Tried a search on this and got 24 pages of mostly unrelated posts. If it has been asked before can someone point me to the thread(s). Otherwise .. I have never published an audio book but have researched the techniques. Does anyone have any thoughts or practical experience to share. Is it worth the effort? Is it technically difficult to achieve required audio standard to get it accepted on Amazon. I can only consider the DIY approach. Planning on using Audacity and a Samson Q2U microphone. Already have ebook and paperback self published on KDP. Any advice appreciated.
All I can speak about is Scott Siegler getting started building his fan base on Podible, I think the site was called. He read his books and posted a chapter at a time, like a podcast.
Hmm, interesting. I created a few videos with Audacity, a video editing software that came with Windoze 7, and a Rode microphone. They turned out pretty well, I thought. One of them was a 'dramatic' reading of Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart. Audiobooks are similar, I suppose (except you obviously don't need video-editing for that). Is it even possible to monetize audiobooks, though? I never thought of creating one, but that's only because I didn't think I'd need one until after I publish.
[QUOTE="Rath Darkblade Is it even possible to monetize audiobooks, though? I never thought of creating one, but that's only because I didn't think I'd need one until after I publish.[/QUOTE] That really depends on how you define monetizing. There was a site called podible, I think it has disappeared, where authors would post their work in audio format as a podcast of a chapter a week. Scott Sigler did this with several of his books to build an audience, and got picked up by a major publisher because of it. So in one sense he did use audio to monetize his work.
That really depends on how you define monetizing. There was a site called podible, I think it has disappeared, where authors would post their work in audio format as a podcast of a chapter a week. Scott Sigler did this with several of his books to build an audience, and got picked up by a major publisher because of it. So in one sense he did use audio to monetize his work.[/QUOTE] Ah! Sorry -- by "monetize", I meant audiobooks that come out perhaps a year (or two?) after publication, or - in the case of some authors - much longer. I was thinking of (say) the BBC Dramatizations of works by Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, Douglas Adams, and Terry Pratchett -- or (to use the example of Sir Terry), the Discworld audiobooks narrated by Nigel Planer, Stephen Briggs, or Tony Robinson. I've seen many, many of these in bookshops and libraries, and I was wondering. Naturally, I don't put myself in the league of such authors. But what tool would you use to post your work in audio format, or as a podcast? I'm guessing that if I used a mass-market tool like YouTube, then no-one would ever see it or listen to it, because YouTube is so big. Am I right?
The cases you mentioned were more a matter of someone being contracted to create the audio book by the publisher, in which case there is a royalty for the rights. I known Amazon is creating audio books through their originals program on audible. And you have companies like Soundbooth Theater, and Graphic Audio that produce audio books, but am not sure how that process works for author compensation.
