Self Promote and Succeed Chapter 17: All Things Audiobooks

Chapter 17 all things audiobooks what do you think are audiobook consumers who listen to books considered readers? I'm not sure, but whether you think they are or not, it's worth spending a moment on audiobook marketing. Audiobooks are widely considered one of the fastest growing segments of the publishing industry. Many books, even traditionally published books, don't have an audiobook format for their book because of the to date high costs of production. Though this is rapidly changing given advances in AI, narration quality and acceptance. There are some distribution decisions that impact your marketing choices, and that's a bit of a rabbit hole for our purposes here. I'm not going to go too deeply into that, but they generally involve money, reach and marketing. Audible also continues to squeeze authors and their profits. It's a bit gross the power play they have made, but that isn't a topic for this book. Ultimately, if you want your audiobook to be available to library listeners, as many of our Book Launchers authors do, then you must make it available widely and not exclusively through Audible, so it can be requested through platforms like overdrive. At the library, we do this through Findaway Voices, but there is also Authors Republic. There are also some good options for selling your audiobook direct to buyers. Stay tuned for the next chapter. It's a pretty fabulous way to make more money per book sold and get contact information. Book Funnel is probably the best option right now for selling direct to an audience, but there are more options emerging constantly in the audiobook space. Before I give you my marketing strategies, I have to emphasize that an audiobook with a bad title or a bad cover has the same problem as a print book or an ebook with a bad title and a bad cover design is just as vital when it comes to your audiobook. Bad narration on Audible can also cause you problems because books are rated on performance. And just as reviews are vital for the success of your book in print and ebook, it's also important you get Audible specific reviews because they are the only reviews that show on the Audible app. Assuming your audiobook metadata and design elements are good to go, here's my audiobook marketing advice. Regardless of your bigger picture marketing goals, Ideally, launch your audiobook at the same time as your print and ebook. We've done audiobook launches after a book has been out for a while, but driving traffic to sell an audiobook isn't that easy, and generating media interest based solely on the release of an audiobook is almost impossible if it is simply an audio version of your book. If there's some new, fresh content only in the audiobook that is relevant to something happening in the world or a trending topic. It makes it easier for but driving traffic to just an audiobook is not that effective. It's best to market your book and have all formats available at once so buyers can choose. If you don't have the audiobook ready when you launch, you lose sales that would have come from folks who consume books only in audio form. The reality is that someone won't check back later to see if you've produced an audiobook. You've lost that sale. Make it a habit to tell people your book is also available in audio. You'll see people's faces light up when they prefer audiobooks and you tell them you have one. Plus, they may know other people who wanted the audio version. Or perhaps they haven't finished reading your book and they would prefer an option to listen to it to make that easier. If your book is sold on Audible, there is a great feature called Whisper Sync. Whisper Sync lets readers switch back and forth between reading the ebook on their Kindle and listening to the audiobook on Audible without ever losing their place. Maybe they get home from work after they've been listening to your audiobook in the car and they sit down to read the ebook, and voila, they're in the same place. I did this while reading Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. I also found it beneficial to be able to review and highlight what I heard while driving. Some readers will buy both versions for these reasons. Granted, one is at a discount, so less royalties for you, but it's a bonus sale, selling to the same person twice. And now the readers are happy because they can listen and read interchangeably. Telling your audience your book is also available in audio just opens the door to a lot more sales when you do live appearances and you're selling physical books, have a QR code available for people who might prefer the audiobook version. You can even have them buy the audiobook on the spot and give them the free print book, pen or other incentive. If they walk away, they might forget or lose motivation. Get them to buy it while they're there. Post samples of your audiobook on SoundCloud and then embed those on your website. Also, share them in your newsletter and pretty much everywhere you're talking about your audiobook. Once you've uploaded a file to SoundCloud, they have an easy embed function. You can also use that embed code in newsletters or as an email signature if your email provider allows it to. You can even upload a free audio chapter and give it away to people who listen to your podcast interviews. That's a great way to build connections with potential readers, customers, clients, or even partners. Use the free code to get audiobook specific reviews or for reader giveaways to generate interest. When you upload your book, you receive codes to give away free audiobooks. If you have ACX codes, the listener can get an audible version of the book. If you use Findaway Voices, they give you 31 time codes for a free audiobook that you can give away to anyone you'd like. Listeners can go to a designated site to redeem your code to listen to your audiobook on any of Findaway's free Author Direct Mobile apps. If you pursue professional reviewers, bloggers or podcasters, you can give them one of your codes. You can also do reader giveaways if you're on a podcast or doing a live event. You can. You might want to give away an audiobook using these codes to a few audience members. I also use them for thank you gifts for