How to Sell an Audiobook on Findaway Voices by Spotify

In a recent video I shared ways to sell your audiobook that weren't Audible and in that video I talked about Find a Way Voices. Well, since that video, Findaway Voices has now rebranded to Find a Way Voices by Spotify and there's been a lot of ambiguity around what they are actually going to pay authors for books sold on Spotify. But regardless of all that, I am still excited for the options beyond Audible that Findaway Voices offers us authors. So I thought I'd shoot and everything you need to know about uploading and selling your book on Findaway Voices video. So if you're looking for some details on Findaway Voices to sell your audiobook, this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the Book Broad author and founder of Book Launchers. Now one of the hot topics on book launchers TV in 2023 has been avoiding Amazon. Amazon has been glitchy and half of what we do some days seems like all we do is fight Amazon bots. So I get why people are trying to avoid Amazon. That said, I am not an anti Amazon person at all, but I am an advocate for selling wide and not giving all the power to any one company or outlet. That's why I've been super happy to have Spotify as a distribution option for audiobooks. Now the way to access Spotify is through our aggregator of choice Findaway Voices. To help you out, I took some videos while I was uploading my latest book, Self Promote and Succeed and Full disclosure. My team at Book Launchers normally does all this for our clients, so I wasn't that smooth at the job, but I did get it done for you. Now before you do any uploading, you need to make sure you have upload ready files. What does that mean? Well, it means you meet the criteria. Chapters, credits and any introductions must be standalone files no longer than 120 minutes each. You'll need to order all the chapters in proper order and when you're recording it, you need to start each file by saying Chapter one or whatever chapter it is. Opening credits must be included and include only the title and author or narrator names. The opening credits cannot include any additional information or narration. The details should match exactly what's provided in the metadata. Details and and the details on the COVID Self Promote and Succeed Written by Julie Broad Narrated by Julie Broad as an example, ending credits must be included and must reference the completion of the book I. E. Say the end. All additional introductions as in Preface Author's notes should be separate files with appropriate verbal headings, all of which should be loaded in the front matter section on this audio page. All the instructions are on the Findaway Voices page. You don't need to take notes or worry about remembering this. You also have to have an audiobook sample and it must be shorter than five minutes and can't contain music or credits or explicit content. You cannot use any voice to text or those files will be removed. Every file needs room tone, which is basically silence at the start and at the end of each file. So when you're recording, make sure you always pause at the start and pause at the end again. All of this is on the Findaway Voices website and it's the same requirements as acx. So you get all that done, you've got it recorded, it's edited, it's beautiful. Now you upload your files. Here's what that process looks like on Findaway Voices. So it's on there. Now make sure all your chapter titles are labeled right. This is visible to the Spotify audience and they can listen to one chapter in your book. So those chapter titles should be selling your chapter my friend. And make sure you've labeled it right because that is what your listener will see on all the platforms. The chapter titles also have some discoverability in search High five to all of you who have been watching Book Launchers TV for years and new to spend time on those chapter titles. That work pays off once again. So here you can see me doing this. For the upload, it would be best to have your files labeled right going in so you don't miss this. We're training a new editor and that wasn't explicitly stated in our materials before today. I've changed that now, so changing chapter titles. Super easy. As you can see me doing in this, double check the spelling of those chapter titles and make sure they are all in the right order. Now you see this section front matter. This is the material preceding the main text. Some common examples are title page dedication, preface, author notes and introduction. Click or drag to add the MP3 or FLAC files. The retail sample, as I already noted, shouldn't be longer than five minutes and it should showcase the narration. Don't start with music, don't start with opening credits. Think about a section that will hook a reader. Well, a listener in this is going to be the sample they preview on retail sites. So pick something where your performance is strong and the material is going to help sell the book. Findaway Voices has a ton of distribution options and you now need to choose your distribution. I'm going to leave everything checked except for Audible because I will upload direct to ACX. Findaway Voices takes a 20% fee for their service, so you're going to make even less selling on Audible if you use Findaway Voices to upload to acx. Yeah, it means one more place to update the files of your book and collect details for tax purposes. But you're likely to sell so many more copies through Audible, so it's worth unchecking and selling through ACX for Audible. If you're a Book Launcher's client, you don't have to worry about any of this stuff. We take care of all of it for you. It's a pain in the butt and it does take a few hours to do, even if you know what you're doing. And if you don't know what you're doing, well, it takes way longer if you're a nonfiction author writing or marketing a book to build your business or your brand, we can help. Our books, courses and our full service team, from our writers and writing coaches to editors, designers and marketing professionals who pitch you for podcasts, live appearances, media run ads and more, are all focused on your bigger picture goal with your