The Basics of Audiobooks

Audiobooks. In many ways, they’re the bane of my existence. They’re expensive. They’re complicated. They can take a rather long time to earn back their production expenses.

So you can get an idea of where and how audiobooks are sold, mine can be purchased at my Patreon Store, through audible, at Apple, at Kobo, and at a variety of other retailers and subscription services. My Patreon store is my most profitable venue, and I give my Patreon users one to three weeks of advanced listening to thank them for supporting me and my audiobook endeavors. (Patreon significantly funds my audiobook efforts.)

I do audiobooks for one reason alone: accessibility.

And by accessibility, I don’t mean for those who prefer to listen to their books. I mean accessibility for those who have no other choice than to listen to their books. Sometimes, this means the blind. It can also mean those with visual processing disorders. (Blindness isn’t the only reason someone listens to audiobooks instead of reads them.)

For example, I have a few autistic children who are listeners. The first time a parent of a child suffering from a more extreme form of autism came to me and thanked me for giving their child the gift of books, I had questions. The child’s age came to mind, I won’t lie.

I write for adults, although the lack of sex on the page in my titles does mean I have an audience of teenage readers. (I am not saying teenagers do not consume books with hefty amounts of sex in them, but generally, parents don’t actively give those books to their teens.)

The youngest child (suffering from autism, non-verbal) who listens to my books was aged eight at the time this story happened. How did I find out I had a very young reader like this?

Their parent, in tears, wrote to me with a thank you.

Their non-verbal child had, because of my audiobook, asked a question.

This may seem insignificant to you, but it was of upmost significance to that parent.

This has stuck with me, and even when I bleed out money on audiobooks, I persist because of people like that child and parent.

Accessibility matters.

The Expense of AudioBooks

This is the primary source of my struggles with audiobooks, I won’t lie. I will not use AI voices for my audiobooks. I hire real people for that creative take on my books. I want my books to remain creative pieces in all mediums. And that means hiring real people to narrate my books.

It costs me approximately $3,000 for a full-length novel for the narrator. It is several hundred dollars to have the book proof-listened, which is an additional expense. Then I need to pay my designer to make the square cover based on the original rectangular cover. Honestly, that’s the cheapest part of the whole process.

$4,000 isn’t uncommon for pricing. I know people can produce audiobooks cheaper than that, but I am a firm believer in paying everyone in the chain fairly.

Without them, I do not have a product. Without them, I do not have a career.

Fair payment is critical.

As a general rule, I pay roughly $200 per production hour for an audiobook. For those who need cheaper work, you can get narrators for as little as $45 or so per production hour at Author’s Republic. (Please note that this price range was valid at the time of posting and may have changed since then.)

Regarding Questionable Distributors…

Please note that I do not support or recommend Findaway Voices (owned by Spotify) as an audiobook distributor. They have a known history of attempting to grab rights, and Spotify is notorious for mistreating creatives.

While I know it has cost me money, I have made certain that none of my audiobooks touch Findaway’s (Spotify’s) servers after their rights grab in early 2024.

You can read more about that here.

Here is the important bit, the contract language they had used in their attempt to grab rights:

Licenses that you grant to us

User Content

You retain ownership of your User Content when you post it to the Service. However, in order for us to provide the Service to you we do need a limited license from you to that User Content. Accordingly, you hereby grant Spotify a non-exclusive, transferable, sublicensable, royalty-free, fully paid, irrevocable, worldwide license to reproduce, make available, perform and display, translate, modify, create derivative works from (such as transcripts of User Content), distribute, and otherwise use any such User Content through any medium, whether alone or in combination with other Content or materials, in any manner and by any means, method or technology, whether now known or hereafter created, in connection with the Service, the promotion, advertising or marketing of the Service, and the operation of Spotify’s (and its successors’ and affiliates’) business, including for systems and products management, improvement and development, testing, training, modeling and implementation in connection with the Spotify Service. Where applicable and to the extent permitted under applicable law, you also agree to waive, and not to enforce, any “moral rights” or equivalent rights, such as your right to object to derogatory treatment of such User Content. Nothing in these Terms prohibits any use of User Content by Spotify that may be taken without a license.
You also agree that, if you create your User Content with one or more collaborators, you will ensure that each such collaborator has granted to you all of the rights that you need in order for you to grant the licenses that you grant to us herein in such User Content.

