If you’re thinking about the market, royalties, costs, narration, duration, recording, standards, permissions and pitfalls of creating an audiobook… check this out!
Hi from Dave, Just a quick narrative on author2audio’s activities in the past few months. I have had a great start to the year that really began in December with the release of Kate Christie’s audiobook Smart Time Management for Doctors on Audible, iTunes and more than 10 other online outlets. Kate is keen to record […]
The same is not true of all audio book distributors. AudioBooks.com (via Author’s republic) for example will create an International Standard Book Number (ISBN), and publish your audio book regardless of whether the book has been published in any other version e.g. eBook. With a faster time to market and lower cost you may be able to use your audio book sales, to finance the publication of your eBook or printed copy versions. Worth considering!
If you are looking to list your audio book for sale on iTunes or Audible, or to those distributors through an aggregate distributor such as Authors Republic, you will need an Amazon Sales Inventory Number (ASIN). In effect you need to have published your book or eBook to iTunes or Amazon, BEFORE you can publish your audio book. The ASIN is like a grouping code for all the different versions of a publication like print; eBook; audio version; etc. Audible use the ASIN to ‘match make’ your audio book with other existing versions of your book.
Listings with multiple outlets has never been easier, and the increasingly hungry appetites for audio would seem to guarantee a shortage of audio book product. Besides it makes good business sense to distribute widely, and author’s are likely to gain from the upward pressure on royalty percentages, as supply pressure increases for the large retailers
How on earth can you hope to get you audio book distributed across all the major and boutique outlets? Well, I’m glad you asked me! Online retailing has made it much easier for distributors to distribute for other distributors. Have a look at the Authors Republic and Findaway Voices websites. See if you can spot the absence of any publisher or on line retailer.
We can help you carve up your audio into ‘sound bites’ so you can on a weekly basis, 1. Publish audio book excerpts on given days at random (tasters) and, 2. Publish paragraphs in chapter order on given days in sequence (teasers).
Get a ‘spot’ on a podcast. Leverage your author’s page (e.g. on Amazon). Write some ‘back story’ posts about your characters and motivations. Divide up your biography into paragraphs and talk about your heroes weekly.
Audio interviews with fellow authors (easy to do with MP3 Skype Recorder). Write opinion pieces for publicity (loved by bloggers, editors and journalists). Tie your audio book into current media topics.