Ultimate Guide to Publishing Your Own Audiobook

Ever wondered how you can grow your self-publishing business?

By writing just one story and publishing in several formats? Or finding out ways to reach a new market, or new audiences?

No matter how well your self-publishing business is doing right now, there is always room for growth.

There are currently three main formats that a book can be published in:

• Paperbacks
• eBooks
• Audiobooks

While the first two have grown so popular that they seem to have reached saturation point, there is so much growth potential for audiobooks. As a matter of fact, the audiobook market has been growing at a rate of 30% yearly. That’s 4x as much growth as the eBook market within the past few years.

With this much potential, why do publishers shy away from making their own audiobooks? So much has to do with the barrier to entry in the audiobook market.

I mean, virtually anyone could self-publish an eBook and start selling almost instantly. You could sell directly to your readers, or through Amazon Kindle Publishing, but not so with self-publishing audiobooks. There’s so much that has to be taken care of for the audiobook to come out right.

This guide offers you all that you need to publish and sell your own audiobook. To make the content easily digestible, the guide is divided into sections that include:

• Why You Need to Make Your Own Audiobook
• Different File Formats Available for Audiobooks
• Different Options Available to You for Creating Your Audiobook
• Getting Started With Making Your Audiobook
• Different Audiobook Markets to Publish Yours
• How Much Can You Earn From Your Audiobook?
• Conclusion

Why You Need to Make Your Own Audiobook

Paperbacks have become the dinosaur of the book publishing industry. With the ease and cost effectiveness of publishing eBooks, the digital books have long overtaken paperbacks.

Today, most readers appear to be in favor of listening to the books rather than reading through.

It’s on record that 77 million Americans listened to at least one audiobook in 2016 – consuming an average of 15 audiobooks in the same year. This begins to make more sense when you realize that the growth trend has been up to 33% in recent years.

That’s a potential growth market for self publishers with lots of earning opportunities. Whatever genre of books that you write, as long as an audiobook version can be created, there is a ready market for you.

The other reason to create your audiobook is to respond to changing dynamics of humans. The world is getting busier by the day; with most low-income households keeping at least two jobs. Most 9 to 5 workers spend a considerable amount of time in transit, and very little time to enjoy a good read.

These reasons and many more account for the wide acceptance of books that people could listen to while working or commuting. Readers don’t have to stop what they are doing to focus on a book. They can enjoy the content of your audiobook and still be able to engage themselves in other activities.

Audiobooks are also quite appealing to the younger adults. It brings some kind of fun into studying that neither paperback nor eBook does.

Nursing mothers, business executives, college students, and professionals all love audiobooks with valuable content.

The question now is why create an audiobook, but how do you create yours? Before we delve further in, let’s highlight the formats that audiobooks come in.

Different File Formats Available for Audiobooks

Every book type has its own format in which it is presented. Well, the paperback format comes in paper format.

eBooks are mainly in a PDF format, with Kindle supporting other formats like MOBI files and ePub files.

Audiobooks also come in multiple formats depending on the publishing platforms or devices used for listening. This section focuses on 3 popular audiobook formats namely WAV, MP3 and M4B files.

I. WAV Files 

The origin of WAV files can be traced as far back as 1991 to Microsoft. If you are among those who cared to listen to your PC sounds, you would remember the ‘ping’ error sound from the Sounds section in the control panel. These sounds were produced as WAV files.

Back then, WAV files were Ideal for very short sounds since the format was very bulky. Today, audio compression technology has evolved allowing the use of WAV file format for longer sounds. Engineers use WAV files in the studio for file mastering, and it works out great.

For instance, when a file is recorded, the original file comes in a ‘band’ file which is passed to the engineer to extract all the individual WAV file tracks for the different chapters. After this, the WAV files are mastered and then exported as MP3 or M4B files.

II. MP3 files 

The MP3 file format is one of the most popular audio formats we have today. It is the final file format for most audios because it is much smaller than the compressed WAV file. Also, the MP3 file format allows you to compress audio files into much smaller sizes without compromising audio quality.

The file format is portable, and can be played on most commercial audio devices.

III. M4B files 

This audio file format shares a lot in common with MP3 file format. For one, both file formats are small and easily portable. They are also widely used online, while M4B is the file format supported by iTunes, MP3 is used on Audible and most other audio platforms.

The main difference between both file formats is that M4B can be bookmarked while MP3 cannot.

The take-home from this section is, when publishing on ACX, your MP3 goes to both iTunes and Audible. While iTunes supports the M4B file format, Audible makes do with MP3.

Now that you know the different file formats for your audiobook, let us explore the options before you.

Different Options Available to You for Creating Your Audiobook

Even with the growth prospects of the audiobook market, lots of publishers still keep away from the market, largely because of two reasons – the difficulty in creating an audiobook, and high cost associated with making one!

Although these fears cannot be waved away, there are ways to create your audiobook without much trouble. This section offers you two options depending on your needs and preferences.