someone who's been a great supporter or for someone who did something extra for me. Chirp and bookbub are now available as paid audiobook promotion spaces. Watch the market for more as I expect this will continue to grow along with the interest in audiobooks. Supporting Cast is a service I'll use with this book promotion to offer copies of the audiobook for free to buyers of the print book. I'll also set up a sales page like self publishandsucceed.com, this sales page, however, will be a direct audiobook sale using Supporting Cast as the distributor. Then I can run Google or social media ads with links to the audiobook and track conversions. To date, I've found limited value in paying for a lot of audio specific promotions, but I recommend testing the waters. If you have a bit of a budget for paid promotion, pursue audiobook specific reviews. If you're listening to this book, Please head to audible.com afterward to rate and review it. I would be so grateful. There are a few review sites specific to audio. One that I've seen work really well consistently is audiobook boom. Now freeaudiobookcodes.com Again, it's worth testing because different books get different results. Some of the many sites you can check out include the Audiobook Blog, the Audiobook Reviewer, Audiobooks Today, Audiobook Worm, and Karen Commons. Enter Audio specific awards to gain more credibility for your book and help sell it. The biggest is probably the Audi Awards from Audiophile Magazine. There's also the Independent Audiobook Award for us self published authors. The IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award also has an audiobook category which is a well known and highly respected award in the publishing industry. There are more and more of these types of awards out there and my feelings about them remain the same. An award win is really what you make of it in and of itself. It doesn't do much to sell any books. You have to be the one to leverage recognition into credibility Promotion and sales promotions have been a staple of ebook marketing since the beginnings of bookbub, but there are not as many professional services for audiobooks, largely because Audible controls the price. You can't set a promotional price for your book if you're using Audible. I think this is part of why more promotional services haven't cropped up yet, but as more authors go wide with their audiobooks, especially after Spotify bought Findaway Voices, you're going to see more opportunities to promote your audiobook at a discounted rate. We're always talking about the best places to promote books and we'll keep you up to date on emerging audiobook platforms. Make sure you visit, Self Promote and Succeed and join our bi weekly launch letter to so you get all the news on book promotion opportunities. And now, as promised, here's what you need to know as an author. About Chirp Chirp for Audiobook Chirp is a sales platform developed by BookBub, and it brings the best audiobook deals right to readers inboxes. It's simple, you sign up and then they email you with audiobook deals of the day or week, along with featured deals curated by BookBubble. If you're on the hunt for something in particular, you can specify your favorite genres, authors or titles, and Chirp will match recommended deals to your interests. The deals are time sensitive, but you can also shop the rest of their audiobook library and buy directly from the site. They also have an app so you can listen to your audiobook or download it to your device. While Chirp focuses on helping readers score hot deals, you can find most traditionally published and a ton of self published audiobooks available for the regular retail price. So what does that mean for you? Dear Author? Chirp's unique distribution model relies on deals, not a credit or subscription model with a bunch of fees. Unlike audiobook services like Audible, a buyer doesn't have to sign up for a service they may or may not use or commit to a pricely monthly plan just to get their hands on one book they want. If your book catches a reader's eye, they can simply purchase the book in the app and start listening. The whole process is really easy. By joining Chirp's library, you can potentially reach a whole new audience ready to take advantage of a great deal without any hassle, and you're giving your book's discoverability a big boost. Even better, you're not giving up control of your price. With Audible, you don't get to choose the price of your audiobook, but on Chirp you do. Since you're the one setting the price, you don't have to rely solely on their featured deal option to offer readers a discount. You can lower your price in the library whenever you want and run your own promotions outside of Chirp as well. One disadvantage is that you must be partnered with Findaway Voices to sell your audiobook on Chirp and take advantage of Chirp deals as an author. Unfortunately, Findaway Voices does get a small cut of the sale, but but that's for their service. For some people, that might be a deal breaker and there's no way to sell direct on Chirp. To keep all your royalties, you have to go through Find a Way Voices. If that's not a deal breaker and you don't mind the limited availability, the process to submit your audiobook to Chirp is easy, and submitting and listing your book as a featured deal is free. Yep, I said free. We don't get very many breaks like that as authors, so you've got to take advantage of it where you can. Now that you're armed with what you need to know about marketing audiobooks, we'll look next at some creative book sales strategies, including how to sell from your website and dig up new sales opportunities. Chapter Summary 1. Audiobook consumers are an opportunity to reach more people with your book and compete in a market that has far fewer titles. 2. Remember to let people know your book is available in audio format. It's a simple step that adds punch to your outreach and marketing efforts. 3. Audiobook marketing is still new, but there are platforms like Chirp that allow you to do some specific promotions. This requires you to be set up through Findaway Voices so you can control your audiobook price. 4. Audible doesn't allow you to set your audiobook price, so it's difficult to use for promotions.