I received a very welcome email this week. It was from Findaway Voices and it sent me a link to my second audio book, Loving Vengeance, on Audible. When I first launched this book I kept checking if it had finally arrived on my Amazon page, but that was at the end of November 2019, and as the months past I kind of gave up. Besides it was available on many, many other platforms, and at libraries, so it didn’t really matter.
I’ve been very patient. But that’s been more about not having anyone to chase as much as anything. Findaway Voices deal with the platforms so I stepped back and let them get on with it. Which is difficult to do when you’ve spent out on getting an audiobook made.
Producing an audio book with Findaway Voices is very easy and as a wide author (as in I have my books on all platforms worldwide) I feel much better publishing through them than direct with ACX who only publish to Audible.
There is a small cost to upload your book to Findaway Voices but if you go to them via Draft2Digital then this is waived.
If you use Findaway Voices they can organise the recording for you. You load up details of your project and they will send you a selection of voices they think will suit and you can choose one of those or ask for more. They will then arrange the recording.
Alternatively, you can publish using your own files. This is what I did. I was at one of my client’s book launches and through him had met one of the other guests, an actor, Henri Merriam. It suddenly occurred to me she might be interested in doing the narration so I asked. She did, and here we are. Well actually there was far more to it than that, at least as far as Henri was concerned. She found somewhere to do the recording, Audio Waves Recording Studio, we discussed a couple of the voices and I left her to it. I’m sure some authors are more hands on than me but I was new to it, she is the professional, and fortunately I loved the results.
Audio is meant to be the next big thing in publishing, the market is growing, we keep being told, but I’ll admit I’ve found the audiobooks quite hard to promote. Another time thing of course, plus everything to do with them seems quite new, so most of my copies have gone out via libraries. Which is fine.
The main thing is that these books are done now and there forever!
If you are interested in listening to my two audiobooks please click on the covers and, all things being equal, you should be able to choose your favourite audiobook platform, although they will keep being added to others. You can also listen for free via your local library, just ask for them. Apparently you can do that via an app! Who knew?
What are your experiences of audio? Do you like listening to audiobooks? If so, where do you usually get them from? If you’re an author do you have your books in the audiobook format, or are you thinking of doing them?
Another interesting post, Georgia! So glad to connect with my favourite bloggers and authors after my blogging break. I love, love, love audiobooks!
That’s good to hear, Luccia. I’ll be honest and say I don’t often listen to them at the moment – I don’t have those long journeys, and any quiet times are taken up with writing.