book. We surround you with care and support as we guide you through the process. If you want to chat with us, go ahead and fill out the form you'll find at the link below. When you're doing this, come prepared with your bisect codes. I'll link to a video on that at the end. Also, you're going to need your keywords. Use Publisher Rocket to figure out those for your audiobook. You can go ahead and grab a copy of Publisher rocket@book launchers.com Rocket. You also have a lot of space to upload keywords here, so take advantage of that and don't repeat your title material in those keyword boxes. Okay? You also have to put your street date and release date here. If you haven't published the audiobook anywhere else before you set the date, it can be your launch date or another date if your book has already launched. There's also a space to upload save supplemental material. So if you have images or graphs or a workbook, you know, or workbook type space in your book. This is where you create a PDF for your listeners to download. I typically just tell people to go to a website to get resources so I can get them to join my community. If you want to join my community, go to book launchers.com newsletter and you join our community there. That said, you don't want bad reviews. If you do reference a lot of things in your audiobook, so so you do want to include those things here. That's where you upload it. Now you do also have to know your pricing going in, so do your pricing research. We usually look up your competition in your category and come up with a price range. You have the option of setting a promotional launch price here. I didn't do that because I wasn't doing a launch push with the audiobook. My focus is actually on giving it away for free. By the way, do you want to get Self Promote and Succeed for free in audiobook format? No problem. Hit up the link in the description below and you'll be able to download a copy of Self Promote and Succeed in Audio Format, which I have uploaded into Book Funnel. Check out the other video to find out how to do that. So no launch pricing for me, but if you're doing a big push, this could be a good tool. You also might be considering a chirp promotion where you can sell your audiobook for $0.99 or $2.99 or a low price and that could be something you promote here. Regardless if you were with Audible, you can't set your price. So it's nice to have some control over here. Oh, and your ISBN. They give you a free one, but I highly recommend you use your own. Nothing is truly free and what happens on Amazon and many other places is they use a free ISBN and then they want to go to other platforms and they can't figure out what to do with their real ISBN when they've been given a free one from some other platform. So just start with your own ISBN and keep it clean. So right here I click set my own and then I load in my ebook, print and audiobook ISBNs so they all are synced together once you've uploaded all of that, including your description which you need to format so it looks nice, click review and submit and you'll see a screen like this. Watch your email so you see if there are any file issues or other things that need your attention. Once it's approved on the various platforms, you'll be notified and then you can get your Spotify codes to give away to advanced listeners or reviewers or people who are maybe going to interview you or help promote the book. These codes will give the listener the ability to download from Spotify. I know you're wondering how much money am I going to make from all of these places? To figure that out, you have to consult the Schedule C of your agreement. Let me show you what this looks like as of October 2023, Findaway shall receive a distribution fee equal to 20% of royalty receipts. According to the above table for royalty receipts from Spotify, the rights holder shall receive distribution royalties equal to 100%. That's why I don't upload from Findaway to Audible because I want to save that 20%. Now, anything sold on Spotify you're getting 100% of, which is cool. However, the new piece of news about books and being available for premium subscriber holders up to 15 hours a month is going to be paid out based on the pool of funds and the amount of time your book was listened to. This is not really clear what that's going to look like. Musicians have notoriously complained about Spotify not paying well for their music being listened to, so I'm not sure, but it's likely that's going to be the same for authors. It's also important to note that the payout is based on the retail listed price, not what you set. So if they discount the price as Audible does all the time, you're getting paid on that discounted price, not what you've set your price. I'm not going to take you line by line through this because you can download your own Schedule C and see what the rates are for the places that you are planning on promoting your book to. So check out the rates of what you're going to make on the channels that you plan to be selling on. And understand the difference between a library checkout, a subscription listen or a purchase. Because all of that is laid out nicely in Schedule C. But it does differ. Whew. That was a lot on Findaway Voices. Oh sorry, Findaway Voices by Spotify. Again, it's a smart move to go wide with your books. Giving all the power to Amazon may make you more money in the short term, but it will hurt you and all authors in the long term. So going wide, selling direct and just generally not giving all the power to one place like Amazon will pay off for you and the entire author and publishing community in the long run. So even if we don't end up making a ton of money from Spotify, I am grateful to a big player giving Amazon some much needed competition. What do you think? Let's chat about it in the comments below. And when you comment the day a video is released, you get entered to win some sweet hashtag no boring book swag like this T shirt. So let's help you with those questions like what is a bisect code? Go here. And if you need a fabulous. Book description. This is the video you need right here. Head on over and comment when you get there. I'm waiting.