Audio Books for Success

By Doris-Maria Heilmann

Discover every aspect of audiobooks with this comprehensive guide for audiobook publishers, narrators, voiceover artists, and audiobook listeners. Get step-by-step instructions on how to plan, narrate, record, edit, master, proof, and sell your audiobook, plus countless tips on finding the best audiobooks and apps and writing an audiobook review.

Learn the following and more:

• Why investing in an audiobook is worthwhile
• How to choose an audiobook studio or production company in the USA, the UK, and Canada, and most important: to find the right narrator for your title
• How to set up your own DIY recording spot and which equipment to use for quality recording
• Where to take narration training and learn voiceover techniques or build a career out of your voice
• How to make words on a page come alive for the audience and create a visual image for the listener
• How to find reviewers (including direct links) and how to market and distribute your audiobook
• Where to find info about audiobook sellers and apps, and even where to find free audiobooks on the internet
• All about audiobook industry associations and their awards

• Language: English
• Publisher: 111Publishing
• Release date: Aug 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9781988664361

Book preview

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Audiobooks for Success

A comprehensive guide for authors, audiobook publishers, narrators, voiceover artists, and audiobook listeners on creating, producing, publishing, and marketing audiobooks.

© Copyright 2019 Doris-Maria Heilmann

Publisher: 111Publishing

All rights reserved under international and pan-American copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Print Edition June 2019

ISBN: 978-1-988664-37-8

Electronic Book Edition 2019

ISBN: 978-1-988664-36-1

111 Publishing, 21 Crockett Ct, Antigonish, NS, Canada

About This Book

Discover every aspect of audiobooks with this comprehensive guide for audiobook publishers, narrators, voiceover artists, and audiobook listeners. Get step-by-step instructions on how to plan, narrate, record, edit, master, proof, and sell your audiobook, plus countless tips on finding the best audiobooks and apps and writing an audiobook review.

Learn the following and more:

Why investing in an audiobook is worthwhile

How to choose an audiobook studio or production company in the USA, the UK, and Canada, and most important: to find the right narrator for your title

How to set up your own DIY recording spot and which equipment to use for quality recording

Where to take narration training and learn voiceover techniques or build a career out of your voice

How to make words on a page come alive for the audience and create a visual image for the listener

How to find reviewers (including direct links) and how to market and distribute your audiobook

Where to find info about audiobook sellers and apps, and even where to find free audiobooks on the internet

All about audiobook industry associations and their awards

Table of Contents

About This Book

Why Audiobooks?

The Long History of Audiobooks

Benefits for Authors

Planning Your Audiobook

Finding the Right Narrator

Audiobook Production Companies

Production Costs for Audiobooks

DIY Narration and Audiobook Production

Becoming an Audiobook Narrator

Audiobook Narration Training

Marketing Your Audiobook

Audiobook Reviewers

Audiobook Distribution

Audiobook Library Distributors

Listening to Audiobooks

Finding Free Audiobooks

The Audiobook Industry

A Note to the Reader

About the Author

More books and ebooks by the author:

Links and Resources

Why Audiobooks?

Audiobooks allow you to be productive while you listen and to enjoy books in a whole new way as narrators bring the story to life. In my blog article Split Your Book Apart, I discuss how authors can use their manuscripts and their copyright and increase their earnings. One of these suggestions is audio. In other words, repurpose your manuscript and wring more out of it than just the print and ebook versions. Why not create an audiobook from your novel or even from nonfiction? Audiobooks are becoming more and more popular!

The Magic of Audiobooks

Forget the snobs who treat the written word as superior. British author Mark Haddon explains why he’s a huge fan: "I would pay good money to listen to Juliet Stevenson read me the terms and conditions of my mobile phone contract.

Despite my reservations about listening to readings of my own work, I am an avid consumer of audiobooks in general and have little time for those who parade their snobbery about the supposed superiority of the written word. Some of the best reading experiences of my life have been listening experiences."

Scott Sigler: Listen during your workout and watch those treadmill miles fly by. Or during the daily commute, and you might find yourself looking forward to heavy traffic that will keep you in the car just a bit longer. Or, just for your own enjoyment.

Listen Up: Why we can’t get enough of audiobooks

Steven Poole wrote in an article for The Guardian recently: "In this time-poor, podcast-friendly world, audiobooks are booming. So what is the science behind them – and do they change our relationship with the written word?

Are audiobooks the new… books? It was recently revealed that audiobook sales rocketed by 43% in 2018, while those of print books declined (by 5%) for the first time in five years. Can people no longer be bothered to read for themselves? Is this, rather than the ebook, the harbinger of the slow death of print, about which we have been warned for so long? And if so, what does that mean for literary culture?

Let us first retain some historical perspective by noting that Homer’s Iliad was essentially an audiobook before it was ever written down. Oral literary culture long precedes the book and there are many reasons for its rising popularity. The surge in audiobook sales seems very likely to be a halo effect of the huge popularity of podcasts, especially the single-theme long-form series such as NPR’s breakout Serial, first released in October 2014, or ABC’s 2019 The Dropout, a jaw-dropping investigation into the story of Elizabeth Holmes and her blood-testing tech company Theranos."

Listening is the new reading

Audiobooks, which let you multitask, are a great way to listen to books while driving long distance, walking the dog, cleaning the house or lying on the beach—and they are certainly a wonderful way for blind people to enjoy books. Audiobooks can be listened to on a smartphone, iPod, or MP3 player, on a laptop, and even on most e-readers, such as the Kindle, Tolino, and Nook.

If you have never tried an audiobook, give it a go.