Developing an Audiobook: An Indie Author’s Perspective

By Ray Flynt

Part of The Indie Author Series

JH: Audiobooks are hugely popular, but not every author knows how to create one for their novels. Ray Flynt is back in the lecture hall today to walk us through the process of creating an audiobook. 

In its purest form, writing a novel is storytelling. The world’s first books undoubtedly had their genesis in timeless stories once told around campfires. We also know that children learn to read and develop their own love of books by being read to, whether from those first Golden Books or hearing about the adventures of Harry Potter.

Thanks to ACX.com (an Amazon company) Indie Authors can see their stories come to life as an audiobook. It makes sense to have your books available in as many formats as possible to appeal to a broad audience. I’m always puzzled when I see Indie Authors say, “I only have my novel available as an eBook, since a print version would be too expensive.” It’s my contention that if you’re willing to spend time and a modest amount of money, you can easily develop a trade paperback. In this article, I’ll provide my perspective on adding an audiobook format to your available mix.

Hey Indie Authors! Create Space is Closing Down.

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy 

Part of the Indie Author Series

If you’re an indie author, odds are you’ve already discovered this simply by logging into your Create Space account. But I spoke to some writer friends this week who were unaware this was happening, so I figured a quick shout out couldn’t hurt.

Amazon is closing Create Space and merging it into KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). Amazon KDP has had the option to publish print books as well as ebooks for a while now, but with Create Space handling the print side of things, few authors seemed to use it (at least in my experience and conversations with authors). But that’s over now.

Amazon has made this entire process fairly painless. They have a nice “before, how to, after, and FAQ” section that will answer your questions and tell you what you need to do.

Producing Your Books in Audio Part Six: Approving and Paying for Your Book

By Angela Quarles, @AngelaQuarles

Part of the Indie Author Series

I'm continuing my series on producing books in audio with ACX. Last month, I covered Producing Your Books in Audio Part Five: Proofing Your Book. 

This month I'll give tips on approving the final version and marketing your audio book. It's kind of funny how these posts are now lining up with the exact stage I'm in right now. Last month I was in the middle of proofing, and now I just had the payment received on Monday, so I'm waiting for ACX to approve.

Producing Your Books in Audio Part Five: Proofing Your Book

By Angela Quarles, @AngelaQuarles

Part of the Indie Author Series

This month, I'm continuing my series on producing books in audio with ACX. Last month, I covered Producing Your Books in Audio Part Four: Prepping Your Book. This month I'll give tips on what to do when your narrator is done recording.

Tip #1 -- Evaluating the first 15 minutes

This is the 'speak now or forever hold your peace' kind of moment. Your narrator will send you the first 15 minutes, and you need to listen to it (preferably with headphones) and let them know any big pic issues you have at this point. Hopefully you've done your homework and picked a narrator who fits your story, but this is another checkpoint. Things to listen for and mention:

• Pacing -- are they reading at a comfortable pace? You don't want them reading it soooo sloooowly that it drags. But you also don't want them rushing the story.
• Characterization -- are they properly embodying the characters and their personalities? Especially your main characters?
• Tone -- are they reading your story with the right tone? Playful when it should be playful? Suspenseful when it should be suspenseful?
• Accents and pronunciation -- are there any accents that are off? Are words pronounced properly?

Don't worry about sound quality, as these aren't mastered, but if you do notice excessive mouth noises and pops, just touch base with your narrator to make sure those aren't going to be an issue when all's said and done.

Are Your Book’s Ads Earning or Losing You Money?

By Marcy Kennedy, @MarcyKennedy

Part of the Indie Author Series

A couple of months ago, I started a series on advertising as an indie author. We’ve already looked at a big picture overview of when and what we might want to advertise, and last month we talked about whether there’s ever a time when it’s okay to lose money on advertising.

From this point on, we’ll be looking at advertising where we earn back at least as much money as we invested in the ad. But there’s something we need to do before we can go any further talking about ads. We have to figure out how to measure whether our ads are earning us money or not. It’s fine to say we want them to earn us money, and another thing entirely to know how to tell if they are. That’s what I’m going to walk you through this month and next month.

