The Advantages of Converting Your Book into an Audiobook
Long gone are the days of sitting at home by the radio waiting to hear the news and enjoy an audio drama. These days, we can listen to anything we want on demand, and that includes our favorite books. Audiobooks are changing the literary landscape by offering people the chance to listen to all kinds of stories and making them easy to access anyplace, anytime.
With an audiobook, you can bring your story to audiences you can’t normally reach with a printed title alone, and having an audiobook also increases your credibility. Other than the monetary investment to have an audiobook made, there’s no reason not to do it.
For authors, audiobooks represent a whole new market and a new way to reach their audience, and it isn’t as hard as you might imagine. If you’re interested in learning more, check out our end-to-end audiobook creation services for authors of all genres and join the future of book publishing today.
Tap into a growing market and earn more with audiobooks
Audiobooks have been shaking up the publishing industry with their explosive increase in popularity—they are currently the fastest-growing format in book publishing. Tapping into this expanding, profitable market by turning your manuscript or published book into an audiobook will allow you to diversify your income as you reach a whole new demographic eager for fresh content.
Also, this being a newer medium, there are still fewer audiobooks available than print titles and eBooks, meaning it’s easier to stand out with a new audiobook than it is with the more traditional formats. In other words, it’s the perfect time to dive into this burgeoning market and carve out a name for yourself.
Audiobooks can reach more people
Audiobooks have existed for a while, but they were initially almost exclusively made for children and the visually impaired. Now, technology has opened up the audiobook market to the general population as anyone with a smartphone can listen to a professionally narrated book on the go.
People who love reading and those who don’t, people who have trouble reading and those who don’t have the time can all listen to new stories anytime they want, whether they’re commuting, cleaning, cooking, exercising, or hanging out. The option to listen to audiobooks while doing dull tasks like driving or cleaning is perhaps their greatest asset, and you can cater to this growing audience of story lovers eager to fill their time.
Audiobooks have made literature available to an entirely new section of the population, which is why they’re becoming such a staple for writers, especially those who are self-published and looking to diversify their income. Some may argue that listening to a story isn’t the same as reading it, but that argument is easily thrown out of the window because who doesn’t like being read to?
Besides, it doesn’t matter if some people think that. They’re clearly not the target demographic for your audiobook, so you don’t have to care about their opinion. Listening to an audiobook is just as valid as sitting down with a print book or an eBook and shouldn’t diminish the reader’s experience. Actually, it can enhance it since it allows for the expression of extra details through tone and intonation.
Audiobooks never run out of stock
Another advantage of selling audiobooks is that there’s an infinite number available for download, so they’ll never run out of stock, unlike print books. As long as the servers are up (which is all the time), people will always be able to download (or stream) your audiobook. Since audiobooks can be bought and listened to on demand, your audience has permanent access to your story, which is great in the age of middle-of-the-night online shopping sprees.
Should you turn your book into an audiobook?
Audiobooks sound almost too good to be true, right? However, not every single book should be turned into an audiobook. Technical fare like instructional books, cookbooks, and textbooks—basically anything that heavily relies on images and illustrations—don’t really work as audiobooks.
If your narrative work is heavy on dialogue, you should also consider how it will sound and whether you’ll need more than one voice actor, which can feel too performative for some listeners but works well for others. Effectively, any fiction book lends itself well to audiobook conversion, as do non-fiction books that aren’t overly technical. That said, the best strategy for creating an audiobook will depend on the nature of your story.
How to convert your book into an audiobook
If you’re ready to convert your book into an audiobook, you can either do it yourself or hire a professional. What you choose will depend on your budget, experience, and schedule. If you’ve never recorded an audiobook, it might take you a significant amount of time to do multiple takes of every scene and learn how to use the software, while outsourcing the entire creation process will take significantly less time but will be more expensive.
Are you in a hurry to release your book? Are you on a budget? There are multiple factors to consider first, including the voice of the narrator, their accent, how much they charge, and how long it will take them versus how long it will take you to master the craft of audiobook creation. In general, it’s recommended that you hire a professional because reading a book aloud well is not necessarily as easy as it sounds, and it’s absolutely critical that your narrator can fully engage the audience. If you don’t have experience recording audiobooks, there’s no way you’ll rival a professional voice actor.
If you’ve decided to turn your book into an audiobook, the next step is to decide who will record it. If doing it all yourself feels overwhelming, check out our audiobook creation services and start working with experienced, professional voice actors and sound engineers who will produce optimized audio files ready to be uploaded on the most popular online marketplaces. You can choose the accent and preview the actors, customizing your audiobook to your liking.
