Continuing the theme of the last couple of posts, let me whine about another way authors can lose plenty of money quick: audiobooks! In July Draft2Digital announced they were partnering with Findaway Voices, a service to create audiobooks. It said there was no fee to join or anything as long as you were a Draft2Digital member, so I figured I'd go check it out.
I went through and submitted A Hero's Journey as I didn't think one of the gender swap books would be appropriate. After a few days later I get an email that they have some recommendations for narrators. It gave me a list of five or so ranging from $75/completed hour to $250/completed hour. I have no idea how many hours my book would take, but I think most audiobooks are a few hours.
So no I didn't go through with it. I mean it'd probably be like $300 minimum and you think I'm going to get that $300 back? Hell no. While it might be neat to hear someone other than Amazon's Text-to-Speech reading my book, I don't have the money to waste on it.
Amazon's ACX lets you exchange royalties instead of paying a set fee. Though I think that would just be a waste of the narrator's time and money as much as mine.
There are just so many ways for authors to waste money that might sound like good ideas but really aren't. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice (or more), shame on me.
2 comments:
I know some Indies are selling audiobooks, and it seems they're the ones who do this full time. I've thought about it too. The thing that scared me off so far is managing it all. Plus (and I'm not sure about this) I don't think we have control of the price of the audio book.
At least you're looking for ways to market your work. I never even tried.
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