ACX Audiobook Adventures Part 1

ACX Audiobook Adventures Part 1

Hello everyone!  For the next several post we will be talking in great detail about my Audio Book Adventures with ACX, Audible, iTunes, and Amazon.  I hope that if any of you have specific questions post them in the comments.
Here is all four installments so far. 

Part 1
Part 2 
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5 

WHY AUDIOBOOKS 

The first thing we'll talk about is why should you add audiobooks to your list of things to do.  Well, there are several reasons for you to move into this fast growing business.

1. The Blind reading audience
2. Those that travel, truckers is a huge Audiobook audience.
3. It makes you look more genuine as an author. 
4. It brings your book to life to have a great Narrator read your novel. 
5. If you don't you're missing a huge audience of readers

FINE PRINT 

   The first thing I did was procrastinate six months. If you read the list of things you are signing up for it can be very daunting.  I suggest you do read them, and try to understand them, and if you can't call ACX, they are very helpful and have a great team waiting to answer questions.

My two main reservations, were signing away my book rights for 7 years, and going the royalty split and having to share my earnings. I looked and prayed for a long time and decided it was either jump in or just lose out.

Decisions  Decisions

I decided at this point in my life, I can't afford to do this on my own. I am not a great reader, and I knew if I was going to capture this audience I was going to need to find a great reader and quit worrying about splitting royalties and giving my book to Amazon, iTunes, and Audible for seven years.

This is a test. I chose a book in the Romance genre and started looking at the narrators that were out there. In a year or so I may learn that it was a mistake, or that it was a great investment, only time will answer those questions. For now I'm happy, I love the narrator I chose, and I think the audiobook will do well, the only problem is how in the world do you market an audio book.
 
That question we'll get to later when I know the answer, or at least some part of it.  For now we will focus on ACX. As in all sites you'll need to set up an account, get all of your information in there email and such and then chose which book you want to get out there into the hands and ears of audio listeners.

I went with Romance because it is the best selling genre out there, or one of the best and I thought Maid for Martin would do well. It has a great cover, and a great hook and it's a trilogy so if it does well folks will want to listen to all three books.


LOOK CLOSER

As I mentioned you will want to look over the fine print on ACX and I'll be honest there is a lot of reading to do, and it's not all easy to figure out. I myself called them several times.One thing that I have learned is that they do not do CD's. When all is said and done there will not be a hard copy of anything to place on your shelf at home. That so far is the only thing I'm disappointed in.

It will be up to you to decide which genre to go with, and while I'm thinking about it, ACX sets the price on how long your audio book will be. There is a chart for this. Maid for Martin was a tad over 10. hours so it is in the 25.00 range.

The hardest choice, after deciding if you going with ACX is choosing a narrator.  I'll talk about that in the next post.

Thanks for reading
Samantha

Samantha Fury is the author of  the Street Justice Series

She's written many articles on book covers, for Indie Authors.  

She operates several Indie Groups. Editing Services, Cover Artist, 

Helpful Indie Facebook Groups, and a wonderful Forum 

just for Indie Authors. 

Check out Samantha's premade covers here

Images by

Javier Brosch
Gemenacom
From Bigstock 


Part two of this article go here