Audiobooks in Review!

Audiobooks. Most people agree that the market keeps on expanding, so smart authors are doing their best to meet the demand. My book WIND OVER MARSHDALE has been available as an audiobook for quite a few years now. As well, the first part of NEIGHBOURS “New In the Neighbourhood” was also in audio format for a short period. (The original publisher has since taken it down.)

It has been my goal in the past couple of years to get all of my novels in audiobook format. Wishing and doing are two different things, however. Audio production is a long and time-consuming process. Paying a voice actor or sharing the royalties with a production company is expensive. It’s why I took the plunge last year and took a course on doing it myself. I also bought the necessary equipment and plunged into audiobook production with gusto.

Except… my aspirations were not entirely realistic. It took a lot longer than I anticipated to record, edit and format. Then sickness hit (more than once) and I sounded like a smoker… Add to that packing and moving – which included my sound “studio”, which was another break in production. These days my equipment is still in boxes and I haven’t found a suitable place to set it up yet.

So much for producing thirteen fiction books in eighteen months! (My original and totally unrealistic goal!)

BUT… There is light at the end of the tunnel! Apple books recently reached out to romance authors who publish through Drafdt2digital* with an offer to produce their work using digital narration technology that sounds surprisingly human. Of course, a human would be preferable, but this was an offer I couldn’t decline. At the time of this writing, NINE titles are in their review process! That is a huge boost! (Eleven are shown here, but two have already been taken off the list because they are in Amazon’s exclusive kdp program and can’t be republished in any format until April.)

Of course, there is no guarantee that any will be accepted due to various quality control issues. As well, the audiobooks produced will only be available to Apple books, so if I want to sell them to a wider base, I would still have to produce them using other means. Still, having them available as audiobooks in any format is a giant step forward and gives me hope that I can and will get them out there in a timely manner. (At my other rate it might have been a decade before I got them all finished!)

I am still working on LONE WOLF myself, which seems doable since it is a short novella. (I originally started with MY MOTHER THE MAN-EATER, which is my longest novel… probably not a wise choice!) I hope to have LONE WOLF produced and ready to release this summer.

So that’s it for my audiobook update. I am excitedly waiting for the results and will let you know the moment I find out!

 

*Draft2digital is a platform that publishes indie author work across a broad spectrum. (In other words, including but not exclusive to Amazon.)