Audiobooks are huge and I’m excited to see how well my book performs in this format. I had originally intended to work with a professional narrator, but when it fell through I decided to give recording the audiobook myself a try. It was time consuming, but overall it cost a significant amount less and I was able to tweak the files until I was satisfied vs having to pay for re-recordings.
If you are thinking about releasing your book as an audiobook, I highly recommend considering reading it yourself. I consider it a treat when I get to hear the author read their own books.
From what I saw originally you’re looking at about $1,000 - $5,000 depending on the narrator you choose to work with and the length of your book (if you’re paying upfront). Also expect it to take at least a month to be produced and returned to you.
To record myself, the cost of equipment was about $300. It took me about 3 weeks to record and edit, spending approximately 2-3 hours per day on it. I own 100% rights to the files. I consider this a huge win.
Read Next: Self-Publishing: Recording an Audiobook
These are the platforms I decided to release my audiobook through:
Author’s Republic
I chose to list with Author’s Republic because they distribute to all of the major distributers, including Audible & iTunes. When I reached out to Libro.fm (an up and coming audiobook distributer), they recommended listing via Author’s Republic to get into their catalog as you can’t do so directly. Presumably this is the case for other smaller audiobook distributors.
It’s important to note that Author’s Republic pays you via PayPal unless you have 10 titles listed with them. That means that you’ll unfortunately lose more of your payment because PayPal will charge a fee for the funds transfer from Author’s Republic.
Read Next: Self-Publishing: Uploading an Audiobook to Author’s Republic
ACX
ACX allows you to publish your audiobook directly to Audible & iTunes. ACX also offers other services that connect you with narrators who can audition to read your book at varying pricing. Read the fine print on these deals though, some of them sound pretty limiting. For example you could get yourself locked into a 7 year exclusive deal with ACX and be required to pay higher royalties if you don’t pay for the audiobook upfront. Since I decided to record the book myself I didn’t explore this avenue.
I chose to list directly with ACX for the following reasons
- Author’s Republic is a little misleading in their verbiage about how much you get paid. They state you will make 70% even through Audible and iTunes. What this really means is that you’ll make 70% of the 25% that ACX pays vs the full 25% if you go directly to ACX.
- ACX direct deposits your payments so you won’t lose a percentage to PayPal.