Audiobook Marketing Strategies | Livestream Replay

Hello. Hello. Happy Tuesday to you. Welcome to our every two week live stream. I forgot to promote this one. So I'm really excited for all of you that are here. So do as you're joining in. Please do say hello. And today's topic is going to be about audiobook promotion strategies. So this should be a fun topic. We haven't talked about it before, and while we're just giving folks a moment to join in. Did you catch our holiday extravaganza on Saturday? It was so fun and lively and we covered a lot of great topics. It was a little slow in the beginning. There weren't a lot of questions. And then once the questions started pouring in, there was so many of them and we gave away a lot of swag. Angela is probably going to spend an entire day at the post office shipping T shirts, magnets, three hoodies and a whole bunch of books off to the lucky winners. So. And I've got a cold brew delivery. One moment. Thanks so much. All right, so that WeWork and I was getting a cold brew before the live stream and I always seem to get the bottom of the tap. And so it goes. And yesterday I was doing this and the iced tea literally exploded on me. It shot out. I was covered from head to toe in iced tea. So today when I was getting cold brew and it started to go, one of the people from the front desk heard it and ran over, Julie, Julie, stop, stop. I'll fill it for you. And I told her, I can't wait. She's like, I'll deliver it to you. So I'm very well taken care of at WeWork. I'm a big fan of the WeWork offices and their service. So anyways, all that to say the holiday extravaganza on Saturday was really fun, but if you missed it, we are going to be posting the replay on December 24th. And if you comment on the 24th. So as always, if you comment the day a video is released, every Tuesday and Friday, you'll get entered to win. But for this one, this special, special holiday extravaganza replay, when we post it on the 24th, the 25th and the 26th, I'm going to take everybody who comments those three days and I'm going to enter you to win a T shirt and a magnet. Well, actually, there'll be one winner for a T shirt and one winner for a magnet, so. And then I'll post the winner on the community channel so that if you missed it, you didn't miss out. Okay. You still have a Chance. And you can still catch all the great questions. You can meet my team members and catch a little bit of the fun. We had. We had a scavenger hunt and we had some trivia. It was a good time. All right, so today we're going to dive into the subject of how to market an audiobook. And one of the things. Well, actually, since for those of you who have joined in, let's do a little piece of trivia because Kobo put out a report recently on book sales in Canada and I'm curious about what you think one of the most listen to nonfiction. Well, I shouldn't say listen to. One of the most sold nonfiction audiobooks was in Canada according to Kobo in 2021. Now that we're wrapping up the year. So that's our participation first participation question of the day. So what do you think? What book was the one of the most not listened to nonfiction books. And interestingly, it wasn't in the top sales for print books on Kobo. And I see Efren's here. Hello. So anybody else is here, do say hello. And of course, if you're watching the replay, say hello too. So I'm just going to give you guys a minute to think about that. And while you're thinking about what the most listened to or purchased audiobook could have been for Kobo in Canada, I'll just give you another stat that came out of that report. Let me just pull it up here. Okay. They said audiobooks are widely considered one of the fastest growing segments of of the publishing industry. In fact, over 50% of audiobook listeners sampled in a Kobo research study reported to listening to more audiobooks over the past year, likely due to Covid and discovery of convenience of the audiobook format. But that same study found that book lovers most often listen to audiobooks while driving. Of course, but driving was not number one. Interestingly enough, household chores was number one, driving was number two, and going for walks or runs was number three. I found this really interesting because my husband actually when he's doing laundry and does other things around the house, he's always listening to podcasts. Now they're almost exclusively hockey related podcasts, but he's always listening to podcasts. And me, on the other hand, I pretty much exclusively listen to podcasts while driving or going for walks. So interestingly, we both lined up in this stat. All right, so what have we got for entries here? You guys aren't even guessing. Benny's here, Bill is here. So I guess I'm just gonna have to tell you guys. So so much for participation prize one. Maybe you guys need time to Google it. So do is Dune. Dune's a fiction book, isn't it, Efren? I don't even know. Oh my goodness. I'm pretty sure that's fiction. I'm talking nonfiction. But interestingly, it was not in the top five because there was a top five that they issued and. And it was not actually in that top five. So I'll give you. I won't tell you the one I'm looking for right now. I'll tell you the other four. So Barack Obama, which was a popular book in print. It was, I think, in the top 10 a promised land. So. So by Barack Obama. That was one of the most purchased audiobooks by according to Kobo in Canada, the Four Winds by Kristin Hannah. So fiction book, Atomic Habits by James Clear. That was a big winner in 2021. And then another fiction book, the Marrow Thieves by Sherry demouline, I guess is the name was the other four. So the one I was looking for, it was. Let's just see. Make sure there's no guesses here. Yeah, I thought it was. Thought it was fiction. Just making sure. Thanks for clarifying, Angela. Okay, so the. By the final one, this was. It was. It was odd to me. Although I'm pretty sure he narrated it himself, so it