Six Ways to Promote Audiobooks & How Libraries Pay Authors

I'm so excited. I'm live. All right. Hey, you guys. I have missed you so much. It has been, well, I think three months and a week since our last livestream together. I am so excited. And of course, this is new that we are going live directly onto YouTube because previously we went live on Facebook and then I would repost it right here on YouTube. But I wanted to show this with you on YouTube and I think assuming this goes well, this is where we'll be going live every other Tuesday. So welcome. I'm still getting the hang of things, so make sure you say hello when you get here. So I know who's here. And also when you say hello, you want to chat in the chat box because Angela, my executive assistant, which I have some announcements, I have some news, she will be watching the chat box and making a note of who's here. And then we're going to have prizes for all of you folks who took the time out of your day to hang out live because I appreciate you. It's also more fun to not talk to myself, so. Hello, Brian. Hopefully I said that right. Ms. Nelly inspires. Hello. Welcome, you guys. So excited to have you here. Okay, so today we're going to do a handful of things besides the fact that I have a ton of prizes to make up for the fact I missed the last livestream, which also forgive me in advance, but I probably will still cough. The sinus infection is lingering. I feel great, though, so that's all good. Just, you know, it's still getting. Making its way, making its way away. So we're going to talk about what do you get paid when your book gets into a library? We're also going to cover six ways to sell an audiobook. And if you have questions, you can always ask your questions. So Chakwuma. Chakwuma. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Just a correction on how to pronounce somebody's name. I appreciate it. I always want to pronounce your names right, and especially if you join the ranks of being a YouTube bestie. I absolutely want to pronounce your name right. So correct me if I get it wrong so I can get it right when I give you a shout out. Okay. And while you're here, smash that thumbs up button. YouTube loves that kind of stuff and I like it too, admittedly. Okay, so we're going to do that and then I have a few announcements. So I'm actually going to start with one of my announcements right now. The channel views on this channel are 987,210. Do you know what that means? We're less than 13,000 channel views away from 1 million views. And when we hit 1 million views, we're having a virtual party, you guys. And I think you guys probably remember what we did when we hit 10,000 subscribers. We had a Prize of Palooza. So I have already ordered some new swag that will be special for that Prize of Palooza when we hit 1 million channel views. So thank you so much for being a part of that. Okay, so welcome again for those of you who've joined. Looks like there's a few more folks. Say hello because Angela, I'm pretty sure Angela's here. Angela, are you here? Excuse me? Here. I'm going to try and mute myself when I. I think that worked. Okay, there she is. There. Okay, Angela is here. So she's going to be watching the chat box and we'll be doing a draw or two for the folks that are here and joining us live. Oh, poetry from the heart. Wonderful. Thank you. Okay, so what do you get paid when your book gets into libraries? I've put. Oh, Margaret, hello. Welcome. So I've put a couple YouTube videos up talking about how to get your book into libraries. Truthfully, it's not a straightforward process. It's not a guaranteed. If you do step one through five, you're going to get your book into libraries. You know, you can always give your book, donate it to a library, and even then, sometimes it doesn't get carried. So there's things you can do that give you a better chance of getting into libraries. But there's one thing that we do for all of our clients, and that is we get you set up through Draft 2 Digital, which is an aggregator. Again, I just put out a video kind of explaining ebook distribution and aggregators. So check that one out if you're not sure what an aggregator is. But we set all our clients up with Draft 2 Digital because they get overdrive access. Now, just because you have overdrive access doesn't mean your book is widely available through all libraries. But overdrive is the library system for ebook borrowing. But still, the local library still has to request and purchase that copy. So what happens is if a library decides to carry your ebook or your physical book, they will purchase a copy, maybe two. You get paid that one time. So you get paid just like any other purchaser of a library book. And you'll get that one payment and then they just lend it out to whoever. Many people. But it's a one borrow at a time. So even the ebook, they purchase it once, you get paid once, but then they only can borrow or lend it out, as it were. Lend it out one at a time. Does that make sense? There is a new service that Draft 2 Digital is connected with now called Hoopla, which is a library service that your book can be available to all library users through Hoopla. Now, the cool part is not only does your local or does somebody's local library not have to purchase it, but you're going to get paid for every time your book gets borrowed. So what that means is if 100 people borrow your book instead of getting paid one once, like you do in the traditional system, you're going to get paid 50 cents for every borrow. So you'll make more money the more your book is lent out. So