A YouTube video (Julie Broad, Book Launchers) advising nonfiction authors on whether to produce an audiobook. It weighs benefits — discoverability, credibility, audience relationship, promotional content — against costs and limited price/control on Audible/ACX. Provides concrete production estimates (time, cost), distribution/royalty trade-offs (ACX exclusivity vs. wide distribution), and practical recommendations based on author sales and audience size.
Questions this video answers
Approximately 9,000 words per finished hour.
About 6–8 hours of editing and mastering per finished hour.
Approximately $300–$500 per finished hour.
Roughly seven hours of finished audio.
Plan about 2.5 hours of recording time per finished hour (the speaker recommends scheduling three 6-hour days for a 60k-word book).
Chapters
Recording an audio version of your book can be a smart move, but editing and producing an audiobook at a professional level is expensive. And audible doesn't let you set your price point, so you don't have much control over how much you make on the most popular audiobook platform in North America. So you might be wondering, is it worth it to produce an audiobook in 2021 and beyond? Well, if you're wondering that, then you are in the right place, my friend. This video is for for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the book broad from Book Launchers. We're your professional self publishing team helping you write, publish and promote a nonfiction book that will help you have a huge impact on your readers. And done right will help you grow your brand, build your business, and make you money. The best part? You yes, you keep all rights and royalties. Our clients ask me all the time, should I do an audiobook? The answer isn't as easy as I would like it to be, because audiobooks are expensive to produce in the quality that is expected by most consumers and by acx, which is the company that puts the books on audible. And to achieve your specific goals, you may not need an audiobook. So how do you make the decision? First, if you have the budget and belief in your message, the decision is simple in my mind. Produce an audiobook. Here's why. Number one, there are far fewer audiobooks on the market than there are print books and ebooks. It is easier to stand out in the audiobook market and be found in your space because so much of your competition will never appear in audio format and there's not a massive backlist of audiobooks that there are in ebooks and print titles. 2. It enhances your credibility and helps establish trust with your audience. When you see a book available in multiple formats, you assume the book is high quality going. The extra effort will make you look that much more professional. 3. If you read your book yourself, you're the narrator. You. Your voice is now in the reader's head. Think about the podcasters you listen to on a regular basis. You feel like some of them are friends, don't you? This is a really big opportunity for you to build a relationship with your reader. 4. Recording an audiobook is fun. You'll also be able to share some awesome social media posts and behind the scenes pics with your audience. 5. Reading your book aloud also allows you to catch some little typos that may have been missed. No matter how many editors have worked on your book, those little suckers creep in there and because you're using self publishing and likely print on demand to produce your book, it's never too late to correct a typo.
Show me the money. Show you the money. Show me the money. Show me the money.
Let's talk dollars and cents. Because for every hour of book recording, it actually takes a professional six to eight hours to edit and master the file. It requires someone with great equipment and an experienced ear. Depending on your narration speed, it's one hour of audio for roughly 9,000 words. Who wants to do some quick math? My favorite. Okay, if your book is 60,000 words, your audiobook will likely end up being roughly seven hours long. You're going to pay $300 to $500 per finished hour. But remember, before you balk at how much that is every finished hour, your editor spent six to eight hours to get there. So yeah, you're probably spending at least $3,000 just for editing. And then you still need to set up distribution, create a cover, let people know it's available in audio. Then of course there's narrate the book. And I do recommend you narrate your own book if at all possible. If you don't, then you're also paying for the narration for your own planning to record your book, including tongue twisters, ums, misreads, misreads, misreads, energy drops, and dry mouth. Because clearly that's my problem. For your own planning purposes, to record your book, including tongue twisters, ums, you know, energy drops, dry mouth, misreads, it's going to take you at least twice the time to than the finished hours to record your book. I would plan for two and a half hours per expected finish hour. So if you have a 60,000 word book, you're probably looking at about 16 hours now before you think, okay, cool, two days in the studio and I'm going to knock that sucker out. It's far more taxing than you realize. So I would recommend scheduling three six hour days including breaks. But still haven't answered the question, is it worth it financially? If you want a straight ROI on an audiobook in North America, Audible is the big player. And if you go exclusively with acx, which is Amazon's company, you get a bigger cut of the pie. A much bigger cut. With ACX, you can reach Audible, Amazon.com and Apple Books. And if you go with them exclusively, you'll earn a 40% royalty rate on every book sold. If you're not exclusive, you're only earning 25%. ACX also does not let you set your list price, you have no control over that, so you can't raise your price to adjust your earnings. A longer book typically will be priced higher than a shorter book, but ACX does the calculation and adjusts it over time. So for a straight up ROI consideration, if you are in the US reaching US listeners, going exclusive with Audible for the first year and then potentially asking to be released from the exclusivity to go wider later might make the most sense. Being exclusive with ACX allows you to make more money, but you are limiting your distribution. If you have international readers or you want your audiobook available in libraries, you won't want to be exclusive forever. At that point you'd probably look at going with an aggregator like Findaway Voices. It is worth noting your exclusive contract with ACX is for seven years, but if you narrated your own book, you can ask to be released from that exclusivity with ACX after as little as six months and they are likely to let you out. But let's be real. If you have an audiobook on ACX exclusively, you're probably making somewhere between $4 to $7 per copy sold. That means you have to sell at least 600 copies to break even on the audio version alone when you factor in studio rental and other costs. So is that possible? Absolutely. Is it common? Not that we've seen. At the Most, you'll see 20% of your book sales in audio format. So if you're selling thousands of copies each year, it's going to be worth it financially to have an audiobook. But if you're not selling a few hundred every month or thousands a year, then the audiobook probably won't have a direct roi. So if you're looking for that direct roi, it may not be there. It's impossible to know how your book is going to do in advance. Which is why I say if you have a budget and you have an existing audience already, especially in audio or a visual audience through podcasting or video streaming, produce an audiobook. You're not going to regret it. But if you're doing your decision based solely on financials, the roi, the average nonfiction author isn't going to get an ROI on the audiobook alone. That doesn't mean it's not worth it. But a straight up audiobook calculation won't likely get you that return. I got to tell you, I really regret not doing an audiobook for my book more than cash flow. And sure, I could have done it after the fact, but the reality is the majority of your sales for most authors is going to happen in that first year. So if you don't have an audiobook out for launch and beyond when you're doing the hardest push, you're missing out on sales that you're just never going to get back. Ultimately, not every decision is about money, so only you can decide what's right for you. So what do you think? Yay or nay on your audiobook for your book? Let's chat about it in the comments below. And right before you do that, smash that thumbs up button. Go ahead, try it. It does feel good. And when you comment the day a video is released, you'll be entered to win some sweet no Boring Books Swag. Like our oh so Soft Journal or our no Boringbooks mug where coffee, tea and hot chocolate are all verified to taste better in that mug. We have new videos every Tuesday and Friday. Make sure you catch everyone by subscribing to the channel and turning those notifications on. Well, you're a lot of fun. Would you like to keep hanging out? Okay, cool. This video right here will help you decide whether you should narrate your audiobook or not. And this one right here is all about selling your book from home. Because you're going to have to market your book whether you do an audiobook or not. So you're going to need those tips. Both are pretty much guaranteed to be useful and maybe even a little fun. So click on over and I'll put on the coffee and see you there.