kind of makes sense, I guess. It was Matthew McConaughey's book, Green Lights. Where did my list go? Green lights by Matthew McConaughey. So. So that was the most purchased audiobook in Canada, according to Kobo. So this is probably just through the Kobo platform, not acx. Okay. With all that said, let's dive into audiobook marketing strategies for you. So I want to kick it off before I dive in. I've got five, essentially five strategies for you today. And if you guys have something that's working to sell audiobooks, let's share because this is an emerging space in the book publishing world. So I want to start with two caveats. And the first is that your title and your cover still matter a lot when it comes to audiobook marketing. As with ebooks and print books, the COVID will make or break your marketing. Now, some people don't realize that your audiobook cover is going to have similar design elements from your ebook cover and your print cover. But there are differences. There's in fact, three main differences for an audiobook cover. The first is probably the obvious one, which is that it is square, but also if the narrator title is different than the author title, or even if it's not, it often is included on that cover as well as the title or the lettering. It has to be moved around most of the time because of the different size and shape of the book cover being square. So you're still going to have an audiobook cover that generally fits with your print and your ebook cover. I have seen them be different, but it is a little weird when that happens. It can be jolting for the buyer because it doesn't feel like the same book. So it usually has the same design elements. But it's still best to have a graphics designer, a book cover designer in particular, do the design for you so that it still has that same look and feel of your book cover. And it has to stand out. It has to be something that people can read the title on, that it draws their eye in and it makes them want to click on it. Now, interestingly, for anybody who shops on Amazon or searches for books on Amazon, Amazon will automatically show you the most converting product for a book. And so you. And I don't know exactly how much algorithm goes into it, but I don't purchase audiobooks almost ever. And I still get audiobook results when I search for certain books. And so my guess is they're showing me the most likely to convert. So in many cases, the audiobook cover is the first thing that Amazon is showing. The audiobook is converting really well. So you want to make sure this does look great because it could be the first thing that is shown when somebody searches and clicks on your book. Okay, so that's caveat 1. Title and cover are still so, so vital to your success, but so are your categories. And the audio categories will be different. So for acx, I gave Angela the list so she can post it. I also gave Angela the link to the Kobo study, the Kobo report that I drew those, those audiobook titles from, and the stats on what people in their survey say they're doing while they listen to an audiobook. So if you want to check those out, if you're watching the replay, I will post them in the description. And if I haven't done it, when you're watching this, just gently nudge me in the comments and remind me because I will be running, dashing off after this live stream to go to the Titanic Museum, which is at the Luxor here in Las Vegas. My son is. If anybody, if you follow me on Instagram, you already know that my son is absolutely obsessed with Titanic, Britannic, the Olympic and the Carpathia. Who came to rescue and the Californian that I think was called the Californian who didn't come to rescue the Titanic. People, I can tell you an awful lot of facts about Titanic. You would not want to be up against me in Trivia Pursuit if Titanic questions were on the menu now. So, yes, I'll be diving. I'll be dashing off after this. But. So I may not have the links in there when you're watching, but nudge me and I will make sure they're in there as of tomorrow. So thank you. Okay, so. So categories. So the first three categories, or, sorry, you can post three categories on ACX for Audible and they're different. They aren't the same categories as anything else, as you'll see if you click on the link in the description below or that Angela's posting right now in the chat. It's a much shorter list. So you're going to need to do a little bit of category research to figure it out. And then you email ACX to change the categories. Now, as I was prepping this, I realized my book is uploaded through Findaway Voices, which is an aggregator, and so I'm wide. I actually don't know how we picked the categories for that. So I will do an audiobook promotion video in 2022, and I'm going to be adding and refining a lot of the stuff we're talking about today. And that's going to be one piece that I'm going to check with Jacqueline, our production manager, and our production team, what they do for Findaway Voices. Because a lot of times we're using Findaway Voices to exclude acx. So we're going to need categories that are elsewhere. It could be dictated by bisect codes, but I'm not certain how that works for Findaway Voices. So that was something that came up in my head as I was prepping for this. And I went, I don't know the answer to that. So that is one thing I will state. You guys can stay tuned on that and I'll let you know. Okay, so the final thing before I dive into tips is to say that marketing an audiobook only on its own as a launch later is tricky. We've done audiobook launches and it's not so easy to generate a lot of attention just specifically for an audiobook, especially if you're trying to do it to generate media attention. And it's also one of those things where you've missed out on people who have come to your page, wherever that is, they found your book. But they were looking for an audio version and they didn't have it. You've, you've usually lost