I hope that clears it up. Because some people, I think, you know, some people didn't realize they were going to get paid at all if their library has their book. And then other people thought that they were going to get paid every time somebody borrows the book out. So there's a lot of kind of misconceptions around that. And then Angela's going to. Hey, Ron. So good to see you. Latonia, great to have you here. Okay, so Angela's actually got a link from the Draft 2 digital website that explains it. And the terminology is one copy, one user, versus a cost per checkout model. So Angela will drop. I eat books. That's normal, right? Okay. I can't laugh. No, making me laugh. Yes. As I said, I'm still recovering from the sinus infection. Feel great. Don't sound so good. Still have some coughing issues. So, yeah, no laughing today. We gotta keep things. We gotta keep things very serious people. Got it. But do say you're here. Give us a shout out, say hello. Cause Angela's gonna be doing some draws today for everybody who's here. Cause I wanna celebrate the fact that you guys took some time out of your day to hang out with me, so I don't have to talk to myself in my office. So thanks for that. So that's the library payment options. If you guys have questions, you can let me know. Benjamin, welcome. I'm happy to answer them if you've got questions about that, but hopefully that clears that up. I ate half of my Harry Potter book collection. I don't know who Void Comics is, but I'm laughing here. Sometimes I'm so hungry, I feel like I could eat a book, but it's not my favorite food. Okay, so let's just Do a prize. So of course many of you know, because I know I recognize a big chunk of you. You're part of my YouTube bestie community. So I know your names are in this mug, but I'll just tell anybody else who's listening to the replay or if you're new here every day, every Tuesday and Friday, I release a new video. Every other Tuesday, we're going to be going live here on YouTube. And when you comment the day a video is released, you'll be entered to win some fantastic swag. One of our things is the no Boring books mug. And I've been told coffee tastes better in this mug. So we've got one of these and we've also got an oh so soft book launcher journal. Now this one is my own one, so it's got notes in it, but a really, really great journal for writing down all those book ideas that you might have your research, anything like that. I also have one last piece of fabulous swag from our 10,000 subscriber. It is a medium, no boring books hoodie. Yeah, Angela. I'm giving this one away, but we're getting new ones. So I told Angela I would give it to her, but I'm actually going to give it to one of you. So if medium will fit you. Medium is what I wear. So just for size comparison, if medium will fit you, you can choose whoever is kind of a first come, first serve. So you can choose between the hoodie, the mug, or the journal. So let me go here, Ernest. Hey, nice to see you here. Okay. Eat green, My Green wizard guide. Oh, it is short. I'll show them in a minute, Ron. I've got a copy right here beside me. Okay, so just so you guys can see I'm not cheating, this is our first winner. All right, Margaret Fitzpatrick, I don't see you on here. So if you're watching the replay, email me@teamteamooklaunchers.com with your mailing address. And if you our first come, first serve, the hoodie. If medium will fit the mug or the journal. All right, awesome. Margaret Fitzpatrick, thank you so much. And I'm just going to cough. One second, please. Thank you. Okay, so congratulations and thank you. I'm just checking the comments here. Angela, did you drop that link in? Can you drop that link in for the comparison between the different library models? So the link I had told you to put in, if you can put that into the comments for folks so they have that, I'd appreciate it. Okay. And Ernest, I'm curious, did you end up releasing your new book because I know you were asking pricing questions on YouTube recently, so I was just curious if you did actually end up getting it out there. All right, so the other thing I thought we could chat about. And again, if you have any questions or anything you want us to talk about, you can just drop that in the comments. And, you know, make sure you hit the thumbs up button while you're here. Always makes me happy. And it feels good, too. I promise. Try it. Try it. I dare ya. Okay, so I thought I would talk about. Oh, wait, Ron's book. One sec. You'll see me go out of frame for a second. And I'm back. All right. The Green Wizard Guide. It is short. It's awesome. I was reading it the other day to see why my fern died and what I could do to bring it back to life. Ron, so I use your book all the time. Okay, so how do I sell audiobooks? So one thing I wanted to mention was this service. So if you set your book up with Findaway Voices, again, another aggregator service, so if I'm saying things that you're not familiar with, I promise there's a YouTube video that I've recently put out that explains aggregators. It also explains Findaway Voices and draft 2. Digital. Findaway Voices is we set our clients up with ACX to get on Audible, but then we use Findaway Voices for wide distribution everywhere else. Again, because it gives us things like library access and access to services like Chirp, which is now something that Find a way Voices has partnered with BookBub, which is a really big promotional platform. So one thing you can do is if you've got your book set up on Findaway Voices, you can use Chirp to promote it. And it's