On the first Wednesday of every month, members of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group (open to anyone and full of great resources and information for writers) post their answers to a monthly prompt on their blogs.
Authors benefit from getting an insightful prompt for generating more blog content, and IWSG links all respondents, which is a way for writers to discover
April 6 question – Have any of your books been made into audio books? If so, what is the main challenge in producing an audiobook?
The short answer is: no.
But if I left it there, that would be a very boring blog post! A better answer might be: I’d like to do that.
Anecdotally, I gather that a significant swath of millennials and younger consume audiobooks, many as their primary (or even only) mode of accessing books. The ability to multitask while driving, getting housework done, or doing anything else seems to make audiobooks ideal for a generation that is constantly on the go. And as people get busier and true downtime to read seems to get ever scarcer, I would guess that audiobooks would continue to see growth as a Thing.
What research I can find seems to support that intuitive conclusion. And further, the fact that I all my previous work is published via Smashwords means that I definitely could do it on my own if I wanted to. So… why not?
The main challenge in producing an audiobook is that either: (a) I would have to pay a professional to do it — and even if I wanted to spend that money, I doubt that would ever be a net positive return on investment at least for my currently published work; or (b) I’d have to do it myself, which means a lot of time that I don’t have. Otherwise, I probably would have done it by now!
Still… maybe either approach wouldn’t be so bad for a short story. Perhaps I should pick one and try it out… Anyone have a vote as to which one?
Audio books do sell! My publisher did mine. Not sure how much it cost though.
Finding out the cost to publish audio book, would be a good idea.