How I Turned My Book Into an Audiobook With ElevenLabs and ElevenReader (And Got Paid)

Everything you know about making audiobooks is changing. Most authors assume producing an audiobook costs thousands of dollars, requires hiring a narrator, and then handing over most of your revenue to a platform like Audible. And that's kind of how it used to roll. But what if you could take your finished book, clone your own voice, and publish that audiobook almost in minutes? Well, that's what I'm going to show you today. I'm going to show you how to get paid when people listen and how to do it with your voice-cloned audiobook. So if that's something you're curious about, then this video is for you. Hi, I'm Julie the Book Broad, founder of Book Launchers and your host here at BookLaunchers.tv. Book Launchers is your first choice for all things related to writing, publishing, and promoting a nonfiction book. In a previous video, I showed you how to clone your voice using ElevenLabs so your book could be narrated in your own voice. I'll link to that one in the description below. Below so that you can watch that video so you know how to clone your voice. And it is super easy to do. And I'd already published that version of the book through Spotify for Authors. And that video is also here. You can see it right there, but I will link in the description below as well. Today, I'm gonna show you how to publish that voice-cloned audiobook inside ElevenReader. So what is ElevenReader, you might be asking? Well, ElevenReader is the listening app created by ElevenLabs. Where authors can publish AI-narrated audiobooks directly to listeners. It's a new distribution platform for audiobooks. You can generate the narration using AI, or like I said, your voice clone, and publish directly to listeners in the ElevenReader app. It doesn't have to be your voice clone, although I do recommend that as a great option for authors, but you can potentially even use some of their licensed celebrity voices or voice clones to narrate your book through their platform, which is kind of cool. But again, I cloned my voice, and that's what we're uploading to ElevenReader today. The interesting part is some of the economics of this, which we'll talk about when we get to the payout settings. So publishing the audiobook. Once your audiobook is generated and ready to go, the process is actually quite simple. By the way, if you have not already signed up for 11Labs, you are welcome. I invite you to use our affiliate, which will help me build a better partnership with them and just supports the channel. So booklaunchers.com/11labs is our affiliate. Inside 11Labs, once you have your book uploaded which basically you can upload your manuscript in quite a few different formats, your EPUB, your doc, PDF, those kind of files, and then you can go from there. Once you upload it, the platform organizes the content into chapters automatically. Again, the exact details on how to do this with a voice clone is all in this other video, so you can go and watch that and follow those steps. Now, I do recommend that you do some editing, whether you use one of their voices or your voice clone. If you edit it, it will make it the best it can be because there were some spots where it sped up and it sounded a little weird. And so some editing really helps. Once this work is done, you're now following along the steps that you see on the screen here. In my case, I selected my own voice clone from the menu on the left. This was, by the way, for the second edition of Self-Publish and Succeed because the original edition is narrated in my voice, which you can download for free, and I'll tell you how in a second. But when you publish with this, your voice clone, make sure you have selected original audio. You'll see that pop up here. Previously, this option didn't appear for me and the audiobook kept publishing with different default voices instead of the voice clone that we had so painstakingly edited to make it as best as it could be. So make sure original audio is selected so the book uses your actual narration. Now you're basically just following the prompts as you can see here on the screen. You can expect that you're going to fill in normal publishing metadata like your book title, your description, of course you need a cover, your author bio information. This is similar to uploading a book on any other publishing platform. So have all your copy, all your metadata ready, and of course your cover file. Now it's time to choose the payout model. During the publishing process, you'll see a section that asks you how you want to earn money from this, and you do have an option to just give it away for free. You also have an option to earn from subscriber listening or sell the audiobook directly, and you can do a hybrid. You're not forced into one or the other. Now let's break down what these mean. Free— well, It's kind of straightforward, right? Your audiobook is simply available to anyone using the 11Reader app. Now this can be useful if your goal is reach. For me, when I give my audiobook away for free, I'm using BookFunnel. And in fact, you can get the original version, not the second