Last month Smashwords announced a partnership with Findaway Voices, a new distribution platform. That brought more – and cheaper – content to the site, making it even harder for publishers to profit, Coker says.Ĭhange may be in the wind, though.

In 2012 they opened the platform broadly to self-publishers and cut royalties by about half. But, generally speaking, if a book is selling poorly as an e-book, “it’s not going to make itself better as an audiobook.”Īs for sales channels, Amazon dominates the market through, its audiobook arm. Of course sales will vary by author, and from one project to the next.

“There’s no guarantee that you’re going to get your money back,” says Mark Coker, founder and CEO of Smashwords, an e-book distributor for self-publishers. (Who can blame them?) More typically, publishers front the expense. Many voice actors eschew deals that require them to work in exchange for a share of future royalties. At that rate, an 80,000-word book would run about 8.5 hours and cost at least $3,400 to produce. Multiply that by the length of time it will take a performer to read your book: about 9,300 words per hour at a steady clip. The cost of creating an audiobook runs about $400 to $500 per “finished hour,” which includes both narration and editing. Still, making a profit is more challenging. New technology makes it easier than ever for them to produce and distribute audiobooks. At a time when the book industry faces intense economic pressure, reports of an exploding audiobook market leave independent authors and publishers wanting a piece of the action.

Acx audio books