It’s the third Wednesday of the month and time for another posting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.

I’m dealing with Adventures in Audio again this month. Now for the final phase, what this whole adventure had been building up to: audiobooks.

I’ve been publishing audiobooks for a while now, and went through various steps before I finally did it myself from start to finish.

So, in 2018, I went through a professional service to get my audiobooks recorded and published. It was fast, professional, and I was quite happy with it. But it was expensive. It was my first book, so I splurged. Unfortunately, the ROI wasn’t what so many people had boasted it would be. (I was still learning to take all advice with a pinch of salt.) It sells, don’t get me wrong, but more than five years in, it still hasn’t paid for itself.

But it’s not about money, it’s about accessibility. There are people who don’t have the time or the ability to read (I’m thinking dyslexia, ADHD and more). Having your books in more than one format enables more people to access the stories you weave.

In December 2020, my dad and I built my audio-booth in my study (yes, the room is now divided in half, but it works). I wrote about this adventure and shared some photos in a previous blog post.

But I wasn’t ready to record and publish audiobooks. It was this little voice in my head telling me that I’m not good enough, that I don’t have a voice people want to listen to, that… so many lies that I listened to because of imposter syndrome.

But I bit the bullet and started my podcast: The Faeries and Folklore Podcast by Ronel. I wrote about my podcast and the ups and downs in a previous post.

I tried – while listening to that irritating little voice – recording and publishing audiobooks, but it failed because I didn’t believe in the project, didn’t believe in myself, gave up at the first hurdle.

It took hitting 6k downloads on my little podcast to finally boost my confidence enough to try it for real.

Let’s just say that there are a few things to keep in mind when recording your audiobook:

• no paper pages – use a digital version of your book on a tablet, eReader or phone;
• have water handy for when your throat becomes dry; keep lip-gloss (or whatever you like) on hand to keep your lips moist so you don’t have those lip-smacking sounds in your recording;
• eat before you record so your stomach doesn’t rumble;
• don’t drink carbonated drinks beforehand or it might make gurgling sounds in your stomach or you might burp during your recording session;
• keep up the same energy throughout the book: you are telling a story;
• record when you have the most energy and time to do so: remember that listeners can hear your mood in your voice, so if you’re tired, your story will come across the same, etc.
• don’t over-act: your narration should sound natural, not forced;
• you know your story best, so bring the emotion of the piece to life in your reading.

There are a lot more things to consider, but these are the basics.

Once you’ve recorded, you need to edit. You listen to the story and make notes of where things need to change (wrong pronunciation, wrong word, etc.) – this is a step you’ll do when professionally narrating your book, too.

Then the changes are made, either by you or your narrator/production company. And then the audio mastering is done, and then, finally, it gets published.

I recommend using Draft2Digital for going wide with eBooks and to work from there to distribute your audiobooks through FindawayVoices (you won’t have to pay the $49 admin fee per book if you do this, which is good for the budget-conscious indie author).

Personally, I narrated and uploaded my own audiobooks and didn’t work with a narrator, but there is an option there to do so if you want to.

So, go to your book on your Draft2Digital dashboard; click on the button to create an audiobook through FindawayVoices; go to your email – there will be an email from FindawayVoices to go to your account and set up your password; then start doing the work to fill in your tax stuff and contact details before clicking on your audiobook you want to work on.

For your audiobook: a square cover with all the necessary details according to the specs given; metadata about the book (series details, keywords, categories); upload your audio files; set your price; set your preferred publication date; set your preferred stores (I pick all stores); publish.

Here’s the difference between an eBook cover and an audiobook cover:

Here’s a PDF from FindawayVoices you can download for the technical requirements.

Sounds easy, right? Not so much. That bit about moving from one account to the other took me over an hour to figure out as there weren’t any directions as to how to do this (when you sign up for a new account, it simply tells you that your account already exists, but not how to sign in). I eventually figured it out when I signed into my email account to send an email for help…

As for the digital side: you have to translate all that tech language on the technical requirements page into something that makes sense when you look at the program – and where to make the settings work accordingly.

This video helped the most.

But once all of that is done, you just need to wait for the quality control check on FindawayVoices (ten work days and you’ll know whether or not your book made it) and then it’ll be live on various stores in about 30 days.

If you want digitally narrated audiobooks (also called AI narrated audiobooks), you can do it through Draft2Digital as they have partnered with Apple to create more audiobooks. It’s free, though it is only available on Apple and, at some point, Overdrive. There is also the free Google Play Books option, if you can publish through Google Play Books (which I can’t, as I’m South African and they don’t support authors in my country and a couple of other countries). And Amazon is getting in on the action, too. If you want to pay for a digitally narrated audiobook, you can use a service like DeepZen.

I have my books narrated by a professional narrator, by the author (that’s me!) and by AI. They are clearly marked on the cover and in the metadata as to who narrated them. You can check out all of my audiobooks here.

As for promotions: I have my audiobook links everywhere I can. On a special page on my website. On each book page along with the eBook and paperback links. On my universal book links page. On Goodreads. They’re connected to my eBooks on Amazon (or they were before the-store-that-shall-not-be-named terminated my account). And I talk about them on my podcast and even share book extracts.

There are more things one can do, but I’ve stopped trying to do all the things myself.

I hope you’ve found this post helpful. You can find more author-centred posts here. Have you recorded audiobooks yourself? Do you have audio-versions of your books?

I have a book out to help authors with various parts of this audio journey:

Adventures in Audio: Audiobooks, Podcasts and More for Authors by Ronel Janse van Vuuren

Remember that you can request all of my books from your local library!

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