edition. So the original version was voice narrated by myself. You can get it at booklaunchers.com/freeaudio if you want that version. Again, human narrated, but not the updated. That is distributed through BookFunnel. Which is what I use to give away my audiobooks. And then people will opt in and they become a subscriber of my launch letter. Now, option 2 is to earn from subscriber listening. This is the option I chose in combination with the option to sell direct. And this does refer to ElevenReader's paid subscriber tier called the Ultra subscription. Subscribers receive a bundle of listening hours each month inside the app, and authors get paid based on engagement. You can also set a price And if someone's not a subscriber, they can do a full purchase. So the good news is you are in charge of setting the price and you have choices. You don't have to pay to publish through ElevenReader Publishing, and there's no listing fees. This is set up for ElevenReader. You can't sell your digitally narrated voice on Audible, but you can export the files from ElevenLabs and distribute elsewhere like I did. Spotify for Authors or Voices by InAudio will distribute to select readers. They don't follow the royalty model of ElevenReader. With 11Reader, your direct purchase, for example, here we set it at $14.99. You'll make money from that or the subscription streaming, which is, I believe they charge about $8 to $10 per month for unlimited listening. I think your book will earn per streamed hour. They pay out with Stripe. So you do need a Stripe account. Now with the direct sales, you earn 60% of net revenue after platform or store fees. So if someone's using the 11Reader app on an Apple device, there are fees there that they have to pay. So you'll probably end up making about $8 on a $14.99 sale. For the record, that's pretty darn good. Although I doubt a lot of people are shopping on 11Reader. So this is really probably the people that you're sending there. Subscribers, well, they're less juicy. It's $0.20 per hour of verified listening streamed, and it's capped at $2.50 per book total, per listener or overall engagement applies per book. So heavy listeners will max out at $2.50 for your title. So what I mean by that, is— and a lot of audiobooks that are nonfiction are like 5, 6, 7 hours— you're going to earn $1 or $1.20 for that listener if they listen to the whole thing. And again, if your book is a lot longer, it's capped at $2.50. Now, if somebody only listens for a little while, you know, you're looking at $0.20. Now, subscribers are coming from their database, so that is where you're going to get bigger reach. So there's value there. Direct sales are more than likely coming from your audience. And I mean, it's ideal if you are driving a targeted audience there because you're going to make more money from an Eleven reader, reader, listener, whatever, than you would from another platform. I mean, you're saving a lot of money doing it this way because if you produce your own voice narrated audiobook, you're looking at $2,000, $3,000, $4,000 just for production and more if you hire a narrator. Platforms like ElevenLabs make it easier to produce audiobooks quickly and have them narrated in your own voice or your cloned voice and publish them yourself and keep the majority of the revenue. Not every listener will enjoy a digital voice. So you aren't capturing 100% of the market. But let's be realistic. If you didn't have this format at all, you're capturing 0% of the market that would only listen to your book. We're not in a time anymore where publishing in audio is an optional thing. I believe every book, well, almost every book, needs an audio version. The results of this fabulous platform combo is that audiobooks are becoming accessible to authors who previously couldn't afford to create them. For this demo, I published the audiobook version of Self-Publish and Succeed, the second edition. And it's narrated using my voice clone created with ElevenLabs. So instead of taking 3 days in a studio or hiring a narrator, the audiobook sounds like me reading even when I didn't have the time to dedicate to it. And this is powerful for busy entrepreneurs, doctors, or people who just don't have the time and money to invest in their own voice-narrated book. But you want it to be in your voice because your audience already knows your voice. AI audiobook publishing is still early. 11Reader is a brand new platform and it's just starting to grow its audience. But that's why it's interesting. Early adopters often have the biggest advantages. And there are other platforms that are also coming on stream that make your book interactive, like Sinai. I did a livestream on that one and have a new video coming out soon as they are just launching now. If you want to see how I created the voice clone used for this audiobook, watch the previous video where I walk you through it. And of course, if you want more practical insights about writing, publishing, and marketing your nonfiction book, I do hope that you've subscribed to the channel and come on over and hang out with us at our free community at booklaunchers.com/skool, school. See you there.