How important is it to have an audiobook option?

efreysson

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I was asking advice on an ad campaign on Reddit, when someone suggested I instead spend my money on getting an audiobook option, and pointed me towards a website for indie authors. I gave it a look, and it lets you have a robot voice read a manuscript, although you can adjust the gender and tone of the voice, as well as add music.

I hadn't even considered audio, and it all seemed like an interesting idea for a while. Then I checked out the poster's profile, and found that all their previous posts bring up audiobooks, and I started suspecting an ulterior motive.

But the issue remains: WILL having an audio option for my book make a significant difference?
 

Woollybear

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A friend of mine had an audio version for his first book and a bad cover. He said the audio helped with visibility... but there were no sales of the audio version (sales of print and e-book, though). He said he should have put the money into a better cover instead. On his second book, he did not do the audio option. He said he might get around to it but what is driving sales is a good ad campaign and writing in series. My understanding is the next chunk of change he drops will be to improve the cover on his first book.
 

Introversion

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I’ll be interested in the answers.

Personally, I never listen to audiobooks. In the car I can’t devote enough attention, and at home I just don’t wanna wear headphones or subject my family to my books.

But I know people who prefer audio to print, so who knows?
 

LJD

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Audiobooks where a robot is the narrator? IDK. I have, uh, not heard of ppl doing this. (But to be fair, I don't pay much attention.)

Audiobooks are popular, but expensive to produce, so it can be hard to make your money back...which is why I never seriously looked into it.
 

Lakey

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I don’t know anything about marketing, but I do listen to audiobooks, rather a lot of them. And I would never listen to one with a robotic, synthetic voice. I don’t even like to listen to audiobooks read by a person who is not a professional voice actor — I tend to avoid “read by the author” books. Narrating an audiobook is a very particular skill; even the TV and movie actors who are sometimes engaged to do it aren’t always as good at it as the professional audiobook readers who have performed dozens of them.

Long and short, I would think that if you want to capture an actual audiobook market, you’d have to invest in a well-produced audiobook — because audiobook readers have enough quality productions to choose from that they aren’t going to listen to one that isn’t. An auto-produced robot voice ain’t it.

:e2coffee:
 

Cephus

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You don't want a robot voice, but there are tons of reasonably priced human narrators available through ACX that can do an audio version for you. It all depends on your genre as to how successful your book will be in audio. Some genres, they sell like hotcakes. Some they don't move.
 

raelwv

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pointed me towards a website for indie authors. I gave it a look, and it lets you have a robot voice read a manuscript, although you can adjust the gender and tone of the voice, as well as add music.

What's the name of the site? I'd be interested in seeing what finished products sound like. I listen to a lot of audiobooks, but I couldn't imagine a book-length narration that sounded like a Kraftwerk album (and I love Kraftwerk!).