Discontinuation of Distribution

You may request that Spotify cease to distribute the User Content at any time through the distribution workflow in the Service; provided, however, that Spotify and its distribution partners shall be permitted to continue providing users who purchased access to User Content prior to your withdrawal with continued access to such User Content. Spotify will make commercially reasonable efforts to remove the User Content within 30 business days of receipt of such notification from you, subject to these Terms, the Payment Terms, and any applicable distribution partner terms. You acknowledge that such removal requires action on the part of Spotify’s distribution partners and may take longer than 30 business days to complete.

Findaway Voices, February 2024

The important stuff is bolded above. Anyone familiar with contract language can identify that this whole contract was one flaming red flag.

I immediately terminated my relationship with Findaway.

They attempted to charge me for severing their royalty share program (seven titles, with a penalty of several thousand dollars a piece) when I notified them I did not agree to the changed terms of usage.

Let’s just say I was prepared to go to court over it; a company may not change the terms of a contract without also allowing the other party to sever the contract without penalty. The old contract must either stand or the other party must be released from the contract.

You cannot legally bait and switch people in this way.

The Process of Bringing an Audiobook to Life

• Step One: Write the Book.
• Step Two: Edit the Book.
• Step Three: Send the Book to Your Chosen Audiobook Producer or Narrator. (Pay deposit)

For most of my audiobook production, I use BookMarketing.Pro. Bo and his team have been absolutely fabulous to me. I’ve been using them for many years now. I work with Cameron Hill independently, and he is an absolute gem of a human being I found through a network of narrators.

Keira Grace and Cameron Hill are my primary narrators, but I also work with Tracey Rooney and Ivan. I know Ivan has a last name, but he’s just listed as “Ivan” on the website. Please note that Keira Grace is listed as Kira on the BookMarketing.Pro website.

As a few notes: I only use BookMarketing.Pro for the production of the audiobook. I do not make use of any of their other services, so I can’t say anything about that.

• Step Four: Receive the UnProofed Audiobook (Pay balance.)
• Step Five: Proof the Audiobook. (I hire Jenny Bodle to do this for me. Jenny is fabulous.)
• Step Six: Submit Corrections to Producer/Narrator.
• Step Seven: Receive Corrected Audiobook
• Step Eight: Upload Audiobook to Retailers (Acquire Audiobook Cover Art here if you don’t have it yet.)
• Step Nine: Sell your Audiobook.

Some folks may have a slightly different process, additional proofers, and so on. This is just how I handle things.

I want to say there’s no wrong way to handling this process, but there really is. Audiobook listeners are picky. An unfortunate number of them are entitled and expect perfection. Do not skip the proofing phase. Yes, it can be expensive, especially if you have an audio processing issue like I do. I cannot proof my own audiobooks. I can’t listen to audiobooks, period. I have anxiety attacks.

How Long Until an Audiobook Earns Profit?

Here’s where I come bundled with bad news in general. Because of the high expense of audiobooks, I find that it can take anywhere from six months to two years to earn profit on a single audiobook. And once I do earn profit on an audiobook, I’m reinvesting to do more audiobooks.

If I was doing them trying to earn profit, I would have had to quit audiobooks ages ago. They are simply not profitable, at least early on. And even later on, the new books devour any profits I might have had.

As I am not a traditionally published author with a massive reach in the library systems, I just can’t get that sort of leverage required to make audiobooks work better for me.

But What About GraphicAudio?

While I understand GraphicAudio is hugely popular, the prohibitive expense of having them done renders them far outside the scope of my business. If you can afford to take that risk, great!

I can’t afford that risk, not when my end game goal is accessibility. And no, doing GraphicAudio is not going to mystically make an unprofitable audiobook profitable.

You need the fans to buy the books, and I do not have that level of fanbase.

Do I do well? Yes. But I don’t do “tens of thousands of dollars for a single audiobook” well.

And there is no shame in that.

If you can afford the money, and you feel you have a solid chance of earning back, then GraphicAudio may be for you.

At this point in time, it isn’t for me.

Marketing your Audiobook

Honestly, marketing an audiobook isn’t much different from marketing a regular eBook. Just change the text and the targets to reflect audiobooks and go to town. (It’s still not easy, but you can use the same exact logic on both formats. Be aware that Amazon Ads and Bookbub Ads, in particular, work differently for audiobooks. Or may not have viable advertising at all. I genuinely don’t use Amazon for audiobook advertisements, so your milage will definitely vary.)

Good luck!