those people that would have only bought it in an audiobook version. For those launching with an Amazon focus, there have been many folks that suggest that Amazon does give preferential treatment to books that have multiple formats. And I know that I've, I've seen this and heard this and read this many times that psychologically we as buyers also give more credibility to the books that have multiple formats. So having that ebook, that print book and that audiobook format just makes your book look that much more professional and credible in the eyes of a buyer. But also in the eyes of Amazon's algorithm they are more likely or they do seem to give preferential treatment to show the books that have those multiple formats. Which really, it makes sense if you think about it in a logical sense because Amazon is a conversion algorithm machine. And if you are going to have the format that somebody is going to want when they click on your link or your get to your page, then Amazon's more likely to show it to people because you're going to just have that much higher of a conversion rate because there are going to be people you lose when they come to your page and they find out you don't have an audiobook. So I'm just checking it, just thinking if I want to say anything more about that basically it's reinforcement that having all of. Oh sorry. Angela just messaged me that it's freezing. So that's weird. We should have really good Internet today. Hopefully it's okay now. And if I freeze, I really hope I freeze in a decent looking face. It is the worst when it freezes and it is an awkward looking experience expression. So I'll just try to smile a lot so that if I freeze again you can look at a smiling face, not somebody going er, like that. Okay, so Angela says she thinks it's YouTube so not much I could do on my side. But yeah, I should have really, really good Internet today, so it really shouldn't be me. Okay, so just trying to remember where I was at. So for Amazon to send you send traffic to your page, they're more likely to do that if you have all the formats that'll convert. So it is better if you can to launch with all formats of your book so that you're capturing every sale that you possibly can. Now all that said, all hope is not lost. We've seen some folks release audiobooks at different times before. We've seen it actually happen before Launch, which has the fun little advantage of you can actually get reviews posted on Amazon in pre launch. When you have an audiobook that has launched before your book has launched, it's kind of a fun little thing. You know, it actually happened by accident for one of our authors, because Audible kind of approves the book for launch whenever they feel like it. Sometimes that's how it feels. And it came out earlier than the book and. And we were like, well, now we can get reviews. And so it did allow, because the audiobook was out, it allowed people to post reviews before the book has actually launched. So that was kind of a cool thing. But generally speaking, it's long, it's for launch or beyond. And there's some things that work. There's some things that I'm going to talk about today to test, and then I do hope you share anything that you've seen or that is working, because I know my book launchers besties have ideas and you've tried things. So let's share as we all learn in this expanding space of audiobooks. So, all right, so my first attempt at a participation question did not work. So let's try to see who is paying attention. What is the number one activity, people, according to the Kobo report, people are doing while they listen to audiobooks? Go ahead and share that. Layla and Penny, hello. Great to have you here. Mike is here. And what else here? I'm just reading Raining buckets in California. It's freezing, but I thought it was just me, the YouTube. So I don't know, it sounds like it's freezing for everyone, so hopefully it's all good. And you guys are talking about weather. It is. It's actually, we had a. In Vegas, we were having a bit of a storm and a big wind warning for this evening. So we have an inflatable dinosaur and an inflatable Christmas tree for some of our Christmas decorations, and they've had to come indoors. Okay. And it looks like Bill's having trouble, too. Oh, it's so sad. I hope you guys are having much, much better, much better Internet now. And Efren got the answer. So Efren was here paying attention early earlier. Meanwhile, Angela's telling everybody that it is 80 and sunny in Florida, while the rest of us are cold, rainy, and windy. All right, congratulations, Efren. That is right. It is doing chores around the house. That is what people are most likely to be doing when they are listening to a podcast. So let us know what you haven't won yet, Efren. Okay. And oh, Mike, you're not far off. Okay, so that was number three. Walking and rocket walking and running was the third most common activity. It was. Number one was house chores. Number two was driving, and number three was walking and jogging. So you're not far off. All right. And poetry from the heart is here too. So hello and welcome. Okay, so just looking at where we want to go next. Okay, so I'm going to share five strategies for marketing audiobooks. I did see your question, Efren, and I think I'll be covering timing, so nudge me at the end, Angela on that one. I'll talk timing at the end. What I can tell you is that timing of your audiobook launch, as much as you possibly can, either launch it before or launch it with your book. Because as I noted, I really think you'll lose sales that you'll never get back if you launch it later. But, like, all is not lost. There are ways to sell books post launch, and a lot of our clients do that. They've launched a book and then they do the audiobook. But as much as possible, we recommend the timing for reading an audiobook is when your book is in proofread or just coming out of proofread, or, sorry, second after your second copy edit