Assuming you haven’t sold the audio rights to your book, you can take it to the next level by publishing your own audiobook.
For those of you who haven’t signed any contracts yet, making a deal with a publishing company for print rights is far different than giving them subsidiary rights. The latter means the publisher can produce your work in any other format they want including film, TV and, of course, audiobooks. So, if possible, hang onto those rights instead of just turning them over.
If you’ve retained the rights, gotten them reverted back to you, or have self-published—and if you get lucky, an audiobook publisher will come calling without your ever having made a move. That happened with my dad’s book The Last Jews in Berlin, as well as with my writing coach client Barbara Hinske’s Rosemont series. Just make sure you select a great narrator, since listening to a book narrated by a sub-par voice over professional can be downright tortuous.
But you don’t have to wait for an offer that may never come. You can always publish an audio version of your book on your own. That doesn’t mean you have to go it alone. These days a number of companies will be happy to help. Audiobook publishers to check out in terms of talent and distribution include Findaway Voices, ListenUp AudioBooks and ACX. Of course, you can always go the DIY route, an attractive option when it comes to control and royalties assuming you can secure the right talent and the right production facility, or have a professional home setup.
Either way, publishing an audiobook is going to cost you. Expect to pay a professional narrator $150 to $300 an hour. Thankfully, that hourly charge isn’t based on studio time but rather on the length of time required to read your book aloud. One “finished hour” as it’s called usually equates to 10,000 words. So for a 60,000-word book you could expect to pay the talent $900 to $1,800. That’s usually not the only expense. Production expenses vary from company to company and vary according to the royalty split, distribution options and more.
Why spend the money? Because more and more people are opting to listen to books these days. So publishing an audiobook brings in a whole new audience.
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