getting promoted to bookbub's audience. So this is pretty huge. I haven't done it yet. We haven't tested this. It's still fairly new. But I know the BookBub audience is many, many millions, and they're like whale readers, right? They're avid consumers of book content. So I think this is a great opportunity and something that probably is still pretty cheap to advertise because it's new. Okay, bye. Bye. Ryan, make sure you tune in. Let's see. I'm trying to look at the minutes here. You can tune in from 12 minutes on to see if you won a mug or a journal, because I know your name's in that mug. Hey, Kevin, Welcome. Thanks for staying up so late to join us. I really, really appreciate it. Oh, I'M just Void ate his chemistry book. Sorry, I don't know who Void is, but you're cracking me up. Okay, so Chirp. Amazon ads also are a way to sell audiobooks. Now you can't run an Amazon ad direct to an audiobook. Like you can't focus on it if you've got a print and an ebook and all of that. But yeah, am I sick too? I'm still getting over. I'm like a five week. I'm into my fifth week of being sick. But anyways, I'm not sick. I just had a sinus infection and there's remnants. Anyways, back to the Amazon ads. So you can run Amazon ads and while you can't direct it to just promote an audiobook, if you've got different formats, it will end up resulting in a lift in sales. And I've been testing this myself and we've got some clients where we're running Amazon ads for them and they have multiple formats and we're seeing a lift. For me, I can talk to you about like, if it's a dead book and what happens when you run Amazon ads. So my second book, the New Brand, you'd. It doesn't sell a lot of copies on its own. I never did a lot to promote it outside of the first month of launch. I was pregnant, we were moving to la, didn't really care. I did the opposite of everything I tell you to do. So recently we started testing Amazon ads and we used it as a guinea pig. And audiobook wise, I think I was selling about two audiobooks a month. And then we've been running Amazon ads and we're not spending $50 a month Amazon ads. So it's really low spend. And my audiobook sales are now up to about 10 units a month. Seven to 10. And that's after three months of running ads. So it does make a difference to run Amazon ads. That's obviously a tiny test case, but we're seeing this with clients too. I just don't have permission to share any of those kind of results. But my book I can talk about. So Amazon ads number three is focus on selling your books overall. I know this is kind of funny, but people need to know about your book. They need to know it's available in softcover, hardcover, ebook, and then audiobook, especially audiobook, because a lot of people won't even think to look for it in an audiobook form. Just let people know and then just focus on promoting your books overall. Which of course, you know, there's Tons of videos on my YouTube channel to help you with that. Yeah, welcome. Hey, there's quite a few more people have joined, so make sure you say hello. I'm actually Angela. We're going to just pick a random number. So just. Let's see. Kevin, pick a random number for me, please. And I won't tell him what I'm doing with this in case he tries to rig this. So pick a random number, and then we're going to do a draw for the folks that are here, because I want to thank you for all joining us. And of course, we'll still include Brian, even though he had to leave. So while Angela's picking a random number. Sorry, While Kevin's picking a random number, I'm waiting for him. We're at 88 right now in Cleveland. That's a good random number. I like that. It was over 70 here today. Oh, good. Okay. So, Kevin, I'm just going to use that as. Oh, the random number was 11. Okay. So I'm going to go 11 times 2. 22. So, Angela, pick the comment 22. Who is the 22nd person to comment. And you are the winner of a mug or a journal. So you can let us know. Okay, so, Angela, find out who that is and put it in the comments for me, please. And Voight chose to. There you go. Sweet. Okay, number four is promote your book on audiobookboom.com. so this is a site that's dedicated to promoting audiobooks, and if anybody on here, I know there's quite a few authors that are here. If you've ever done any promotions on there, I'd love to hear about it. This is something I'm going to test, so soon enough just to see how it goes. But I've heard good things on the forums and some of the author groups I'm a part of. So, yeah, authorboom. Authorbookboom.com and you know what? I'll just go ahead and put that right here. Boom. Author. Because I keep saying it wrong. AuthorBookBoom.com There, in case you need it. All right, and then this is going to seem kind of obvious to some of you, but promote or, sorry, Google audiobook reviewers and find ones that have reviewed books similar to yours or at least in the same category or genre. So, I mean, if you're just. Because Ron's book right beside me. If you're Ron and you've got the Green Wizard Guide and you find an. And you've got an audiobook, which at this point, I don't think he does. He's got a great YouTube channel, though. So check out Ron's YouTube channel, the Green Wizard. But if you've got a audiobook that or an audiobook reviewer that's all about, you know, health and fitness or motivation and inspiration, you know, you wouldn't pitch a book like this, but you might pitch a book like April Jones's no Mess, no Message or William Hung. He's got a book coming out, champion by choice, that's coming out on October 3rd. We also had. I'm just