In Today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* Audiobook Narration: A Follow-Up
Quote of the Day
“Rejection is just a landing pad for your next takeoff.” Dame Helen Mirren
Audiobook Narration: A Follow-Up
Writer Bob B. left a great comment on Part 3 of the Audiobook Narration series of guest posts:
“If Harvey or anyone else is able to achieve a positive income flow from audio books, it would be a great guest post to read and learn from. I’m all for it if it can be proven to work.”
Bob makes a great point, and of course I agree with him in principle.
(This is neither here nor there, but as I was writing this, my wife reminded me that a little over a decade ago a lot of folks were saying the same thing regarding the then-budding ebook publishing format.)
Now Here’s My Follow-Up
in which I’m gonna tell you a few things I’m betting you already know.
1. Very seldom does any “proven” format work for even one writer, much less across the board for all writers. Whether a format will work for you depends on too many factors.
For sake of argument, let’s say
- you’ve written a great story (of any length),
- you’ve done all the necessary “presentation” things (spell check, formatting, an excellent cover, your first reader catching any glitches, etc.), and
- you’ve done the necessary but arduous tasks: submitting to your agent or publisher if you go that route, or if you’re truly independent, uploading to ebook publication and/or uploading to paper publication and/or narrating an audiobook yourself or hiring-out the narration.
Even if all of the above are givens (as they are in my case), for you to realize a profit on your investment(s) of time and/or money, you still have to depend on factors that you can’t know in advance.
Now, if you were smart enough (I wasn’t) to build a list of dedicated readers to whom you can market your book directly upon its release in whatever format, that will help.
But even then, the actual number of sales—and therefore whether you will profit from your investment and how much—depends on a number of other variables that you simply can’t control or know in advance:
Those include everything from
- what’s going on in each potential reader’s life at the moment, to
- what genre(s) you write in, to
- what mood the reader’s in as he’s looking for a book to buy and read (or listen to), to
- what mood the reader’s in while he’s reading, and
- any number of hundreds of other variables.
So despite what anyone writes in any guest post, there are no guarantees.
2. The best any writer can do in a guest post is open up possibilities for other writers. With luck, the post will serve as a catalyst for those writers’ own thought process.
That’s what Jason McGinty did in his 3-part guest post.
Plus in his “Now for my sales pitch” segment, he literally eliminated any risk from the equation (if you go with him as your narrator):
- You can actually hire Jason for only a royalty split. That means if the book sells, both you and he will profit per the terms of the royalty split. No money up front for his actual efforts.
- And if the book doesn’t sell, neither you nor he profit. In my mind, this begs a question:
How can he (or anyone else) believe in your work more strongly than you do?
Of course, that’s a topic for another post. And I probably won’t address it because I’ve done so many times in the past. But the short answer is “Because he’s a reader first, and (shrug) he likes what he likes.”
Anyway, nothing could be more honest and open and risk-free than an open-ended royalty share. Based on that alone, I personally recommend taking a chance on Jason if you want to go with publishing your work to audiobooks (subject to his stipulations, which he also spelled out).
3. Still, only the writer can decide whether to take the risk with ANY publishing endeavor in ANY format (paper, ebook, film, stage play, etc.).
And even whether to take the risk depends on a lot of factors. Jason pointed out one of those factors: If you go with a per-hour payment, he asks only that you pay what you believe your own work is worth.
Off the top of my head, other factors include more practical matters:
- How personally averse are you to taking chances (risk)?
- How much money can you comfortably invest in your book(s)?
- How much time can you take away from writing (and other interests, family, etc.) to invest in emailing back and forth with the narrator, setting up a free account in your name at an audiobook platform, listening to the finished product and requiring adjustments, etc.?
I’m not being flippant here. Those factors are different for everyone.
4. But as is the case with pretty much everything, no matter which publishing formats the writer decides to risk trying, there’s a bottom line:
Anytime you publish a story or novel to audiobook format (or paper, ebook, film, stage play, etc.) you’re only opening up another possible income stream.
So the possibility that your work will sell is the best outcome. Again, there are no guarantees. It might work out and it might not.
And remember, that bottom line is completely independent of any other writer’s experience and success or failure with the same format.
The unfortunate truth is—and I raise my hand to testify (loudly)—in each publishing format “lightning strikes” for some and not for others. That’s just the way it is, even among those who’ve done everything right per the first bulleted list above.
But that’s precisely why it’s so wonderful that whether to take the risk is left solely up to the individual writer.
Earlier I said there are no guarantees, but that isn’t entirely accurate:
- If the writer assumes the risk of publishing his work to a particular format, he’s created at least the possibility that he will make a profit on his investment.
- However, if he chooses not to take that risk, he’s erased that possibility and created his own guarantee that he will have zero sales in that particular format.
Or more crudely put, if you wanna win the lottery, y’gotta buy a ticket.
Just food for thought, submitted for your leisurely perusal.
A Follow-Up to the Follow-Up
Of course, I don’t have a horse in the race regarding anyone’s writing but my own. Just like all of you, I gather information, then make the best decision I can for myself and my own fiction in the moment.
Incoming royalties tell me that writer and editor Frank Theodat’s anthology The Boys Book of Western Stories (which contains one of my short stories and is available in three formats) is selling relatively well.
Now, maybe the royalties come primarily from the paper edition or the ebook edition or the audio edition, but probably across all formats.
As far as future narration of my own stuff goes, I’ll definitely have Jason McGinty narrate at least the first novel in the 22-volume Wes Crowley saga. (He likes that saga.)
Because I personally never built an email list of dedicated followers, I’ll pay him with a combination of a 51%-49% royalty split (there’s my ego poking up) plus a per-hour fee that he and I will negotiate.
Then, if there’s any movement (sales) at all, I might take a leap and have him narrate more of that 22-volume saga.
But that’s just me. You do you. And whatever you decide, good luck.
Of Interest
16 Writing Guidelines Every Author Needs in the Age of AI Good advice with or without AI.