At the time of this book’s original publication in 2019, every year for the past six years, audiobook sales have been on an upward trajectory. They continue to be a bright spot in publishing, even as other areas slow down. The 2017 sales survey results released by the Audio Publishers Association, or APA, of which you will hear more later in the book, showed a 22.7 percent increase in audiobook revenue over the previous year, with an increase of 21.5 percent in units sold.
Audiobooks have made such an impact in their visibility that The British Library in London had an exhibit titled “Listen: 140 Years of Recorded Sound” that ran from October 6, 2017, through May 13, 2018. It was not about the spoken word alone, but that was a part of it.
So here you are, at the cusp of rising sales and increased publicity for the very thing you were thinking would be a smart addition to your business. Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity, according to some interpretations of the words of the ancient Roman Seneca. Echoing those thoughts centuries later, Branch Rickey has been oft quoted as saying, “Luck is the residue of hard work and design.” Being in the right place at the right time is a more prosaic way of saying something similar. Those words apply to you, today.
The major publishing houses have been including audiobooks in their publishing programs for decades. The market has grown from the days of fighting for acceptance and shelf space in bookstores in the 1980s to being an economic bright spot in the industry today. As sales and awareness of audiobooks grow, many of the non-major (by which I mean revenue, not quality of books) traditional publishers (by which I mean publishers who read and edit and publish books in the old-fashioned way, typically by offering an advance against a royalty or, if no advance, a royalty from dollar one, i.e. from the first revenue received) have begun either producing audiobooks or licensing the audio rights they hold to third parties. The difference between these two choices is significant, but both can bring revenue and value to the publisher’s catalog. Producing audiobooks for sale still carries many of the same risks as publishing books because of the attendant costs of production, whereas licensing audio rights to third parties brings in revenue without any corresponding hard costs.
If you work within a traditional publishing house, it is time to consider audio rights as a valuable subsidiary right. Subsidiary rights are explained in detail in Chapter 4. For now, know that the phrase means rights other than the primary rights which, in this case, are rights that derive from the initial book contract.
If you are selling audio rights, your buyer will typically, but not always, be an independent audio publisher. This is primarily because the major publishers want to exploit audio rights to likely bestsellers or near bestsellers, and they have a great many of those types of books in their own stable. If the rights you are offering are connected to something which has exceptional marketability, such as a tie-in to a major motion picture, you may be able to strike a deal with one of the majors.
I have mixed feelings about publishers who do not produce audiobooks but ask for audio rights in their publishing agreements in order to resell them to audiobook publishers such as Blackstone Audio, Inc. and Tantor Media. Yes, being able to sell off those rights helps to subsidize the publishing of books and also can be seen as value added by making the author’s books available in another format, but it also may give more revenue to the book publisher than is warranted. If you are a publisher doing this, I suggest you offer your authors a 60⁄40 split, rather than a standard split of 50⁄50, to recognize that the audiobook deal is thanks to your efforts and connections, but also to recognize that this type of sale may take relatively little effort on your part, especially if you have begun licensing your company’s audio rights regularly to one or more audio publishers.
Whether you plan to be hands-on in producing and directing, or to hire one of the many freelance audiobook producers and directors to create the audiobooks for you, or you hire an in-house team, or you simply acquire audio rights when acquiring print rights and, in turn, sell those rights to audiobook publishing houses, audio rights are assets that demand attention. You can boost your bottom line and add the new format to your library of titles, or dispense with that and license the rights to third parties. As with all the different aspects of your publishing program, if you find the right audience, you can add ka-ching to your bottom line.
The burgeoning of digital recording and distribution, and the consequent diminution in cost of production have allowed authors to transition to self-publishers without the stigma that self-publishing carried in past years. The companies that catered to self-published authors used to be called vanity presses—a pejorative term, at least in the eyes of those in the publishing business. These companies offered authors the ability to see their books in print, but with the catch that it was the author who paid for that metamorphosis from manuscript to bound book, unlike with traditional publishers. Often vanity presses were for works that were not well written, not well edited, and would not have been produced without the services of the vanity press. At other times, they were used for books the authors intended for a specific and limited audience, such as family members. In the past, as today, there were good books that never found a home with a legitimate publisher, just as there are countless talented musicians who never find a record label willing to produce and sell their music. Vanity presses allowed these authors to at least have copies of their books printed.1 By and large, however, to be self-published was formerly a means of last resort.
That is no longer the case.
A number of authors are turning to self-publishing for various reasons including having the revenue from book sales come directly to them, being able to choose the cover, the timing of publication, and the formats—e-book, hardcover, paperback, audiobook, enhanced e-book. There are also many writers who choose to self-publish because they tried their luck with agents or traditional publishers without the desired results. Some of you who have picked up this guide have already been published by a third-party publisher and now are thinking of doing it yourself. Some of you have already published books on your own and want to branch into audiobook publishing. Some of you have already published or produced audiobooks and want to get better at it and do more of it. No matter the reason you are considering publishing an audiobook, your goal should be to make it a good audiobook. If you don’t want that, why do it at all?
And that’s why this book exists: to serve as your guide to publishing a good audiobook. After all, your reputation and your sales depend on the quality of your work.
Now let’s get you started.