It was hella fun and I’ll talk more about it tomorrow. Today I talked about audiobooks and my dilemma on what to do.
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Good to hear the upbeat in your voice this morning. Couple points. To your comment “How can readers afford the Audible price?” I don’t but recently I have noticed that Amazon is bundling Kindle e book purchases with a very low cost additional copy on Audible. The full narrated audio book. a few authors are, J. Allen, B. Crouch, M. Siemsen and C. Nuttall.
Consider doing the narration. Is it possible that narrating for a period would allow you to recharge from the creative writing process?
Best regards
Richard P.
This audio thinking came suddenly on the scene for me. Perhaps you had mentioned it before and I missed it. I doubt seriously that I would ever buy an Audible audiobook, but I’m more than happy to listen to audiobooks that I get from the library on CD or download from the e-library. I guess books done via Audible would not land up in either of those piles. If indeed there is a market for books at Audible, then it makes good sense to distribute there. I do like your narration and I know many of us started out with that voice doing your books. Still, that doesn’t mean that someone else would not also do a great job. No way to know if there is a market for your books by someone else without trying it out. With what you are doing right now, there is not a huge gamble financially to try. You could probably make as much doing it by yourself, but that would be at a loss of time and energy which could make a lot more writing new books. You would only lose rights to the audio version, right?
I’m quite surprised that there are so many people using Audible, but if they are, then I see no reason for you not to jump on board. You still have the audio with Tanyth to deal with, but you won’t have to worry about all your new stuff. As you said, your main reason not to do it is that part of your brand that does podiobooks and self-publishes. Self-pub is working for print, but trying to do it yourself with audiobooks is just too much work. Stay in the part that gives you energy. That’s what I think.
You said they mentioned Tanyth, is it worth seeing if they’ll go for getting your toe’s wet with just the Tanyth books and re-visit the golden age in 6 months / a year after you see how they do.
I know it probably wouldn’t be a good comparison as the Golden age has a much bigger market share of your works but you will at least get to see what sort of job they do.
You don’t really have the time to do everything. I understand your loyalty to Podiobooks. It really sounds like an entertainment or publishing attorney needs to weigh in and go over the contracts.
KU has Audible books included.
Audible Deal of the Day
Audible members get credits.
Those contribute to their stranglehold.
Nate, don’t sell your abilities short. Your gift for narration is right up there… and most especially in connection with your own works I would pose the question: “Who better to understand what the characters are saying and the proper inflections to give to same?”
At the same time I dare throw a little cold water on the barbeque. You are sometimes prone to (over)examining numbers and levels, as evidenced by your musings during this very podcast which has seen you at times waxing eloquent on the pluses and minuses of self-publishing and so forth. You have come out of a long, ‘dry’ period and are just now getting back into the swing of writing. Don’t start counting your chickesn. If you saddle yourself with arbitrary numbers of books to ‘produce’ in such-and-such a period of time you may end up with an armload of disappointment. You have done quite well up to this point with the books you have written. Despite any misgivings you may have about writing style, your books (and narration) have struck a note with a fairly healthy segment of the reading public. Moving along at a more limited pace while maintaining your own values and the quality level(s) of your writing would be my best advice. And signing away your franchise to some other group for seven years? No matter what pie-in-the-sky they might be promising the idea still makes me shudder. Sorry if all this isn’t what you want to hear.
Nate,
I listen to a lot of audiobooks. Usually in the car using CD books checked out from the library and I agree that having a top narrator makes a huge difference. My favorite narrators are Ron McLarty, George Guidall, and (wait for it) Nathan Lowell. Some authors self narrate and IMHO, should have hired a professional, Bill Bryson comes to mind as an example. You on the other hand are a superb narrator. So as you make your decision, please do consider the time sink that doing your own narration would be, but also consider that another narrator would have very big shoes to fill narrating your books. I don’t think that even Bill Dale would be an improvement as the narrator for your books.
Listening to this one was kind of hard. I don’t think there is any doubt that the best business decision would be to get the books on audible, but I don’t think that would leverage sales from your past customers. I, for one, would not be nearly as much of a fan had I not listened to your narration. I found QS as an ebook and read through FS before finding DS in audio and continuing from there (and then restarting it all in audio). Having that voice with the perfect inflections made ALL the difference for me, as your writing style really lends itself to being spoken. Whenever I read your work I now always hear your voice to go with it.
I’m probably a statistical outlier as I generally dislike audiobooks and have only found 1-2 other narrators that I can stomach, but I’ll be sad that no one else will be able to have the same experience as me.