before it goes into proofread or just after proofread. And the reason is that you'll catch a few little errors. You might catch a funky sentence that you really need to change. You want to do that before it goes to layout, because layout is a really painful place to make sentence changes. And while you're reading your book, you'll just notice a few things that you don't notice in any other way. That then when you read your book out loud, and it's not just reading your book out loud, it's reading your book out loud with the intent of other people hearing it. Your brain processes it in a different way. So that's the optimal timing for recording your book. And then I think the optimal timing for launching your audiobook is with your book. Okay, so marketing strategy number one, the first and hopefully most obvious way to promote an audiobook is to let your audience know that you have an audiobook out. So if you're notifying people who. Even if you're notifying people who already have your book, there's people who will want the audio version. So. And there's in fact, a lot of people who have bought your book who have not yet read it. So if you send them the audio version option, they might buy it just because they are like, I'm never going to get to reading this, and I'm glad there's an audio version. So. And there's also, if somebody bought your book in an ebook version, especially specific to Audible and Amazon, there's Whisper Sync, which is a cool program that allows people to interchange between ebooks and audiobooks interchangeably. So if you're driving in the car and you're listening to the audiobook, you get out of the car and then that night in bed, you pull out your ebook, it will pick up where you left off, and so you can read it, and then you get back in your car and it picks up where you finished reading the night before. So this Whisper Sync function is really cool. And then they buy the audiobook at a slight discount, so it does impact your royalties, but you're selling the book twice to the same person, so it's pretty cool. And so I would still promote it to your audience, even if you're doing it after the fact. And ultimately, when I say your audience, I'm talking email, social media, and especially if you're doing podcast interviews and you have an audiobook version. Mention that because podcast listeners are the same people who are quite likely to, to listen to audiobooks. Like I said, I'm listening to podcasts and audiobooks when I'm driving. My husband's listening to, doing all his audio consumption while doing household chores and, and walking primarily. But he's mostly listening to podcasts also for live appearances. Here's a tip. So when you do live appearances and you've got an audiobook version, obviously you're not going to be easily selling a audiobook at these live appearances, but there's a couple things you can do. You can have a QR code right there to link to whatever place you want to have people purchase your audiobook so they can buy it right there. And what I would do at a live event, if that's what your, if that's what your offer is, I would have something where, if they bought my audiobook, in fact, this is what I would do. But you can make your own version of it. I would say buy the audiobook, I'll give you a copy of the physical book for, for free right now. Or I would have something else like buy the audiobook, show me the receipt, and I'll give you a mug or a T shirt or a magnet or something. So I would incent people to do that purchase right now, not just put it on their list. And so that would be one thing I would do in A live event. So have that QR code. The other thing you can do is you can set it up to sell it direct through services like Book Funnel and a few other places. And I haven't done this myself, so I'm not super deep in the trenches on it, but it is something I'm going to test out here in the future because like I've done with Self Publish and Succeed, which you can see what I've done. You can go to self publish and succeed.com and this is my website where we sell the book. And I use Shopify and Lulu for collecting payment and then doing the printing and distribution. And Book Funnel, I think with another connection like a Shopify app or something in between will allow you to do the same thing with audiobooks, which allows you to run ads, but it also allows you at live events like this to sell your audiobook and make a little more money and also get the contact information of your buyers. So, phew, that was longer than I meant it to be. I had more to tell you than I thought. Okay, number two strategy. Number two to help with the above. So to help with notifying your audience or even just to bring samples of your book to life, what I would recommend is, and I've seen a lot of authors do this, is take your audio sample that you had to upload to Audible or some other sample and upload it to SoundCloud. And then you can take. It's really easy. Once you've uploaded audio to SoundCloud, there's a little button there that's basically embed code. And now you can take that code and you can put it into your newsletters. You can put it on your website. If you have any promotions out there, you can put it there so people can get a sample of your book in audio format. And I think it's a great way you could even put it in your email signature, potentially depending on the size of it. However, how it embeds, there could be issues with putting it in an email signature being embedded, but there's potential for you to use that everywhere just to spread the word and to let people sample it. And you never know. If you give them a little teaser, it's a good sample, they might head on over to wherever you're selling your audiobook and buy it. So that can be a great strategy. All right, just reading your comments here. And QR codes are generally so underutilized. Yeah, Mike. But I'll tell you one thing, I'm going on a little tangent. You guys, you guys Want to go