So I've been marketing my new audiobook (link here) the last few days. It's a short story, not a full novel, but I'm still excited to break ground in a new medium. I narrated it myself, which was a tiring but fantastic experience I hope to soon repeat with my other books. Today's blog is about the logistics of what I've learned...
1) You need a good microphone. I got mine for $20, so it's not a big investment, but without one you'll get nothing but background noise.
2) Location. Location. Location. You need a good room. Small rooms are better than big, and you definitely don't want empty walls. Empty walls will bounce sound around. What you want is lots of furniture to absorb all that ambient noise. I used my bedroom.
3) You need a decent editing program. Something that allows you to delete, copy, & paste is all you really need, but the further you can "zoom in" to your recording, the easier it will be. Zooming to 1/2, 1/4, or 1/8 seconds aren't good enough. 1/16 are ok. 1/32 are better. 1/64 or further are ideal.
4) When you record, things will go wrong, but don't pause or stop the recording. That's what editing is for. Just keep that tape rolling. Not only will you mess up the reading and want to try again, but it's amazing what kind of other sounds are picked up (dogs barking/ neighbors casually closing car doors/ even your stomach grumbling is totally audible). When any of those things happen, just stop talking, go back to the start of the previous sentence, and read it again. When you edit you'll have to choose and delete the bad stuff, and it'll take a while, but the alternative (making a 'perfect' recording for each section of your story) is far worse.
5) Publish! There are lots of publishing platforms out there. I used www.acx.com and it was easy. Once I had a finished product to uploaded, it took them 14 days to process it. They sell it for you on three major audiobook platforms: iTunes, Amazon, & Audible.com. They also choose the price for you, which is nice b/c you don't have to worry about over- or undercharging. Your cut is fair, and that's all that matters.
LMK in the comments if this helped you at all.
Narratingly yours,
-K
ps: Yesterday's Writing Results: No new words written or edited for several days, but my marketing results have been great, so I still did author-ly work and I'm not feeling guilty at all. :D
Thanks for sharing the steps needed to publish an audio book. Very helpful and I hope to follow in your footsteps with my series on Alaska!
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