I used to read, a lot. Eventually, life started to get in the way of my pleasure reading. I’d still read to learn in the evenings, but reading for entertainment sake got harder as the years went on.

First there was work, then family, then more family and more work. Did I mention homeownership? Maintaining a house takes up a lot of time too. Good grief, how does anyone find time to read for pleasure anymore?

Then audiobooks came along. Granted, there were always books on tape or cd, but now they are digital. You can have them on your phone, wherever you go. It’s amazing.

These days, rather than listen to the radio, I listen to audiobooks while I’m commuting. I have to admit, that I find myself beginning to get too lazy to sit down and read a regular book.

In fact, I believe that audiobooks are cannibalizing the written book market to a large extent. So as a writer, what do you do about it?

Make audio books or get left behind

As a self-published author, you’ll find that getting your book turned into an audiobook is not all that difficult compared to getting your book published in print. However, it can still cost a little more time and money to get done.

If your publishing process is at all like mine, then you’ve likely already spent somewhere between $2000-$4000 getting your book made. That includes sending it out to editors and getting covers designed.

Hopefully when you got your cover designed, you also had them make you square version of your cover, since the standard rectangle for your book is not the same format used for your audiobook thumbnail, and let’s face it, stretching your image to fit a square format looks stupid.

To get your audiobook recorded, you should also plan on spending another couple thousand dollars for a professional voiceover artist. You could try AI, though last I checked, not all platforms that sell audiobooks will allow AI recorded books. Another thing I’ve noticed, when I’ve listened to AI recorded audiobooks, is that while the AI can get really close to sounding authentic, there’s always a few spots in every chapter where the inflections are slightly off, or words are pronounced weird, and it tends to throw me out of the story when I hear them.

That’s why I encourage hiring a voice actor. Now you can do this in two different ways. One is by offering them royalties on every download, and another way is to pay them a one-time fee to produce your novel.

For me, I prefer to do the one-time fee. That way, I don’t have to keep track of my sales and royalty payments. Authors with a larger customer base might warrant getting a voice actor to charge a royalty, but I’m going to assume that if you’re self-publishing that you don’t want to go this route. While sticking to a single platform like ACX might help with royalties (might being the key word, because I don’t know this for sure), the method I use and recommend is a little harder to automate royalty payments.

My Process

Generally, around the time that I start working on my cover art for my book, I start looking for a voiceover artist. If you don’t know my self-publishing method, check out my last article on publishing.

Anyhow, by starting this early, I’m able to give my voiceover artist time they need to record, and then my distribution provider time they need. Funny thing is, sometimes the distribution needs as much or more time than the voice actor.

My first two attempts at recording my book went poorly. First, I had a family member who offered to do this for me. He’d never done it before, but he had a dynamic voice and enthusiasm to accomplish the project.

He’d occasionally give me updates, until he didn’t. After a few months, I realized that he lost his drive to make it happen. The novelty had worn off, and I think he may have realized that my book at the time wasn’t all that worthy of his time, especially since I don’t think he planned on charging me for it. I think he just wanted to see if he could do it. I don’t fault him for giving up on it, especially after my second attempt to get it recorded.

For my second attempt, I tried recording it myself. Something you learn very quickly, is that no matter what time of day you decide to record, someone is going to start up a lawn mower near you, or drive a loud motorcycle past your street, or one of your kids is going to start making a racket. Then when you’re sure you have the time and quiet, your voice gives out. Unless you have a sound studio in your house, it can get really hard to record good audio. It takes planning and know-how.

So my first two attempts failed, and I gave up on that book. The third time I decided to do this the right way.

I hired a voice artist. I really like Voices.com for this. They have several voice actors, all with searchable characteristics and samples of their work. I used them to find a great voice actor for my book, One For The Money, Two For The Soul.

She was able to take my book and have it recorded and back to me in about a week. I listened to the files, added a file of my own “from the author” and had her fix a couple minor spots, then it was ready. Also, she recorded it in a format that would be acceptable on all platforms, and most importantly, Amazon’s Audible platform, which has some specific quality requirements.

Next I chose to use FindawayVoices.com for my distribution. I could have just used audible, but like my book publishing philosophy, I really like being available on as many platforms as possible, not just Amazon’s exclusive stuff.

With Findaway, I was able to get mass distribution to everyone, including Audible, however you need to have everything uploaded, and finalized with a release date posted at least a month or two at the minimum in advance, because it does take some time for all the retailers of your book to get the listing from Findaway on their databases.

Once you’ve completed this step, congratulations, you’ve done it. You now have your book published in print, digital, and audio formats. What’s left?

Well, there’s two things. Marketing and doing it all over again. But those are topics for another discussion.

For more fun and helpful content, visit my YouTube channel. This topic, along with a short skit, can be found at: https://youtu.be/1k8kqJTkyOk