I chatted with Sean Druegger couple months back about being an audiobook narrator. Today I have Jayne Rowney with me to share about her experiences as an author in creating the audiobook for her novel, Ghosted. If you are considering creating an audiobook for your books, this is a super informative post about what the process looks like and things to remember!
Words on screen to words out loud:
Turning novels into audiobooks
I’m always busy. My to-do list is never-ending and finding time to do the things I enjoy seems to be increasingly difficult. I love reading, as I expect most writers do, and I push myself to read more books, from different authors and different genres. However, especially recently, I have found that I simply do not have the time. When I take a break from my schedule I want to be able to get outside, enjoy the gardens and the beach that are within a five minute walk from my home, and get the physical and mental space that I need. I am writing this during the fourth week of lockdown in England due to COVID-19, and taking that daily walk is more important than ever. Reading has been pushed to the side.
There is a solution. I can’t sit in my local café and read while I enjoy tea and breakfast anymore, but I can plug my headphones into my iPhone and listen to an audiobook as I walk down the promenade. I can immerse myself in the next chapter of my novel of choice when I lie in bed at night, relaxing before sleep. I can shut myself off with my headphones on and eyes closed while my other half watches what he wants to on television. All these options are open to me because of audiobooks.
Why create an audiobook?
I started listening to audiobooks a few years ago, when I lived in the North of England and I used to take the train to London to visit my best friend. If you’ve never taken the main line from Leeds to Kings Cross, I can’t say that I recommend it. Shutting yourself off with a great book in your hands or having a skilled narrator read an audiobook to you is a great way to make the journey fly by.
I have an Audible subscription, and I buy a fair few audiobooks, but I also have the BorrowBox app on my phone which allows free downloads for library users. I use them often. You could say that I am a voracious listener.
It made complete sense for me to offer my novels as audiobooks. Not just because I listen to so many audiobooks myself, but also because I know that audio is a growing market for authors. In 2019, audiobook sales increased by 43 percent in Great Britain (The Independent, December 2019). Compare this with a continued fall in eBook and print book sales, and it seems like a no-brainer that authors should choose to create audiobooks.
Where to start: author as narrator or hiring a professional
There are several options when considering how to produce and release ones work in an audiobook format. As I am an independently published author, and I have self-published through Amazon to date, my instinct was to explore ACX.com, Amazon’s own audiobook production portal. There are other options. If you have the time, the skills and the (basic or advanced) equipment and software, you can go it alone. As I said at the beginning of this article, I am very busy! I currently balance my time between marketing and writing, and although I want to publish all my work as audiobooks, I believe it is not the best use of my time to produce them myself. I also do not feel that I could narrate and produce them as well as a skilled narrator.
ACX.com offers various options. You can produce and upload your own sound files. The benefit of this is that you keep all the royalties from your audiobook. The downside, as I have alluded to, is that you need to invest the time to producing the polished, professional product. You can record an audiobook in your own home, using free software and an inexpensive microphone. You can edit the files and upload them yourself. If you are motivated and have the time and ability, then don’t feel that you have to hire a professional.
Finding a narrator: searching for the right person or opening auditions
My first experience with ACX.com was with my most recent book, Ghosted. It is my third novel, and I decided to look for a narrator through ACX.com to produce the audiobook for me. Again, once you decide that this is the path that you wish to head down, there are options. The first is to search the database for your ideal narrator. You can narrow down your search by gender, accent, tone, age, and suchlike, so if you know what kind of voice you would like, it’s fairly straightforward to find a few suitable candidates. Your search will give you a list of names and a description of the narrators’ experience, along with some sound clips to give an example of their work. With my audiobook for Ghosted I was fortunate to find Janet Coulson, whose voice is perfect for my book. Once you select your narrator, you can message them directly to make them an offer, and, if they accept, the production process begins. If your chosen narrator doesn’t accept your offer, go back to the list, search again, repeat.
The other way of finding a narrator is to put your title up for audition. This involves selecting a portion of your book and uploading it to ACX.com. I’ve learned from experience that it’s important to choose a part of your work that will help you to choose whether the narrator is the right person for your book. If there are many characters with different accents, try to choose a segment that will demonstrate how the narrator handles the voices. If there are scenes that require a lot of emotion of whatever kind, it might be in your interest to know through the audition piece how your narrator will bring your work to life.
Your book will then be added to the pages of works that are open to auditions. There are many books on this page, so it helps if yours stands out. If you have a good cover (more about that later) and an interesting blurb and audition piece, you may receive more auditions. The sales ranking and review rating of your book on Amazon can also be seen by potential interested narrators.