on a little detour with me? So QR codes, I had a lot of people. So when I do events for book launchers and I'm displaying a lot of our author's books, which is super fun, and I'm talking to people about their book ideas, I always, always have a sign up that is directing people to sign up for our newsletter and get some resources so that I can build a relationship with people and stay in contact. This last event, the last two events that I did, the one before I had a QR code and a sign up, like a physical, write down your name and email address sign up. And then this past event, I just did the QR code and it was really interesting to see how few signups we got with just a QR code. And so what I'm going to be going Back to in 2022 is old school name and email address. And if somebody specifically requests a QR code, I will give it to them. But what I found was, and I know this is what happens to me is people put the QR code on their phone and it loads the page. They're talking, they're walking around, they leave and they don't actually take the next step of putting their name and email address in there. And they've walked away and then they get home and they're also probably like me and they have 45 different screens open and they just go close, close, close, close, and boom, it's vanished. So as far as newsletter signups go at events, I'm not going to, I'm not going to rely on QR codes anymore. But I do think they're really valuable for selling E versions and audiobook versions of your book, especially if you have that extra step of, hey, show me the receipt and you'll get this. Because people will take action on the spot. And that's a powerful way to do it. Let's see. Yes. And Angela's reminding you to hit that thumbs up button. And of course, if you're watching the replay, same thing. And comment. And. And Bill's asking for a video on the Shopify Lulu website sales approach. Yes, I've been trying to wrap my head around how to do it because the setup was a little tricky. Once it's set up, it's really slick and I'm very happy with how it's all performing. But. But the setup was tricky. So I haven't quite wrapped my head around how to do it. Bill. But it is absolutely on my video list. So I will make sure to get it out to you by March, I'll say, because I'll be shooting January's videos next. Actually this week. Oh, goodness. I'm shooting the new content this week. And that will be most of January's videos will be shot by then. But I'll be prepping February and March and January. So. Okay, let's see QR code pages in the book. Yes, absolutely. Efren, I highly recommend QR pages, QR codes inside your book, but also include the specific call to action page. So let me just pull my book up. So there's lots of things you can do for a signup page in here, but here's one example. This is from my inside my book. So that has all the socials. It has a download invitation. You can book me to do interviews for bulk sales. So it's kind of a standard sales page inside of there. A great. That would be a great place to put a QR code to take people to your download or to some other call to action. Okay, back to my list here. Okay, so number three is use giveaway codes from acx. If you've gone exclusive, you'll get just blanked on the number 15, 20. I can't remember how many codes they give you or findaway Voices. If you're not exclusive and you've gone with findaway Voices, they also have some promotional codes that you can use. These codes allow people to download your audiobook for free. And I would use them strategically. If you know you have a committed reviewer who will review your book, then absolutely give them that code to download. There are audiobook bloggers that you can pitch to and see if they will review your book and you can use those codes for them. I would also think you recommend you could do a giveaway to your audience with those codes or on a podcast or in somebody's newsletter. There's a few variety of ways you could use them. But if you are employing strategy number four, you may want to save some of them for this strategy, which is paying for reviews and or entering awards for audiobooks. So one of the places that we've tested is advertising in audiobook boom. You'll get requests from people who, who want to review your audiobook. And your audiobook does need its own reviews. So whether whatever platform you're using, it will need reviews so that it gets that social proof and it sells as people land on it. So you do want to be getting audiobook reviews. Now there's also other sites that I haven't tested yet. We're really moving into an audiobook focus for 2022. So specifically promoting things that will work to promote an audiobook specifically, because you can't run Amazon ads to target audiobook only. You're, you're running Amazon ads to target your book, which is whatever format it's available in. So of course your audiobook will get a boost and it's not possible to specifically focus on it. So we're testing some things to drive more sales and more exposure to audiobooks in particular, especially, as you know, it's a growing market and we're also seeing more and more authors wanting to produce one to be competitive, to stand out, to be more discoverable. So Jane Friedman has a blog on her site where she mentions other paid sites for getting audiobook reviews. So we'll drop that link in the description as well as Angela, for those of you here right now, she'll drop it there. But some of them are audiobook. Sorry, we try that again. The audiobook blog.com audiobook reviewer.com audiobookstoday.blogspot.com theaudiobookworm.com Karen Commons and it's C O M m I n s.com and two or toe review. Oh, tower review. It's tower review.com Karen Commons also has a pretty extensive audiobook promotion checklist that I think I saw on her website somewhere. So if you're interested, you could always go and explore some of that stuff. I think it was an older list, like from five years ago, but I did see