From writer to narrator—DIY your audiobook in 6 steps, a comprehensive guide.
Find out what you need from equipment to recording to uploading the files, with video!
Audiobooks are booming while the barriers to entry are falling. If you want to create an audio version of your book, there’s never been a better time to try. If I could do it—and I did—you absolutely can.
This guide will, I hope, make the process less intimidating. In addition to written instructions you can return to, I’ve included short videos and images to bring this process to life in your imagination and, hopefully, into your listener’s ears. Because before you can do a thing, you have to be able to dream it first.
This is based on what I learned recording and distributing the audio edition of my memoir, Blissful Thinking: A Memoir of Overcoming the Wellness Revolution (Motina Books). I wanted to record this title, both for its unfamiliar words (like S.N. Goenka, nomyoho renge kyo, maha kumbh mela) and because I work on-air in live television and have had voice training. Though I wouldn’t hire me to read a novel—huge respect to voiceover artists (VOAs)! Hiring a narrator is a separate process, and if I make an audio version of Florida Girls (coming out May 28), I’ll write about outsourcing that project.
Whether you narrate, you can still be your own audiobook publisher. The labor and materials you’ll need are included below, but you’ll want to Google for current pricing. I’ve used searchable terms and included a few links.
READ ON!
You must own the rights
This is not a step but a precursor. Check your contact. Number one on your list—establish whether you own the rights to the audio version of your book. Audio deals are often negotiated separately, but not always. If you’re not working with an agent, the clause could be tucked in your book contract. Review the language and/or ask to hold on to audio rights if you even think you want to do a audiobook.
Unless your publisher plans to cover the costs of your audiobook production (ask!), there’s no reason to relinquish these rights. Even if you don’t have immediate plans to produce an audiobook, you might want to hold on to those rights. Ask to keep them.
For one thing, if you don’t own the rights to your book but do want to narrate your story, you might not be chosen to read your book. Even if it’s a memoir. And unless your publisher tells you they’re going to make an audiobook out of your title, they don’t have to. So if you did go ahead and make an audiobook, you’d still owe them royalties.
My feeling is, if I’m the creator, the talent, and the sound engineer, why give away the profits just so someone else can upload the files?
The steps
This is the general order I followed, after making sure I had the rights to my book’s audio version. If possible, give yourself a two-month ramp to record. You or your VOA can narrate the title over a few days, but you’ll still need get those files mastered (which means fitting into the schedule of your sound engineer, possibly in addition to your VOA, as well as time to re-record any mistakes). Then the files must be uploaded to whichever platform/s you choose, which also will take some time to populate).
Now you’re ready.
1. Get equipment!
I got a Rode A1 mic with a stand and equalizer on Amazon. (I also got a boom arm but that was a waste of time & money because I found the stand easier to place in the same spot every time to create consistent sound.)
Over the ear headphones (cans, as they say in the biz) from Sony are my favorite, not the priciest option. But the do bring the highest importance factor, comfort!
Once I had the mic & cans hooked up, I recorded the files using the free download of Twisted Wave Lite. This software is very user friendly, and allowed me to create the mono sound & .wav files my producer specified was needed. Relative to other sound programs I’ve worked with, this software very easy to use relative to other options.
2. Find a producer
I knew from past voiceover work that mastering the sound was a time-intensive labor best outsourced. I wanted files I could upload without error, which meant producing to ACX requirements, the industry standard bearer. (I used a company called Reaping Audio at the suggestion of a voice actor friend and they were terrific! Highly recommend. Example that made me glad I’d made this decision, I found a small error and decided to re-record the 2-second clip. ACX rejected my upload. When I sent the file back to Reaping Audio, they did their magic and it uploaded straight away.)
More recently I learned about an AI program, Hindenburg, that supposedly can do the mastering to ACX standards (more on that below). Since this was the greatest expense, it could be a real money saver. That said, I haven’t tried it yet. (If you do, I would love to hear about your experience. Please leave a comment!)
3. Record your book
Soundproof your space. I had the fortune of having egg crate batting (easy enough to make by attaching it to an old screen door or even taping to your wall) that fit perfectly in my tiny office window and against the door behind me. To create ‘walls,’ I used curtain rods and hung curtains and a lightweight fleece blanket overhead. I have an area rug below me on the floor. If you have a walk in closet, I’m jealous. But also, this can be a great space to record if you can move your setup in there.
One thing I didn’t have to worry about was getting this wrong. Reaping Audio gave my files a quality pass to ensure the final product not only met the audio quality standards of various platforms, but that I hadn’t cut off or repeated or flubbed my words when recording. After I turned the files over to them, it took about a month to get in their schedule and do a few back and forths, or pickup packets (errors to be re-recorded are called pickups).
4. Choose your distribution method
You have two choices — wide or ACX exclusive.
If you go exclusive with ACX (Amazon’s platform), you get a better royalty rate as well as access to certain promotional offerings. I chose wide because I wanted to be sure my book would be available in libraries and I knew my publisher was distributing the ebook as a KDP exclusive. Also, though they make it seem like there’s a big financial incentive to go exclusive, there really wasn’t when I did the math. The promotions are another matter however, and I’ll probably go this route for my next book (which I’ll be distributing widely in ebook and print editions).
