Everyone has their preference. One format, or maybe more. You can pick and chose. Fantastic.
As a reader this is the time of limitless opportunity to consume your books. The pandemic has increased reading habits over the whole world. More and more people are turning to books as a thankful release from the challenges that face us all at this moment in time.
Books are a release. A compensation. A chance to run way from your day-to-day life. And with all the options there are today, there will be at least one that suits you.
As an author this means that we have to make our stories available in all of the different formats and through different media. That’s quite a challenge. As writers, our forte is stories, not necessarily the technical details needed to be able to offer our books in all the required media. We do not have the necessary knowledge to do all of this ourselves. Thankfully we don’t have to. There are many companies, like Amazon, D2D, Smashwords, and many many more, that aid us authors in making this a reality. I can publish ebooks, print on demand books in any format via several channels.
The same applies for Audiobooks.
Now Audiobooks is not something i have tried yet. I’d love to, it just seems so overwhelming.
Not to mention, expensive. I’m and Independent author, an Indie. That means that I publish my own books. The percentages on sales are way higher than with traditional publishing, but so are the costs. They all come down to me.
And believe me, narrating and editing an audio version of one of my books is very expensive.
I understand why. There is a lot of work involved. People’s time costs money, and rightly so. But as an Indie I can’t afford it.
The first book in my Primal Series would wind up as a 9 hour audio book. That would mean many times that as basic material to edit from.
Anyway. It’s expensive.
Now the big characteristic of an Indie author is that we “do it ourselves”.
We write, we take care of the formatting, the editing (outsourced mostly, but we organise), the marketing, the whole lot.
And yes, we can can also do our own Audiobooks.
So what did I do?
I bought a course on do-it-yourself high-quality audiobooks.
I’m fortunate to have a lot of room in my farm house, so I can easily turn one of the rooms into a home audio studio. I can do try outs, tests and see whether this is an option.
To tell you the truth, it’s looking good. it’s exciting too.
If all goes well, I hope te have the first of my books: Primal Nature, available as an Audiobook by the end of this year.
That would be fantastic. Another check on my bucket-list.
So watch this space for more information and a running commentary on how I’m progressing.
In the meantime: here are some more books to tackle your fancy.
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