that when I was prepping for this, this piece. So the fifth audiobook promotion strategy that I've got for you is to promote it on Chirp. So Chirp is only going to work for you if you are uploaded into Findaway Voices. And so again, this is something that I will be walking all of you through next year. So if you're not already subscribed to the channel, you better do that right now. Make sure you turn the notifications on as well so that you get notified when we go live so you can get your questions answered live. But also so when new videos come out, you catch them because I am going to dive more into Chirp, and I have another video coming out very soon specifically on Chirp. So if you've distributed your book wide, not just with acx, the biggest, this is really the biggest platform for promoting audiobooks right now is Chirp, and it's an offshoot of bookbub. And bookbub is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, ebook promotion companies out there. So it's Pretty powerful. But I'm really looking forward to having some firsthand results. I've only been at author events and heard other authors talking about it, some with really great results and others with mixed results, which is kind of what bookbub gives everybody in general. But I'm, I'm looking forward to having some actual experiential information to share with you. But publish or sorry, promotions have traditionally been, you know, an ebook thing for BookBub, but now they've been doing this audiobook piece for a while. It is not allowed with Audible because Audible doesn't allow you to set the price for your audiobook. So as a result of not being able to set your price, you can't run promotions, so you can't participate. Participate in something like Chirp with Audio, Audible's audio book. And that's about, that's the only. That's my five for today. But I did want to give a shout out to local libraries. So if you are wide, your book is probably going to be able to be requested. If you've used an aggregator service like PublishDrive or Findaway Voices, which is the one that I generally recommend, I've used Authors Republic. I've used Authors Republic in the past as well. But through Findaway Voices, your book will be available through OverDrive or other library apps, and you and your friends and your family can all go on your library app and request your audiobook through those libraries. And as we've talked about before, member requests are one of the most powerful things for getting library listings. But also, you know, it just gets your book some attention and some royalties through those platforms as well if they haven't already ordered it or depending on how that that setup is, because there's a few different subscription models that are active on the different library apps. So. All right, that's the audiobook. What questions do we have today? Oh wait, I got to do the YouTubes, the two, the Tuesday and Friday. Everybody who comment on Tuesday and Friday, let me head over to my random name picker place where all of your names have been entered and let's see who our two fabulous winners are today. So the wheel is spinning and our first name to come out the bottom is. Oh, Bill. Bill Miller. Congratulations, my friend. I think it's been a while. I think we have T shirts since we've last given you a prize. So. And I don't think I know you poked your head in on our extravaganza, but I don't know if you were there long enough to win. So if you didn't win a T shirt. Today's a great day. Okay, so, Bill, I think you know the drill. That rhymes. I didn't mean for it to rhyme, but that's kind of fun. So email Angela with your address, your size, and she will hook you up when she heads to the post office with all the other prizes from the holiday extravagance. So let me head back to my random name picker for my next winner. And it. Where is it? Oh, Kit. That's all we've got to work with is kit. So kit if I don't think we have a kit online today, but when you are watching the replay, email angelaeamooklaunchers.com and let her know what you would like. We have copies of self published and succeed. So if you have not yet got a copy, I would highly recommend that be your selection. And as long as you're in North America, we also have T shirts that we can send to you. So just let her know your size and she will ship that off to you. If you're outside of North America, we're going to be sending you a book because we've had all kinds of disaster duty crossing, shipping stories for T shirts. Okay. All right. So do we have any? I know. I'll go back to Efren's question. I don't know if we had any other questions. So. And then. Oh, I saw Mike asking about audio book awards. Yeah, I didn't really dive into audiobook awards, but there are a few sites that have some great audiobook awards. There was one that was the audiobook magazine. I think that's what it was called, Audiobook magazine. And I think the audiobook reviewer also has audiobook awards. There's one that's put out by the, the American Library Association. They have an audiobook award specifically as well. And so submitting to paid book reviews as well as paid book awards, the strategy for both is social proof. And then you have to share the audio, the win, just like any other thing. I have a YouTube video on what to do when you win a book award. Book awards really are what you make of them. You really can't expect the award to happen and you think something else is going to happen after the award. It's really how you leverage it, what you do with it after it's out. But on the audiobook front, it is kind of exciting to get some recognition for your audiobook. And those are relatively new still. Again, we haven't submitted specifically for audiobook awards yet. This is something that Book Launchers is going to be doing more of in 2022. So. And now back to Efren's question. I know I saw was basically about timing. Oh, yeah. So is there a sweet spot for book, audiobook, and online. Online