To go wide, there are a few platforms you can work with to distribute your audiobook. You can also sell your book directly from your own website using a Stripe or Shopify. I chose Findaway Voices, though since their strange deal with Spotify I might reconsider for my next book. One thing I like is that they make it easy to get redemption codes for press/advance readers.
5. Set up the back end: Findaway
Here’s where the process got a little bit awful, but it didn’t last forever!
ACX and Findaway have slightly different backends, but you need the same information for both. Here I detail my experience with Findaway, because I found it much more difficult than working with Amazon though the steps are similar. If you’ve ever published a book, it’s very much like the UX difference between IngramSpark and KDP.
Uploading
After selecting self-narration, you’ll be asked to enter a cover image for your book, the description and all other relevant metadata like the ISBN (which I recommend buying) and BISAC codes. My top hack here is using Publisher Rocket to find relevant keywords. You can also reverse search BISAC codes based off your comp titles.
When writing your book’s descriptions, study your genre and don’t forget the SEO there. Formatting this text so it looks good is a whole other hill to climb. I thought mine was good until writing this, when I noticed it looks like crud on the Barnes & Noble page. Here’s a cheatsheet I clearly need to review…
Another thing to know, Amazon will use the first description uploaded. Since I’m not the publisher of my memoir, I don’t have access to the backend. So, though I revised the book description, on Amazon the audiobook has the same description as the print and ebook editions.
Challenge 1:
After inputting my info and verifying my identity using Stripe (which is how you’ll eventually be paid), I was unable to upload any audio.
Customer service took a few days, but they got back to me with a URL to a page I needed to fill out for more identity verification. Odd, but okay? Though they said this page was accessible “in the Financials section” of my account, I still can’t find that page without using the link in their email. Filling it out solved the problem and I was able to upload my audio.
Next, uploading the audio.
Uploading the files was intimidating and it MATTERS. My production company didn’t use my chapter titles when they named the files and said I should be able to upload my TOC to autopopulate but that didn’t work for me. I had to cut and paste the titles. Not fun, but it had the unexpected benefit of revealing two errors in my chapter title narration.
Challenge 2:
The errors I found when uploading necessitated another pickup packet. These were those two seconds of audio mentioned above that I tried and failed to fix without going back to the producers. Reaping Audio fixed them and they were accepted immediately.
Challenge 3:
The site is clear — the order of upload is the order your work will be heard. After uploading and renaming the files, I hit submit, only to come to another page where the files were suddenly not in the same order as I’d uploaded them, which you can see in the screenshot below where the ending credits are immediate after Chapter 1, etc.
Another email to support.
I don’t know what the issue was here, but after, in tech support’s words, “pushing out a fix,” my files appeared in the correct order. Huzzah!
6. Pricing your book
Next it was on to pricing. I found this confusing, so I’ll try and break it down.
After I’d uploaded all the corrected files, I wanted to price my book according to industry standards, $26.99. Even at that price I was going to have to sell a lot of books to cover these costs, but the site auto-generated a price of $12.55.
Ouch, really? I did a search on pricing and found:
under 1 hour: under $7
1–3 hours: $7 — $10
3–5 hours: $10 — $20
5–10 hours: $15 — $25
10–20 hours: $20 — $30
over 20 hours: $25–35
Based on this and my book’s 7 1/2 hour recording time, I went with $19.99, hoping to recoup my cash outlay for production and expenses. I’ve since changed the pricing to… you guessed it—$12.55. If I’ve learned anything from becoming my own architect in this process it’s that volume matters more, and that there are certain price points that give way to greater volume.
The other confusing part is the library pricing. I’m not 100 percent clear the best practice, so I’m starting with a suggestion I found online (2x the book’s regular price as opposed to charging an ongoing royalty fee) and will see how that goes.
I think that strategy worked because it has been purchased by libraries.
Challenge 4:
The on-sale date. I tried to set 9/26/23 as the sale date for my audiobook, but the sites are oddly vague about what date the title will actually appear.
Amazon has language that suggests you can set the date, but it turns out that is ONLY if you’re exclusive. And even then, I’ve learned, only sometimes.
In the meantime, one reason I felt driven to write this is because it's mind-bogglingly difficult to find comprehensive how-tos on audiobook creation. But the available tools keep lowering the barriers to entry. Also, selfishly, I want these steps captured so next time, I’ll have a comprehensive guide to the nitty-gritty details so it’s not like getting a master’s just to put the pieces together. Though I fully anticipate changes will necessitate updates. Definitely let us know in the comments if you find something doesn’t work or you find another workaround or resource.
In the pipeline..
A Canva tutorial
DIY publishing
BookFunnel
Now it’s your turn…
Are you more or less interested in recording your audiobook?
Are you more or less interested in publishing your audiobook?
What else do you want to know about this process?
It seems like a memoir should be read by the person who wrote it --for sure! I did try to record an essay I wrote one time and quickly gave up. It's so much more challenging than you think it is... thanks for all this great info that I'm sure someone will be able to put to good use!