by Terry Spear
Well, maybe not like ghostly sounds or banshee screeches…but
your words turned into voice.
We all have voice, but what if you turned your book into a
real voice, one that you can hear?
I am the proud producer of a couple of audiobooks. Some of
my Highland books were turned into audio, which was lots of fun. I love
Scottish dialogue. But I wasn’t involved in the process.
This time, I was. With The Dark Fae. And Kiss of the
Vampire. Two young adult books. Two different projects and ways of going about
it.
With The Dark Fae, I found a narrator on ACX. This is owned
by Amazon. It was different from Voices, in that once I approved the book, I
was ready to sell it. I just need to pay the narrator. I didn’t have to. I
could have paid just through royalties, 50/50, but I wanted to pay an hourly
rate. And then it was done.
But if you don’t want to or can’t afford to invest, then the
50/50 royalty is a good way to go. You have to decide who to distribute it through
also. If you want only Amazon to distribute it, then you receive a higher % and
they also make it available on Itunes. If you want to make it available to
other outlets, you couldn’t do it if you check Amazon only, so if you’re looking
for other outlets, it’s better to check the block for that.
For The Dark Fae, the check is in the mail, literally, and
once the narrator receives it, I can have ACX distribute it.
With covers, you can’t use the original cover you would use
on your books. Audiobook covers need to be square.
 |
| Terry's book covers shown here are for demonstration only |
So I played around with that until I could create a whole new cover, same look, but square. Of course, I tried the easy way out first, thinking to squish and squash it into the right size. But it would have looked awful. So I had to start from scratch. They won’t allow you to use borders either. All in all, you want the best look, so that’s important!
Now, with the other project, Kiss of the Vampire, I went
through Voices. Once you have a book narrated there, you have to upload it to
someone else to distribute it for sale. If you agree to pay a set price, you
have to put that money in escrow right up front. Then when you have finished
reviewing the files and agree to them, you can approve it and release the money
right then and there.
I didn’t care for having to set up the escrow, but in the
end, it was easier than having to pay the narrator through ACX since my
narrator didn’t want to receive payment through Paypal because she’d lose some
of her payment that way.
Why even create an audiobook? There are lots of audiobook
readers. I love to listen to audiobooks! Especially on trips. It gives your
book another outlet. Ebook. Print book. Audiobook.
Will you sell a lot? You never know. It’s just like with any
title. We never know which will do well. You have the added
advantage/disadvantage of adding voice—a narrator’s—to the mix. Some will love
the narrator’s voice. But if the majority don’t care for the audiobook version,
it can hurt audiobook sales.
I remember a friend saying she was buying the author’s book
and wouldn’t listen to the audiobook because of the way the story was written
and she felt she wouldn’t get as much out of it by listening to it. So it
doesn’t mean that an audiobook will hurt book sales. In another case, I tried
to get into a book and just could not. So by accident, I picked up the
audiobook version and didn’t have anything else to listen to on the way back
and forth to work and so I kept listening to it until I reached the end. Good
book—to my surprise!
Why keep the option open to be able to distribute on your
own? You can make cds of your works. Offer them as gifts. Offer them for
reviews. Get creative
What is the next project? Second book in the fae series. And
since I’ve already worked with my narrator, we’ve already agreed to terms and
she’s delighted to start a new project.
And that means more audiobooks in the future.
So, ever listen to audiobooks? Do you produce them for your
own work? Or have you thought of giving it a shot?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bestselling and award-winning author Terry Spear has written a couple of dozen paranormal romance novels
and two medieval Highland historical romances. Her first werewolf romance, Heart of the Wolf, was named a 2008 Publishers
Weekly’s Best Book of the Year, and her subsequent titles have garnered
high praise and hit the USA Today
bestseller list. A retired officer of the U.S. Army Reserves, Terry lives in
Crawford, Texas, where she is working on her next werewolf romance and
continuing her new series about shapeshifting jaguars. For more information,
please visit www.terryspear.com, or follow her on
Twitter, @TerrySpear. She is also on
Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/terry.spear .
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