course timing? So I don't know if you mean relative to each other, Efren, but that's how I'm going to answer the question. We have another video on when is a good time to launch your book? And Angela's probably frantically searching YouTube for the videos I'm talking about here. But there is another video on when is a good time to launch or should you launch a book in summer, I guess was essentially what that video was about. But timing wise, I would say, you know, your book and your audiobook should come out at the same time and you should be using the promotion of that to build your author platform, collect email addresses while you refine your course, and even build your course. And then I would be pre selling the course and then launching the course three to six months after your book comes out. I would say you probably want to have a sales page up for your course to start pre selling it, you know, eight to 12 weeks after your book comes out. But the most important thing to be doing is building your email newsletter list while you're promoting your book so that you'll have folks interested in potentially buying your course when it does come out. But there's, there's no perfect science to this, but I do find one from a just a personal management standpoint, trying to launch them all at once is really hard. That's a lot of pieces to try to put together. I also just feel like there's not a market for your. Your course when you launch your book yet you need to give those people time to read the book and go, I want more. And to also build that relationship with them through those emails. So optimally, I would say three to six months post book coming out. You should still have momentum. You should have a lot of momentum from marketing your book. And that can be translated into a course promotion and sale. So hopefully that helps. Let's see. Caitlin. Good luck. That's exciting. And, and Efren says, how would we generally record the audiobook with book launcher services. Oh, the process. Okay, cool. Oh, Mike. But oh my goodness, I just saw that Mike's hoodie, T shirt and backpack never, ever arrived. They're probably all officially missing. Yeah, we've had some real international shipping. I won't call them disasters because at the end of the day, this is Just swag. So it's not a disaster, but it has been a real challenge. Okay. So I'm sorry about that though. Okay. And back to Efren's question. How would we record the audiobook with Book Launcher services? So it's a great question. And our process aligns similarly. Similarly to how you would probably do it outside. So, as I mentioned, the optimal time to record your audiobook is when you are exiting copy edit 2 or exiting proofread. Either spot is good. Where you ideally don't want to record your audiobook is when it's in layout, because I promise you are going to find things you want to change. And changing your book and layout is really not ideal. It's slow, it's painful, and it's it. It also can affect the timing of your launch depending on your. When you're recording it. So. So that's the optimal time for recording it. What we do is we have. Generally, I'm recommending you record your own book. Now, there are certain people who don't want to. They're not a good fit to. So in those cases, we have somebody who will source a narrator for you. But as long as you are capable and willing to record your audiobook, I highly recommend you do so because this is your story, it's your content, and nobody is going to read it in quite the same way that you will. And it puts your voice in somebody's head. So it's very powerful. So if you're going to be recording your own book, we would be pairing you with our audiobook production and editor, our editor and production person, who will do some voice training with you. We'll also explain strategies for recording your book for success. One of the big things is to know when to breathe, because most of us talk and then we'll. We'll say a whole bunch of things and then we're like that. Ask me how I know that. I. I've learned the hard way with all of the. The books I've read, but also all the content that I've created is just knowing to take breaths along the way. So you'll do that and you'll also learn kind of how to emphasize and enunciate and all those things for the best possible recording. So you record a sample and all those things. Now, for some people, they have podcast equipment, they'll record at home. It will still require some soundproofing, some tweaking to what you've got to get it to audiobook standards, if you can. I highly recommend you go to A studio, I've done both and let me tell you, the studio was way more efficient and just more fun. It felt real. It was just really cool to have an engineer on the other side stopping me going, hey, you just read. You just skipped a word or you read that word wrong. And, and having somebody there to share it with me and make it go faster was really, really great. But I've done both and both work. So you record the book start to finish. It'll probably take probably 16 hours of recording time, so you'll probably want to spread that out over three or four days. And then once we've got that, we, we edit and produce. Basically it's mastering the files and you'll get a. I, I'm not exactly sure. You will usually get a sample to make sure it sounds good to you, you're happy with it, you understand what's going on. We record the whole thing, we take the COVID turn it into an audiobook cover, and then we upload it for you to all the places. And some people go exclusive with ACX for the first little bit and then they go wide. Other people will go wide right from the beginning. So that's our process in a very condensed format for it. And generally speaking, knock on wood, our books are flying through the approval process. When we've uploaded people's books who haven't gone, who haven't worked with my team, we've had them snag up in approvals for quite some time and