You may find that you do not get auditions, or you may receive auditions that are not suitable for your book. I personally did not feel that an American narrator would be the best choice for my novels, and I requested auditions from narrators with English accents when I put my other novels up for audition. I still received auditions from producers with American accents, so had to politely decline. You should choose the narrator who is right for your work. Imagine listening to your book and hearing someone reading it to you. Try to think of your novel from the perspective of a reader, or indeed potential listener.
Payment: creating an audiobook doesn’t need to be expensive
The other consideration that you need to make when deciding to work with a narrator is how you will pay them. Perhaps I should have started with this point, as I have seen many discussions in online forums and Facebook groups about the cost of audiobooks. Many writers are put off by the perceived cost of creating an audiobook. However, there are ways to proceed that will cost you nothing up front. The three ways of paying a narrator are 1. A fee paid based on an hourly rate. 2. Royalty share, where the profits from the audiobook are split equally between you and the narrator. You get twenty percent of the sale price each. 3. Royalty share plus, where you pay a fee to the narrator, which is usually less than the amount you would usually pay if you were just paying them per hour, as you will also split the royalties with them. Royalty share plus can open the pool of narrators that you can select from as a larger number of professional narrators may wish to work on a pay-per-hour basis rather than splitting royalties with an author. Before you release your audiobook neither you nor the narrator will know for certain how well it is going to sell. For an independent author, your book needs to be an attractive proposition to a narrator if you want to attract your ideal producer.
Production timescales
As I said, I was lucky to find Janet Coulson, who agreed to produce Ghosted. ACX.com asks for a timescale to be entered and a contract to be agreed upon before work gets underway. The narrator will then produce the first fifteen minutes, and the author should then listen to and review the work so far. You can request changes at this point or approve and move on. I set a four-week deadline for the first fifteen minutes. I was not in a huge hurry to release the audiobook, and I wanted to make sure that Janet had time to read and produce this section. Following approval, the narrator will then complete the rest of the narration before your deadline and upload the book, in individual chapters, to ACX.com, where you can review the complete work. It is quite an experience listening to someone else reading your book out to you for the first time! Even though I am used to audiobooks, I was unprepared for how immersive and engaging my own book would sound. Janet did a fantastic job bringing my words to life. There were a couple of tiny tweaks that needed to be made (one of them was the pronunciation of a medical term, which I should probably have discussed with my narrator pre-production. I have learned from this!) and then the book was signed off as complete.
Once you are happy with your completed work and have clicked the “accept” button on ACX.com, your files are quality checked by ACX to make sure they meet their (and Audible’s) standards. This usually takes a few weeks. I was lucky with Ghosted that it only took a couple of weeks for my audiobook to pass QA and be approved for sale, but my next audiobook, Charcoal, which was my debut novel in 2012, has been in quality assurance for longer than that already. With the COVID-19 pandemic in full force, there has been an impact upon audiobooks being cleared for sale, and timelines have been extended, from what I have heard on writers’ Facebook groups.
Cover art: don’t just resize your eBook or print cover
You’ll also need to add a photo for your audiobook “cover”. I would recommend that you don’t just resize the cover that you already have for your eBook or print copy. The audiobook cover needs to be square, 2400×2400 pixels, and most eBook/print book covers are portrait, rectangular images. Directly resizing them will make your picture and font look less than ideal. Contact your book cover creator, and ask them to reformat your work, or, if you made your own cover, then redesign it yourself for the new dimensions.
The end product
As soon as your book has cleared quality assurance it is available for purchase on Audible, Amazon and iTunes. You can choose to go wide with your audiobook, much as you can with your eBooks and print copies, and you can find information on how to do that is readily available through a Google search.
The whole process, for me personally, was straightforward and very easy. Audiobook sales are already equal to my eBook and print sales, and that’s with only one of my titles on sale. I have Charcoal in quality assurance, awaiting release, and both my second novel, and my forthcoming fourth novel are both also in production. I aim to release my next novel and its accompanying audiobook simultaneously, and that will be my default plan for all future works.
Further information and where to find my work
Marketing audiobooks is a whole new conversation and has been an interesting and informative journey for me. I’m happy for anyone to drop me an email to discuss at jayne@jerowney.com
You can listen to Ghosted from Audible.com for US listeners or Audible.co.uk for UK listeners. A preview is available on my website.
Did you know about the process of creating an audiobook? Did anything surprise you?
I hope you enjoyed this guest post by Jayne. See you until next time!
Banner: Photo by Jonathan Velasquez on Unsplash
Be First to Comment