Sounds About Right!

This week, Selfishgenie Publishing hands over its blog to Robert Cubitt, one of our authors, who returns to tell us about his experiences in publishing an audiobook.

All Views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Selfishgenie Publishing.

Back in December 2022 I wrote a blog about dipping my toe into the audiobook market and whether it was right for Indie authors, given the expense of employing a professional narrator (starting prices are around £1,500 ($1,600)).
 
You can find the original blog in the December 2022 archive.
 
At that time, I promised to get back to you to talk about the outcomes, so here I am.
 
I’d like to be able to report that I had a great response to the audiobook and sales were phenomenal, but I would be lying. I have made some sales, but they aren’t anywhere near as many as I hoped, or as they needed to be to recoup my investment.

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I put the blame squarely on ACX.com, the platform that the books are distributed through. They are a subsidiary of retailing giant Amazon.

They offer no assistance with marketing. This is remarkable, considering that ACX.com can only make money if authors are able to sell their audiobooks.
 
Users of KDP will be familiar with the range of marketing tools that the site offers, including access to Amazon Ads. But there are no equivalents on ACX.com.
 
Amazon Ads are available for audiobooks in the USA, but I don’t live in the USA and my audiobook isn’t aimed at the American market (but American and Canadian readers are welcome to listen to it - see below for more information).

So, not much help here in the UK.

​But even if I wanted to sell my audiobook in the USA, that marketing channel isn’t accessible through ACX.com. There is no link from one to the other.
 
BTW Chirp, the audiobook channel of the book marketing site BookBub, also operates only in the USA and Canada. So, not much use to us 400 million Europeans then.

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The little bit of advice that is offered by ACX.com is in their blogs. I can sum it all up in three bullet points:
 
- Find some reviewers,
- Use social media (including paid advertising).
- Pay audiobook promotion sites (but none are recommended so you pay your money and take your own chances).
 
The only practical help they provide is a batch of promo codes for free giveaways of your audiobook, presumably to give to those reviewers that are queuing up to offer their services for free (sarcasm), but they offer no channel through which to distribute those, so once again the author is left high and dry.

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The whole point of using Amazon Ads to sell a book is that the ads are targeted directly at people who are already looking for books to buy.

The problem with advertising using social media is that people seeing an ad on the social media feed (a) might not be looking for a book to buy and (b) they have to leave their social media browsing in order to buy the book even if they are interested.

Getting  people to leave their social media browsing acts as a barrier to sales.

If I, a humble amateur marketeer, know that you would expect the professional marketing people at ACX.com and Audible to know that too, and to follow the lead of Amazon to remove that "advertising by proxy" barrier to sales.

But they don't. Or, if they do know it, they don't consider it worth the bother to do anything about it.

I have to say I find this quite remarkable. After all, if the author can’t market their book, ACX.com doesn’t make any money from the book either.

You would think they would be moving heaven and earth to help authors to market their books.

​Not only that, but the marketing activity itself can be monetised to produce revenue for them.

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The faceless corporation.

I don’t know who actually runs ACX.com and Audible, but they aren’t very business-like if they are finding ways of NOT making money.
 
In addition, I have found their customer service to be less than professional. Their stock answer to every question or problem seems to be “try asking someone else”. Again, they seem intent on not helping their company to make money.
 
I’ll give you an idea of just how unhelpful ACX.com is.
 
After doing a Google search, I found this blog article (I couldn’t find it on ACX.com itself) about creating an Audible author page. Good idea, I thought. I’ll click the link and do that.
 
The trouble was, there is no link. And I can’t find out how to do it through the Audible website because that is aimed at listeners, not authors.

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So, unless you are very good at marketing your books, you will probably struggle just as much as I have with trying to find any listeners for your audiobooks if you distribute through ACX.com.
 
Now, you may be questioning the quality of my book at this point. After all, nobody can sell a bad book, even in audio format..
 
A fair observation and if the ebook and paperback versions were selling equally badly, I would agree with you.
 
However, that isn’t the case.
 
Operation Absolom is my biggest revenue earner, and it is so successful that the royalties from it are what paid for the production of the audiobook in the first place. Given the level of investment required, you can work out for yourself how successful the book has had to be in order for me to make the decision to produce the audiobook.

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There is a slightly cheaper option.

​Alternative self publishing book distribution site Draft2Digital (D2D) have their own panel of narrators who offer prices from around $135 (£120) per narrating hour, giving an overall cost of approximately $1,400 (£1,300) for a 300 page book.
 
I haven’t used them for audiobooks (I have for ebooks and paperbacks) and if you do then you can’t receive the higher (40%) royalty rate from ACX.com if you also distribute through D2D. However, it does provide a wide distribution channel, so it may be something you wish to consider.
 
If you already distribute an audiobook through ACX.com you can also put it on D2D (using the same audio files), but you will have to reduce your royalty option on ACX.com to the 20% level.

But there are no marketing tools provided by D2D either, so you will encounter the same problems when it comes to helping listeners to find your books

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So, am I advising Indie authors not to venture into audiobooks?
 
No, I am not.
 
This is a growing market and Indie authors can gain an advantage by getting their books into audio before it gets too big and swamps us all.
 
But I am advising Indie authors to consider how they are going to market their audiobooks before spending all that money, because you will get precious little help from ACX.com and D2D. If you can’t crack the marketing nut before you invest heavily in your audiobook, then it is probably advisable to proceed with caution.
 
What about me? Am I giving up on audiobooks?
 
No, I’m not. In fact, I’m doubling down.
 
Book 2 to of the Carter’s Commandos series, “Operation Tightrope” is already live on Amazon, Audible and iTunes.
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Again, I’m invested my royalties from my ebooks and paperbacks to cover the narration costs (more proof of their continuing success). Now I’m going to crack that marketing nut if it kills me. If I succeed, I’ll be sure to come back and let you know, so you can do it too.
 
If you do decide that you want to get into the audiobook market, then I wish you every success.
 
If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.

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