sometimes get kicked back multiple times and have to be re recorded. And so they end up launching their audiobook months after their book because of issues. Audible in particular is really picky. So it's not uncommon for audiobooks to get kicked back if you aren't working with professionals. So. Phew. All right, I think that's all the questions, Angela. If I missed anything, let me know. Mike says, I was once told I have a radio voice rather than a video face. Hey. I mean, I get, I get told on semi regularity that I have a. A. Well, let's just say people are not so kind sometimes on my YouTube videos about my voice as well as my face. So it doesn't really matter what you look like or sound like. I think, I think there's going to be fans and people who are not so not so big of fans. Okay, let's see. Music interludes, thought throughout between chapters, for example. No, not typically. It's usually there's. There are creative things you can do, but if you listen to most audiobooks, it's Just narration. There's not usually sound effects when we're talking nonfiction. So that would be a good question for Jacqueline, because I. I think we do have somebody who put music inside of one of their audiobooks, but for the most part, I recommend you sticking pretty close to the audiobook when you record it. There are some decisions, and I have a video on how to prepare for recording an audiobook, and I'll probably do another one next year. But one of the big decisions is how you're going to handle charts and graphs, because there's different ways to address them when you're reading your book. And typically, what you're seeing is, you know, you can reference a table or chart and have a place on your website where people will go to visit it. You can describe the table and chart and what it is so that people can get a sense of what that table or chart is. But what you don't want to have happen is you're reading your book and you run into it, and you're trying to decide on the fly how to address this table or chart. The other thing is to go through your book and make sure you know how to pronounce all the names, because, again, this is something that can happen on the fly. And I did have one in my book. I think it was the Konigsberg car. And I still don't even know how to pronounce it. But my. My engineer in the studio, I was like, you got to Google how to pronounce this. This word for me, because I don't know how to say it, and I don't know how Americans say it versus how Canadians say it versus how Europeans say it. So we had to Google it to figure out how to pronounce a word. But. But going through your manuscript in advance and identifying words that you maybe don't know how to pronounce, which is usually people's names or places, would be a smart thing to do as well. Okay. Okay. Let's see. I'm just looking at. Oh, you guys are very kind, and I appreciate it. It's. And I don't take anybody who says mean things to me on the Internet seriously anymore. In fact, I often. I often feel sad for the people who post mean things about other people who are trying to create great content and help people, and then they just have nothing to say but something mean, like, you know, a comment about my squeaky voice or dog face. I just feel sad for them because I can't imagine how. What their life is like that. That's what they do for quote, unquote, fun is to say mean things to people on the Internet. So it's all good. Let's see. I love the bloops that drop in sometimes. Yeah, my bloopers. I create a lot of bloopers. Okay. So shallow. I'll take this question. And then I do have to run. I shared in the beginning that I'm going to the Titanic museum with my son this morning, this morning, this evening. And we're going to get there, hopefully before the crowds get there, so he can spend an hour staring at the giant piece of the Titanic that they have in the museum here, which is in the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas. So if you're launching a series, how much time do you recommend to wait between books? I mean, we're nonfiction. For fiction, the answer is different for nonfiction. I mean, I'm really, I'm again, I like people to spend some time promoting a book and building up that platform so the audience is ready and hungry for more. I personally wouldn't recommend releasing a nonfiction book faster than every three months, just so you've got time to promote it, focus on the book that is out, get people's attention for that, and then move on to the next. But, I mean, even then, I think every three months is pretty fast. For nonfiction, I would say releasing a new book every six months to a year for nonfiction is solid, but fiction is a different beast. And I know there's some people who do monthly. You know, fiction readers are less patient. They are demanding of what happened to their favorite character and all of those kind of things. So it is a different answer. And I've had many conversations, particularly with Asian, and you've got to switch on pronunciation. You've got to quickly switch on how to pronounce things. Yeah. It's so true. All right, well, thank you, guys. Thank you, everyone, for joining today. It was such a pleasure. This is our last live stream until January 11th, so I'm taking a little break over the holiday, but there will still be new content for you every Tuesday and Friday. And that holiday extravaganza, video replay will be on the 24th. So if you missed some of it or you didn't get any of it, you can tune in and you can still comment the 24th, 25th or 26th. And you will get entered to win a T shirt or a magnet as your swag prize for just tuning in after the fact. All right, well, thank you all and thank you all for your support this year. It has been such a pleasure getting to to know all of you a little bit more and spending time on these lives with you. So have a wonderful holiday season and a happy New Year, and I can't wait to see what we're all going to do in2022. Take care.