#1 – Paid Production

Going with this option means you pay a voice artist to record your audiobook. This entails getting a narrator, recording and mastering the audio files, and receiving the finished files. This gives you all the rights to your audiobook.

Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX) is the go-to resource for many audiobook publishers. They offer multiple-voice artists from which you can take your pick.

The average rate for producing an audiobook through the paid production is $225 per 10,000 words.

#2 – Do your own recording and publish on ACX

Most self-publishers decide on this option, especially if they have just one or two books to record.

To produce a quality audio recording using this option, you need to have quality audio production equipment.

Work with a skilled audio engineer that understands the audio specs required by ACX. If an audio file is produced with wrong specs, you may have to do the recording all over again.

You should also note that voice recording will take you quite some time, especially if you’re not a professional. So, make enough extra time for retakes, and corrections.

At the end of the day, the goal is to produce an audiobook with the right quality, no matter the option you decide on.

Getting Started with Making Your Audiobook

Recall that we explored two options for creating your audiobook in the previous section. Here we take on the option of doing it yourself.

Using easy-to-follow steps, let’s do a rundown on creating your own audiobook.

Step 1 – Secure the Right Equipment

There should be no compromise in the quality of audio for your book. For that reason, get a good quality microphone to use for your recording. The budget for this should range from $50 to $100.

For audio recording software, Audacity would suffice.

Step 2 – Set Up a Recording Space

Your recording space should be quiet, and devoid of any distractions. Try to keep electrical equipment like AC, dishwasher, and dryers as far away as possible. You don’t want their buzzing sounds to creep into your audio recording

Also, ensure that the walls of your recording space are as soft as you can get them to be. You don’t want to be hearing echo or hollow sounds in your book.

Step 3 – Do the Recording

Prep your voice by doing some voice exercises and rehearsals. Listen to your recording over and over again until it comes out right before doing the main recording.

Step 4 – Give the Recording to an Audio Engineer

The engineer helps to further edit your recording and filters the sound to make the audio sound better.

Step 5 – Edit Your Audiobook Cover to Suit ACX Standard

If you’re skilled in graphic designs, you could hire someone from Fiverr to get it done for you.

Step 6 – Set Up Your ACX Account

Make sure that all the details provided by you in the account set up are accurate. Your bank and tax details must be provided to receive royalty from your audiobook.

Once your audiobook is approved, ACX takes it up from this point.

Different Audiobook Markets to Publish Yours

As with virtually every online business, there are a number of options to choose from for publishing your audiobook. Amazon is always almost mentioned in every online transaction out there. Not surprisingly, it has a stake in the audiobook publishing industry.

The 4 big players we are profiling are:

• ACX
• Overdrive
• Audiobooks.com
• Downpour

1. ACX

ACX is an audiobook publishing platform that is owned by Audible, while Audible is owned by Amazon (are you surprised?)

ACX handles the hosting of audio files, book covers, and the metadata associated with each audiobook just the same way that Kindle Direct Publishing does it for Kindle eBooks.

ACX can also distribute your audiobook to iTunes, giving you a wider reach.

With ACX, you have to choose one of the two publishing options – Exclusive or Non-exclusive.

For the Exclusive option, authors can only publish their audiobooks on ACX. The royalty share will be 40%, and sales of your audiobook can start selling immediately without any negotiation.

The Non-exclusive option gives authors the freedom to publish their audiobooks on any publishing platform of their choice. You can choose to publish on ACX, on your website, or on other competing publishing platforms. The royalty for this option is 25% on sales, although you could make much more publishing in multiple platforms. This is a good choice for authors that have a large audience, followers, or email list.

2. Overdrive

Overdrive helps authors in distributing their audiobooks widely through libraries. The downside is that they are very selective of the authors that they work with.

3. Audiobooks.com

This is a great option to distribute your audiobooks with good earning potential. However, audiobooks.com cannot be compared to what you will enjoy from ACX.

4. Downpour

Downpour is also good for publishing your audiobooks, and as with audiobooks.com, you will have to negotiate your deal. Unlike the exclusive deal with ACX where no negotiation is required, you can start selling right away.

How Much Can You Earn From Your Audiobook?

How much you earn depends on the publishing platform, the number of purchases, your negotiation, and quality of your audiobook.

On ACX, the price for audiobooks are set by the company, so you can have an idea of what your royalty should bring you per sale.

The prices for the audiobooks range from $3.95 – $7.00 (under 1 hour), to $25 – $35 (over 20 hours).

Conclusion

The audiobook market represents a rapidly growing niche, with income opportunities for authors.

Most see audiobook publishing as a difficult task that is expensive. While not ruling out some cost implications, making your own audiobook may not be as difficult as you think.

This guide offers valuable information for any author to use in creating and publishing their audiobooks.

Follow the guide each step of the way and you are sure to get your audiobook published.

Do you know you can earn lots of affiliate commissions using audiobooks? Explore the world of affiliate marketing and let your money work for you (earn income passively). Try out Wealthy Affiliate.