looking at my recent list. Rob Berger's book just came out at the end of August and his is retire before mom and dad. And so he would be looking for. For audiobook reviewers that promote finance books. So his book retire before mom and dad is obviously how to take your salary. And he actually, it's actually a really cool concept. It's all about how you can take, you know, say you make $50,000 a year. So you're not, you know, making millions of dollars a year or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, you're making a $50,000 salary. How can you take that and retire wealthy and retire early? His book walks you through the exact step process to do that. So it's a really, really cool book. So he would look at Google for audiobook reviewers and then try to find people who review in the finance space. So something to do there. Because a lot of the audiobook reviewers, I don't think are getting pitched as hard or as often as the regular book reviewers are and they're specialized in audiobooks. So folks that only like to consume audiobooks are likely to be tuning in to those people. Kevin said I was retired before my mother. That's awesome. Is StoryRocket a good outlet for your book for producers and publishers to find your book? StoryRocket. I'm actually not familiar with that. Latonya. I'll have to look it up. Ernest, congratulations. Hey, so let me know. Sorry you guys. So let me know@teamokcontros.com your mailing address and whether you want to. The fabulous book or the fabulous journal. All right, way to go. Okay, now the sixth thing. Oh, and also actually mention on. And I think the sixth thing actually is it. Yeah. So the sixth thing I have, I took it from Jane Friedman's blog. If you guys aren't familiar with her, she's got some great content for self publishing authors. And I didn't give Angela this link, so I'll have to post it after the fact, but for you. But she talks about audiobook uploading to SoundCloud, which was something I haven't tested. But the fact that it's on Jane Friedman's blog, I trust it as a technique. And then what you do is use. SoundCloud has become a viable resource for allowing listeners to Preview audiobooks. So SoundCloud doesn't sell the recordings, but people are using SoundCloud to listen to samples of your book, and then it allows you to link to the buy site. So it's a place where you can upload a sample of your book and link to it so people can then go and buy it once they found it. So I thought that was kind of interesting. Again, I haven't tested it, but I thought that was a cool idea. There's also audiobook awards out there, some fairly reputable ones. And also that was mentioned on Jane Friedman's blog with some lists to some of the awards. I haven't personally checked them out or vetted them yet, so I don't want to recommend them to you just in case. But. But yeah, so that's. I'll link to Jane Freeman's blog in the comments afterwards or even put it in the description of this video so you guys have it in case you want to read up on those things. But there's actually seven ways to sell audiobooks. All right. My. Oh, geez. I don't know what you're doing, boy, but you're pretty funny. Okay, I'm just going back here. Okay. I'm just checking the questions. I was sick. Oh, you were sick, too? Goodness, Kevin. And it's not contagious like watching each other's videos and commenting. There's no contagious. There's no. We can't be sharing sicknesses. So these are all different. All right, so let's go through here. And I gave 25 codes out on AudioBookBoom and got a whopping four reviews. So you got reviews. It kind of worked. So something. That's interesting feedback, Kevin. So I mentioned audiobook Boom. Giving out your codes. ACX gives you 25 codes where you can promote. You can give them away to promote your audiobook. And I assume that's what he is talking about that Kevin's talking about when he said, I gave out 25 codes on AudioBookBoom and got four reviews. You know what? That's not bad, really. When you think about the numbers, typically you're going to get five people who say they'll get a review, and you're really lucky if one of them actually does it so frustrating, but kind of statistically normal, so that's fine. And yeah. So, Latonia, I'll look up story rocket later. Let's see. Check in, check in, check in. Okay. All right, so I got a couple more prizes and then I gave you the announcement that we're going to have a 1 million chance views party. So that'll be the prize of palooza. We've also added three new team members since we last went live. So Angela, you all are getting to see here on the live stream here. Oh, and Jacqueline joined. Hey, Jacqueline. So, yeah, Angela Jones joined us in the summer, I think in July, and she's the executive assistant in charge of operations over at Book Launchers. So she's helping us make sure everything runs smoothly. And we have all these team meetings and we're more organized, so it's been awesome to have her on our team. And then we added Zach, who is now working in our book marketing department. And his specialty is library distribution, bookstore distribution. His current projects, airport bookstores. But he also does live appearance bookings and just really helps us overall with the strategy. So we're really excited to have him on the team. Just today is Carly Stratton's first day, and Carly's job is as a client care specialist and she's joining Jacqueline on our team. So, yeah, really excited. And Carly's got a really cool background. She worked in a traditional publishing kind of environment for Ghost, I think it's