AudioBooks. Are They Worth Making?

Written by Bo Bennett on 21 May 2011. Posted in Author Blog

Since age 10, I have been a devourer of books -- mostly in audio format. I like to read, but I love to listen. There is something about the spoken word that works better with my style of learning. And I am not alone. We all have different learning styles, and we all differ in how we like to spend our downtime. Some of us read, some of us watch, and some of us listen. So the question is, as an author or publisher, is it worth your time and money to convert your books into audiobooks?

To answer this question, let's start by asking another question. In absence of having an audiobook available, how much potential revenue from sales are you missing? Will readers just buy the ebook or printed version of your book instead? Or will they buy the audiobook in the same genre of another author? There is no quick answer to this -- it depends on many factors. Who is the target audience for your book? Are they the kind of people who generally prefer the spoken word to the written word? Will your target audience buy your book no matter in what format you make it available?

Another point to consider. Does your book even make sense in audio format? If your book is mostly a picture book, a technical book with many charts and graphs, or a book where the visual component is key? If so, you can probably stop this thought process right here. But if your book falls in the "an audiobook version would be really cool" category, read on.

Audiobooks -- Exploring the Possibilities

I buy audiobooks all the time from iTunes and Audible.com. One thing I have noticed is that the selection is a mere fraction of the ebook/printed book selection on sites like Amazon. Why is this? Two main reasons:

Audiobook production is very costly. Not everyone has an "audiobook reader voice". This means, actors/professional readers need to be hired to create a professional product that will meet the standards of retailers like Audible.com and iTunes. A good price to pay for production is $100/hr, which after including the editing and final production, could easily result in several thousand dollars for just a 50,000 word, mid-size book.
The Major retailers of Audiobooks take a very hefty share of the revenue. I don't think I am liberty to disclose the terms of the retailers, but I can say that the author should expect no more than about 15% of the retail price. Why is this so different from the generous royalties offered when selling their ebooks? I was told it had to do with the marketing. Go figure.

So let's do some math here:

You have a 50,000 word book that would cost say $3000 to make an acceptable production -- by the major retailer's standards. You sell this book for $14.95 (average price). How many audiobooks do you need to sell to break even?

15% of $15 is $2.25 per audiobook. Divide that by your initial investment of $3000. You will need to sell roughly 1333 audiobooks to break even. For someone like Tom Clancy, that's not a problem, but for an author like Bo Bennett, that is what we call a "poor investment".

The Solution

I know a $3000+ investment is too much to ask for the majority of authors. Plus, the investment/payback ratio is not very good. But yet audiobooks are wonderful, and only becoming more popular as more and more people own personal MP3 players. In our modern world of long commutes, long workouts at the gym, and "plugged in" kids and parents, the audiobook is a great way to get information and entertainment. So can you have an audiobook without investing your life savings? Yes you can! (Hey, that would make a good campaign slogan!)

Since the 80's computer-voice technology has been improving by sounding more and more human. I knew that voices today sounded pretty good, but I had no idea how far they had come until I researched the current technologies available. I was both amazed, and inspired! Why not use this technique for creating audiobooks? This is not a revolutionary idea -- Amazon is doing something similar for select books on their Kindle (but with a really bad voice). So I picked the company who produced the best voices (in my humble opinion) and licensed these voices to convert our ebooks to audiobooks. The best part: we can do this just $119 per book.

While I don't think a computer-generated voice can replace a talented actor anytime soon, it is an ideal solution for the vast majority of authors who do want their books available in audio and can afford a $119 investment.

So far, I have converted my books and listed to over 10 hours of them. I am blown away. I forget that I am not listening to a human. Just like audiobooks read by actors, I find myself getting immersed in the book rather than consciously thinking that a non-human is doing the reading.

I am looking forward to giving our clients the opportunity to have their books in audio format. For more details on this, see http://support.ebookit.com/members/ebookit/adminpages/audiobooks .