Producing Your Books in Audio Part Four: Prepping Your Book

By Angela Quarles, @AngelaQuarles

Part of the Indie Author Series

Previous posts in this series covered whether you should produce an audio book, holding auditions, and picking a narrator. So for this post, I'm going to step you through some advice for what to do with your book before you turn it in to your narrator!

Tip # 1 - Make sure you have it in your final form

This sounds obvious, but I have heard of authors making changes to their book after they've had their book recorded. So unless you want to pay for your narrator to redo those parts, your audio version will not match if you make changes to your ebook. I've found that little errors pop up right after my ebook releases, so I wait until I know I've got all the nitpicky stuff out of the way.

Producing Your Books in Audio Part Three: Picking Your Narrator

By Angela Quarles, @AngelaQuarles

Part of the Indie Author Series

In the previous post in this series, Producing Your Books in Audio Part Two: Auditions, I gave tips on getting the best auditions for your book on ACX. So for this post, I'm going to step you through some advice for what to do with all those lovely snippets!

Tip #1 - Things to Listen For

Some of your audition samples are going to be easy No's. Especially if they botch an accent. Side note: Can actors please learn to do some various Southern accents other than the Hollywood one? OMG. Seriously, some of my auditions I only listened to about 4 seconds of them the accents were that bad. So, good news is, if you know what you want, you don't have to listen to the whole audition. But what do you want to listen for?

Indie Publishing Paths: What’s Your Next Step?

By Jami Gold, @JamiGold

Part of the Indie Authors Series

For nearly two years in this Indie Publishing Paths series, we’ve been exploring our options—and the pros and cons of those options—for many of the decisions we face as indie authors. That’s a lot of posts.

So before I wind down this series for good, I wanted to offer one last post to serve as a Table of Contents to help us through the learning and decision-making process. Consider this post a To-Do List for our indie publishing choices. *smile*

Producing Your Books in Audio Part Two: Auditions

By Angela Quarles, @AngelaQuarles

Part of the Indie Author Series

Last month, in Producing Your Books in Audio Part One: Should You? I covered some advice for determining whether getting into audio would be a smart move for you.

In today's topic, I'm going to cover some tips for getting the best auditions.

The Benefits of Ebook Pre-Orders

By Marcy Kennedy, @MarcyKennedy

Part of the Indie Author Series

In the past few years, independent authors have been gaining access to tools and techniques that were once available only to traditional publishers. One of those tools is ebook pre-orders.

Ebook pre-orders are exactly what they sound like. Your ebook is listed for sale at an online retailer, and readers can purchase it in advance of the release date. Once the book releases, they receive their copy.

Indie Publishing Paths: What’s Your Master Publishing Plan?

By Jami Gold, @JamiGold

Part of the Indie Authors Series

After almost two years of posts, we’re finally winding down this Indie Publishing Paths series. Over the course of the series, we’ve covered a lot of information, focusing especially on the pros and cons for many of the decisions we face as indie authors.

As I’ve emphasized throughout this series, there’s no one right way to be successful as an indie author. Just because our favorite virtual mentor chooses one method to reach success doesn’t mean that method will work for us.

• Our role models might have different goals or definitions of success from our own.
• The publishing landscape constantly changes—from Amazon’s rules to reader expectations—so what worked six months ago might not work anymore.

It does us no good to blindly follow someone else’s strategy if we don’t understand it or know if it will help us reach our goals. We need those pros and cons to translate their methods to the current market or to something that might be a better match for what we want out of our publishing career.

Producing Your Books in Audio Part One: Should You?

By Angela Quarles, @AngelaQuarles

Part of the Indie Author Series

ACX.com, a subsidiary of Amazon, makes it possible for indie authors to produce their books in audio. Back in 2014, Heather Smith did a step-by-step guide for using ACX to produce audio books and it's a great overview for getting started in audio books, so if you're thinking about doing this, definitely read her article first. I will tackle the subject in more detail in a series of posts, and today's topic is: Should you get your book(s) done?

Chances are you've thought about having your books produced in audio but have wondered whether it was worth it It's definitely still a growing market and smart to do if your books are selling well already (though you'd be surprised at my definition of well, so don't be discouraged yet). For me, it's been worth it and I'm no big name.

