I just got finished recording, editing, and launching my very first audio book!
It was a huge milestone in my own life, and I had to solve a lot of problems along the way.
I wanted to put together an article detailing all of the resources that I used, along with my step-by-step process for turning my physical book on Amazon into an audio book on Audible.
It’s going to take some learning, but you can absolutely record your own Audiobook!
Tools and resources I used…
This is a list of the various tools that I used to create, edit, promote, and learn how to create the Audible book.
Recording: Blue Yeti Microphone. Quicktime Player on Mac. Garageband. Audacity.
Design: Canva.
Marketing and Promotion: MailChimp. Buffer.
Website: WordPress.
Education: YouTube video by Rob Dircks
And… that’s it!
I’ll talk a bit about my marketing strategy later. For now, I just wanted to show you that you don’t really need fancy equipment to be able to record your own audible book.
I did have some speaking experience as a result of interviewing over 150 guests on my podcast. You can see how my podcasting voice has changed over time here.
Where I published the audio book…
I used Amazon’s ACX program to publish the book. I did the Option 1 royalty share “exclusive distribution” option, which ensures that your book goes out on Audible, Amazon, and iTunes via ACX, and wherever else Audible chooses to. You get a 40% royalty.
I did this option because I own the content and all of the rights of the book. I also produced the book. Your situation might vary.
How long it took…
This is a great topic. To give you some context, I had already written a physical/Kindle book on Amazon for this topic. I was basically creating an audio version for the existing book.
I started recording the Audible book on February 10th and I officially published the book on March 30th into the Audible store.
So, it took me about a month and 20 days to record the entire thing, edit it, and get it accepted by Audible.
I did have some back and forth with Audible, because the volume for the book was too high, so I had to make some edits before I re-submitted it. I probably could have gotten this done in less time, but I had several other things going on.
The longest and most difficult part…
The editing was definitely the most time consuming. I had to go back and cut out all of the stammering and other errors. It was much more editing than a podcast.
In addition, I had to go through the entire track, so if the file was one hour, that was one hour minimum that I’d be spending on the track.
Once I edited it in Garageband, I had to re-edit it in Audacity to fix the various noise levels because Garageband wasn’t cutting it.
My marketing plan
My marketing plan was pretty simple. Basically, I just created a specific email list of people that were interested in the upcoming Audio book.
I would mention this designated email list on my podcast, where people could get notified about the upcoming book and join the waitlist.
I also promoted this list signup on my blog and I believe on my YouTube channel. Finally, I shared it on my various social channels.
When the Audible book was finally available, I let everyone know who was on that email list. I also started to link more to the Audible book in blog posts and mention it a few times on my podcast.
I’m going to be doing a webinar on the topic of the Audible book also to help promote it.
My recording advice
I’ve put together a YouTube video with some helpful tips that goes into how you can get the most out of your microphone and ways that you can improve your voice.
You can find this video at the top of this post!