Heather Hart - Book marketing success 03 - how to publish and market audiobooks

It feels amazing to publish a book. You never forget the feeling of holding your first print copy in your hands. Your idea was finally a reality! However, authors can also publish their books in many formats including print, electronic and audio.

Create an Audio Book to Diversify Your Income

Have you thought about creating an audio book version of your current book (s)? Some people prefer listening to audiobooks rather than reading them. Therefore, you may be missing out on additional profits from your book by not offering an audio version.

We recently asked our blog followers during an audiobook giveaway to share if they listen to audiobooks and why. Here are some of their answers:

1. I love audio books. I listen to them at work and I want to listen to ones that have a positive message.

My daughter in law and grandchildren listen to audiobooks all the time. I listen when we are on a road trip and like a smooth narrator with tonal inflections that relate to the story.

I occasionally listen to audiobooks when I am on the exercise bike. Mostly I choose by topic.

I like to listen to audiobooks as I drive because I drive a lot so it helps pass the time. :)

I have loved audiobooks for 25 years!! My kids grew up listening to them with me in the car on long trips. They still do, even as adults!

I love listening to audio books, mostly when Im walking on the treadmill, in the car, or cleaning the house/doing laundry.

I like both fiction and non-fiction, but Im picky when it comes to narrators. I like those who can do a male or female voice without sounding too ridiculous.

I listen to audio books mostly when traveling in my car long distances like 4 or 6 hour drives. It helps to make the trip seem shorter.

I love audio bookswe listen to them as we are traveling.

I do listen to audiobooks every now and then. Mostly, I like listening to them when Im doing stuff around the house or driving.

I love listening to a story, its so relaxing!

And the comments went on. However, do you notice a theme? Most people listen to audiobooks while traveling, commuting, doing other tasks, exer cising, etc. The main point we wanted to make is that people do listen to and buy audiobooks.

We have published our books in audiobook format in two different ways and will share both of those options with you.

1. We have recorded the audiobook ourselves and then sold it from our website.

We have published audiobooks using Amazons Audiobook Creation Exchange program or ACX.

However, when we decided to also publish audiobooks using ACX, we saw a huge increase in our overall income.

Our first audiobook went live on Audible on December 31, 2012. And w ithin six weeks, we had already sold over 100 audiobooks with very little marketing effort on our part.

Here are our sales for February and March:

* February 2013: 198 sales, $403.78 royalties with 9 audiobooks

* March 2013: 310 sales, $575.91 royalties with 12 audiobooks

We went from having one audiobook published in the beginning of December 2013 to having 12 audiobooks earning hundreds of dollars of additional income by the end of March 2013. In this training, we are going to share with you everything we have learned during this process.

ACX is growing fast. They created 10x the number of audiobooks in 2012 as they did in 2011. Now is the time to publish your books as audiobooks. See the full story here:

http://www.mediabistro.com/appnewser/audible-coms-audiobook-exchange-grows-10x-in-second-year_b31674

Heres a tweet that ACX send out on December 28, 2012:

The Five Steps to Publishing Your AudioBook
Step #1 : Decide where to sell your audiobook.

Step # : Decide who will record your audiobook.

Step # : Prepare for production. If recording it yourself, gather your equipment and everything you need to get started. If hiring a narrator, choose your narrator and submit a contract.

Step # : Record the audiobook. Finish recording it yourself or if hiring a narrator, approve the final audiobook files.

Step #5 : Start selling your audiobook!
Lets go through each of the steps in more detail