the experience of audiobook production

At The Passive Voice (the best source for news in the indie publishing world), The Passive Guy asks:

“PG is interested in hearing about the experiences of indie authors with the production and sales of their audiobooks. His impression (which may be wrong) is that there isn’t a path to audiobook publication that is nearly as friction-free as ebook publication is.”

This is true. It is a lot easier to create and publish an ebook than an audiobook. Like, if I really wanted to, I could take an ebook from the start of writing to publication (including making the cover) in about two weeks, though it would be really, really tiring. That would be utterly impossible to do with an audiobook.

I just had my sixth self-published audiobook come out (GHOST IN THE STORM!) and I’ve got six more in various stages of production. So while I’m not the most experienced person at this, I do have more experience than many people.

So, in the hopes of benefiting others, here are my experiences with audiobook production.

Initially, I decided in 2016 not to do any self-published audiobooks. I researched it thoroughly and concluded that it would be too difficult to turn a profit. Even after Tantor picked up the first five FROSTBORN books, I decided not to pursue any self-published audiobooks because it would take them several years to recover the production cost and turn a profit.

Then at the end of 2017, the tax laws changed, and my accountant advised that it would be a really good idea to have more expenses related to my writing business. Upon reflection, I had three options 1.) buying new covers for my older books, 2.) spending more on advertising, and 3.) audiobooks. Buying new covers for my older books would be a lot of hassle (not many cover artists will commit to doing, say, 12 covers at once and I write long series) and might not impact sales, and advertising is always a crapshoot. But an audiobook would create a revenue-generating asset at the end of the process, and the production cost would be a legitimate business expense.

So, I decided to start producing audiobooks through ACX, which is an Amazon website designed to facilitate finding and hiring audiobook narrators. ACX offers two options for paying the narrator – you pay up front once the audiobook is done, or you split the royalties with the narrator for 7 years. Since it fit with my objectives listed above, I went with upfront payment. Also, I’ve noticed that most experienced narrators prefer upfront payment.

I started accepting auditions for CHILD OF THE GHOSTS and FROSTBORN: THE DARK WARDEN in August, and I was frankly shocked by the number of auditions I got – over sixty for each book. And none of them were bad. A few of them were obviously not the right choice because of the narration style or vocal timbre, but all of the auditions were objectively good. I was expecting to get a few auditions that sounded like they were recorded in a shower stall or something, but there were none like that. It was a difficult decision!

Once I choose a narrator, I basically gave them a list of pronunciations and thumbnail character descriptions, answered any questions that came up, and then got out of the way. I’ve heard horror stories of indie authors who go Full Sauron with their narrators (“Your Welsh accent is too Snowdonian!”) and try to control every little thing, but I don’t think that’s a good idea for two reasons:

(And consider how going Full Sauron worked out for the Original Sauron!)

1.) Way back in the Bad Old Days, I was a department manager at a big box retail store, which meant I had to supervise people. I found the best way to get anything done was to find someone competent, tell them what I wanted to happen, and then get out of their way.

2.) It’s important for a writer to realize that the audiobook won’t sound the way it does in your head. An audiobook is an adaptation of your work. The important question isn’t “Does this match the way I heard it in my head?” but “Does it make sense that it sounds that way?” Like, in FROSTBORN: THE DARK WARDEN and GHOST IN THE BLOOD, the characters of The Warden and The Moroaica did not sound that way in my head. But – and this is the important part! – it makes sense that they would sound that way. It works! It’s a good adaptation of the characters. That’s what you should be aiming for, a good adaptation.

To sum up, I got into audiobooks for business reasons, but I’m really happy with how they’ve turned out. All the audiobooks are high-quality productions with excellent narrators, and I can sell them for years to come.

Finally, to quote one of the comments on the Passive Voice post above:

“Good VAs, if you let them have their heads, will find stuff in the text you didn’t know was there, and teach it to you.” 

This is very true! Certainly that has been my experience.

-JM