Kindle Unlimited: Is It Worth It?

By Marcy Kennedy, @MarcyKennedy

Part of the Indie Author Series

Back in June I wrote a post where I outlined the pros and cons of Kindle Select, a program where you’re required to make a book exclusive to Amazon for 90 days in exchange for certain perks.

One of those “perks” is that the book we enroll in KDP Select is also placed into Kindle Unlimited. Kindle Unlimited is a subscription-based service where readers pay a flat monthly fee for the ability to read the books in KU without paying anything additional for them. Authors whose books are in KU are paid based on how many pages of their books are read. The per-page payout varies per month, and Amazon announces what it will be on the 15th day of the following month. (In other words, you find out on March 15 what the payout will be for page reads from February.)

Vendor Spotlight: Pronoun. Distribution Beyond Amazon

By Angela Quarles, @AngelaQuarles

Part of the Indie Author Series

Many have expressed frustration with going wide on platforms other than Amazon, with much of it centering on how daunting it is to navigate the different interfaces on B&N, iBooks, Kobo, or even with the interfaces on distributors to these places like Smashwords and Draft2Digital.

I thought I'd spotlight a relatively new entrant into the distributor arena: Pronoun. Pronoun currently distributes to the following retailers: Amazon, Apple iBooks, B&N, Kobo, and Google Play.

Checking Under the Hood: Using Book Report to Crunch Your Numbers

By Jana Oliver, @crazyauthorgirl

Part of the Indie Authors Series

One of the challenges an indie author faces is the necessity to acquire, then evaluate sales data in a timely fashion.Fortunately, Amazon and its online brethren have made significant strides in supplying that information for us indies. We can tell exactly how many books have sold per day, including where those were purchased. The latter is important if I’m running a Facebook ad and wish to target specific countries or regions, and to determine if I’ve established the proper price point.

Creating Multi-Author Box Sets

By Marcy Kennedy, @MarcyKennedy

Part of the Indie Author Series

Over the past few months, we’ve talked about why we might want to create a box set of our books, how to create a single-author ebook box set, and our options for creating a print book box set.

Today I’ll be closing out the mini-series by looking at multi-author box sets.

A multi-author box set is a collection of short stories, novellas, or novels by different authors. By definition, these works are also sold independently.

"Going Wide" - Part 3: Getting Your Books into Libraries

By Angela Quarles, @AngelaQuarles

Part of the Indie Author Series

Last year, I tackled getting into non-Amazon retailers with Gaining Traction on non-Amazon Vendors Part 1: The Upload Process, which gives an overview of the major vendors, and Part 2 - Gaining Traction on Kobo. Today, I thought I'd tackle getting into libraries.

There are two approaches you need to take to make this work: 1) make it available at places libraries buy and 2) visibility (so they want to buy it).

Creating a Print Book Box Set

By Marcy Kennedy, @MarcyKennedy

Part of the Indie Author Series

The last two months we’ve looked at why we might want to create a box set of our books and how to create a single-author ebook box set. This month I wanted to look at one of the most challenging questions for indie authors when it comes to box sets: Is there a way to create a print book box set for our books?

The short answer is yes. Whether or not we’ll feel the options are workable for us, though, requires examining them carefully.

Indie Publishing Paths: What’s Your Master Plan? Part One

By Jami Gold, @JamiGold

Part of the Indie Authors Series

Over the course of this Indie Publishing Paths series, we’ve covered a lot of information. Indie authors have to make far more decisions than we might think, and each of those decisions comes with pros and cons for us to consider. There’s no one right way to be successful as an indie author.

In this series, we first focused on how to decide which path will work best for us. We figured out our goals and priorities and walked through our options for the where, when, and how much of putting our book up for sale.

Creating Single-Author Box Sets: Part Two

By Marcy Kennedy, @MarcyKennedy

Part of the Indie Author Series

Last time we looked at the benefits of putting together a box set. This time I want to dig down into what we need to think about on a practical level once we’ve decided that a box set is a good idea.

So here are the most important items when creating a box set…

Decide how many books (and what books) to include.

Single-author box sets tend to be the most successful when we’re bundling up books from the same series in chronological order.