Have you seriously considered audio books?
You should check out audio books
There are many reasons for this. A large part of it is that many of the youth [people under 40] have spent a huge amount of time with iPod (or the even earlier WalkMan) earphones stuck in their ears. In addition, many of them spend large amounts of time driving or riding to and fro. For example, the last job I had before I became a full-time writer-designer-publisher required an hour and a half commute. Plus, any people exercise, run, or walk regularly, by themselves. The list goes on.
The result is that more people all the time, realizing they do not have time to read or simply preferring to listen, put an audio book on their smart phone. This is beginning to have some statistical merit. In an article from the editor of MarketWatch, Jeremy Olshan, some evidence was presented that suggests we need to rethink things. His first anecdote was:
“I just don’t get it,” Richard Thaler told me a few months ago, when I asked how his book tour was going. “More people are listening to my book than reading it.”
Thaler is an entertaining writer as academics go, deftly distilling complex ideas. And the subject of his book, “Misbehaving,” is compelling: the psychological quirks and failings that distinguish actual humans from the rational action figures many economists suppose walk the Earth. I had to agree with Thaler, because I didn’t get it either.
It turns out that quite a few people are reporting that their books, some or all, are selling better in audio than they are in print and/or ebook. This has been my experience also. I’ve had two of my books {which were barely selling} converted to audio. So far, one of them has sold more audio in a month than they sold print and ebook over the last year. One of them was released last week and it has already sold more audio books than ebooks this month. The third book is in production.
In the article, Jeremy found that many books of widely varying types and styles, fiction and non-fiction, sell better in audio. He cited some that sold four times the audio books. But it was very hard to predict which ones would work in this manner.
Some he attributed to professional book narrators with a following. This is evidently a major factor in books like the Reacher novels and other best-selling fiction. Mr. Olshan adds the following near the end of his article:
Not all audiobook hits are attributable to how great or greatly known the narrator is. When Joshua Kaufman’s business book “The Personal MBA” was published, the audiobook outsold the print version three to one, even though Kaufman did the narration himself.
The reason? The rise of audiobooks isn’t just about the quality of the performance but the fact that many readers prefer the experience to text. “For a long time the industry treated audiobooks as a subsidiary format, but now we’re seeing it’s become a primary format for many — and has been for some time,” Kaufman said.
Reading in America, among those under forty especially, is becoming rare. Many seniors have vision issues. I’ve written before about the huge percentage of functionally illiterate people in our 21st century culture. There’s a link to an article below which talks about the fact that “Each year, Germans buy more audiobooks than e-books, and the voice actors are as big as rock stars. This past summer, 20,000 Germans filled a Berlin stadium just to listen to the most popular audiobook series.” In short, it is time to seriously consider audio in your publishing mix.
ACX uses your regular Amazon publishing credentials to start your account. You upload a script for the audition and listen to the results. You are looking for a fit with your narrator. it is certainly worth a try—especially if you have a book which is already selling well.
Be careful of costs
If your book does not have large sales, you could easily end up paying a thousand dollars or much more to produce the audio version. That makes little sense unless you have the sales to recoup to expenses.
But even a 50/50 royalty split can have problems. I had one narrator who simply could not get the book completed under the deadline which he self-imposed. After a long time allowance to help him, I finally had to bag the effort.
I’m still a newbie at all of this, and it has required a fairly steep learning curve. But a good narrator will help you. Don’t offer a contract until you are comfortable.
Using a consistent voice
I’ve been blessed with a growing relationship with my narrator. As I develop this new publishing venture, I am seeing that a consistent voice for my audio books is as important as the voice I have developed for my print and ebooks. It is possible I’ll need a different narrator for my radically different book categories: technical non-fiction, Biblical non-fiction, and fiction. That remains to be seen.
There’s a great deal of experimentation necessary as you get this under way. You have to find a narrator with a voice who expresses you accurately. So far, I’ve only been doing non-fiction. I’ve been focusing on short books [an hour to three hours] to get a feel for it and see what happened. It seems to be a good option for some of my books.
You will need to rewrite portions of your books. Try reading them out loud and you will quickly see that some of the phrasing is silly, at best, when narrated. You’ll need to convert your images to prose, for example. Footnotes need to be rewritten as part of the copy. Quotes need to be documented in a manner which flows well when read. All of these things are minor problems though it does take some time.
Give audio a try!
What are your experiences?
