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Hello Fellow authors. In this post I am asking a questions specifically to those who have published obviously, but also to those went the extra mile and got the audio book done as well.

I am looking for your thoughts on the process, your handling of your producer. Were you completely satisfied with your finished product or did you settle in some ways? What did your initial sales look like?

To those doing a series like me... Are you using the same producer or are you mixing it up, with different producers.?

Any regrets, pitfalls to avoid, advice would be appreciated here.

I renamed this thread so people will have a better idea of what it's about. Good luck.

I am doing this now with my book. I got on ACX, found a narrator I liked and made an offer. So far so good.

What I did learn, which no one seems to come out and say, is that if you are a new indie author, you will probably have a hard time finding a quality/experienced narrator willing to do the audio on a royalty share. This is understandable, of course. Who wants to put hours and hours of work into something if you're not entirely sure you will get paid in the end. No royalty-share means you have to pay all production costs out of your own pocket up front. Union minimum is $250/finished hour (i.e. hour of completed audiobook). There are narrators/producers who will get the job done for less, but as the saying goes, you tend to get what you pay for.

I'd really like t o know how this works out for you. Please keep us posted and good luck!

My husband kept telling me I needed to do audio books, and I kept rolling my eyes. I don't have the money to pay someone to do it, and I don't know how to do it myself, so that wasn't going to happen. One day my husband came home, telling me he had order a microphone for me, so I could start recording. This was his way of saying he believes in me, so I wasn't going to tell him no, until I had a reason why I couldn't do it.

I got on ACX and watched all 6 instructional videos. I set up a sound studio in a storage room in my basement. I downloaded Audacity, and figure out how to use it. And then I struggled with chapters being rejected because the sound quality wasn't right. One mistake I made was trying to edit after mastering. Once you master it, you can't touch it or the whole file becomes damaged. Then I learned how to breath like an opera singer, keeping my lungs 75% full at all times so all the words have the same amount of force behind it.

I've come to really enjoy recording my books. I just finished my 3rd, and really got into the voices for the aliens. I'm still not 100% satisfied, and think I can make it better with time and practice. I wish I could get feedback, good constructive feedback, to know what areas I should focus on instead of just stumbling through the process. I think anyone can do it, if you're willing to sit and listen to your own voice for hours at a time editing, and invest in a good mic and headphones.

I was going to use Findaway voices for my audio book but at $250 a finished hour I didn't have $2,000 for a book that cost me only a cover to create.

C.E. wrote: "My husband kept telling me I needed to do audio books, and I kept rolling my eyes. I don't have the money to pay someone to do it, and I don't know how to do it myself, so that wasn't going to happ..."

Actually, good breathing and speaking technique is more about breath support and control than how full your lungs are all of the time :)

I am taking classical voice lessons and have been for several yaers now. I am finally starting to learn some opera arias (okay, in the States people call all classical singing opera for some unfathomable reason). I'm not sure where you read something about keeping your 75% full all of the time since that's impossible to do and exhale, but you don't fill them to 100 percent full, either.

Speaking well involves good breath and technique--you might also try some voice therapy, etc stuff since some of those exercises can help prevent poor speaking habits, strain, breath contol, etc.

I'd love to do this and have bought all the gear, but my house is really noisy.

The sound of the surf is deafening at night and the lorikeets and cockatoos never stop squawking all day.

Not a bad problem to have but I've not even started on the audiobooks.

Adrian wrote: "I'd love to do this and have bought all the gear, but my house is really noisy.

The sound of the surf is deafening at night and the lorikeets and cockatoos never stop squawking all day.

Not a bad..."

That's hard. I was lucky that I live out in the middle of no where, and all my pets are furry, old and sleep all day. Especially if the dog has had his walk. So, all I had to do was rearrange the cardboard boxes in the storage room into a cubicle, and drape some old curtains over them. I still have to stop recording when my neighbor mows his lawn, and am pestered with noises from the siding on the house expanding on a sunny day and the heater popping as it cools down and heats back up. But for the most part it's really quite. I think you'd either have to make a sound proof room in a closet or a corner, or rent a space somewhere else. If you can do that, it's a magical experience to give the characters you imagined their own voice.

We actually built a small insulated closet inside my brothers room just so he could record his music. You could build a little audio booth if it was something you really wanted to do yourself.

Brian wrote: "Hello Fellow authors. In this post I am asking a questions specifically to those who have published obviously, but also to those went the extra mile and got the audio book done as well.

I am loo..."
So, it wasn't much of an increase in sales, but I think that has more to do with my blundering in marketing than anything else. But I would add that it can be completely worth it. There are narrators (like the one I found) that have a fantastic level of energy to contribute, especially if they enjoy the genre as much as you. And they have made it an era where you don't need to have lots of money, or other details, just to work with a narrator. I absolutely recommend finding a narrator, no matter how your book is doing.

I know this is likely controversial, but I'm using Matthew's Amazon Polly text-to-speech neural voice to make serialized chapters of my books. I'm posting them free to SoundCloud and then using the RSS feed to populate a podcast at Apple Podcasts and Spotify. It does a credible enough job for a giveaway audiobook, and I warn people up front that it's TTS.

This is also an excellent way to listen to your writing during the editing phase.