Ghost Mountain Publishing, which is basically kind of like a celebrity book publishing company. So it's really fun to have somebody on the team coming from that background with a little bit different spin on things. So really awesome. Super excited for all of the new support and services that we're able to offer our clients with our growing team. So that's new. And let's do another draw for my YouTube folks. So thank you for commenting and sharing and just being a part of the YouTube community. So let's do this. And you can always ask for the Medium hoodie. If Margaret doesn't take it, then it'll still be up for grabs if it's going to fit you. So here we go. Okay. All right. IJ King. I don't think I've seen IJ on here live, but IJ, thank you so much. Give us an email@teamooklaunchers.com with your mailing address and whether you would fit into a Medium hoodie. You can always ask for it. Margaret's got first dibs on it, but if she doesn't want it. Then we've got this fabulous journal and of course, the noboringbooks mug. All right, I'm going to do one more. Oh, Derek, I know you're in here. I have seen you working hard to get your no boring books swag. So, yeah, your name is definitely in here. So I'm gonna do another draw. I also want to do one more draw for the folks that have joined us live. So what should we do? Should we do a skill testing question or just another random draw? You guys can pick while I go ahead and draw one more fabulous name. And let's go here. If, Jacqueline, if you're still on there, you can. You could pick the. You could pick the skill testing question if you want. Okay, here we go. Drumroll. I looked. I gotta pick somebody new, so I don't. No perceived favoritism here. Okay. Alan West, Congratulations, Alan west, you are the winner. Same thing, same drill. Teamoklaunchers.com Send us your mailing address and what swag you want me to send your way. And thank you for being there on the YouTube channel, commenting on the day videos are released. All right, we're going to do one more prize from the folks that are here live, and then that'll be a wrap for this time. Again, we're going to be doing this every other Tuesday, and I can't wait to see you here back. And then I'm predicting you guys, I don't know for sure, but I am predicting that we will be having that 1 million channel view party in mid November. And it's going to be fun. I'm going to have lots of extra swag for you all, and we will have a really fun time hanging out together. All right, so let's see. Jacqueline wasn't handling the pressure. It sounds like you can do it. You can do it. Let's see. Void says I need a prize. Void. I can't promise we're going to see. We'll see what happens. Blood Knight Gaming. Do you guys work with fiction or just nonfiction? We only work with nonfiction. Fiction is a completely different animal. But we have lots of fiction folks here, so if you have questions about fiction, you can always posted here. Also, I often reference. There's actually a few channels that do fiction that I often will reference and that hang out. So you can always ask questions and then meet up with other fiction authors that can help you. If you worked with fiction, I'd be all over it. Okay, skill testing question. Amazon kindle will pay 70% commission if you price your book between this number and $9.99. Jacqueline's throwing down hard here. That's a good, good one. That's gonna be tough. That's stuff that clients look to us to tell them. So. Yeah. So good, good, good challenging, skill testing question there, people. I'm sure that people are now not listening to me and frantically googling for that answer. Oh, there we go. Well, Kevin, you win all the time. Are you okay if we give it to Lexi? Just checking. And I actually have to make sure that's right. I'm saying that I'm pretty sure 299 is the right answer, but Jacqueline would know more than me, and Kevin definitely won that. But Kevin, if you're cool, I'm gonna give your prize. Unless it's a journal. Oh, you don't have a journal yet. It's a choice between a journal and a mug. So tell you what, Kevin and Lexi, I want to make sure Kevin gets his due course because he's staying up late over in Europe, you guys, to be here, so he deserves that. So if you want your journal, I'll hook you up. But, Lexi, you also win. Yes, Jacqueline just confirmed 299 is the answer. So Lexi, Kevin, email me teambooklaunchers.com and again, you can always ask for the medium hoodie that is left in case Margaret doesn't claim it. And I will just give it to the next person in line for that. So that is it. I'm just looking for an editor for my first book right now. So, folks, if you guys have a great recommendation for a fiction editor, just drop Blood Knight Gaming a message, a reply, or I can. Yeah, if you're watching the replay, let him know because I know there's quite a few fiction folks that will probably be turning in, tuning in after. So let Blood Knight Gaming know. And thank you so much for being here, you guys. It's wonderful to be back together and. And I can't wait to start doing this with you every other Tuesday again. So, yeah, thank you so much. And thank you, Jacqueline and Angela, for your support on this call. And Ron, so good to see you again. Benjamin. Yeah, wonderful, you guys. I'm so excited to see you all again. All right, have a fantastic day, and I'll see you again in two weeks. All right, and remember, new videos every Tuesday, Friday. If you comment the day a video is released, you will be entered to win some of our fantastic swag. All right, see you again next time. Bye.