Audiobooks

Among my unobtainable publishing fantasies is having an audio version of my novel. I have lots of unobtainable fantasies, such as winning the lottery, and dreaming is free, so no harm done.

If you think commissioning a good professional book cover is expensive, just wait 'til you find out about audiobook narrators! Established professionals (and who doesn't want a professional?) charge at least $600.00 PFH ("per finished hour"). Going with an average book length of 60,000 words, the total hours to narrate it would be just short of seven*, which would come out to $4,200 at least!

*Google tells me the average words a narrator speaks per hour is 9,300.

Who are these rich indie authors who can afford something like this? I'm a DIY author out of necessity, which includes book covers and editing...and marketing.

There are alternatives to breaking the bank, of course, but like everything else, you get what you pay for. Fiverr advertises book narrators, but there aren't many and those I sampled weren't up to my standards. One even had far too much reverb on her voice. My AI narrator is actually better than the ones I found.

Voices specializes in narrators for all types of projects, but it appears their pricing matches the going professional rate. Upwork doesn't provide any information unless you create an account, and I'm not interested enough to do so. My assumption is that their narrators' rates are comparable to the industry standard. ACX, the best known, tells you upfront that its packages start at $4,400.

With the right equipment I would just do it myself. But alas, I don't have my own recording studio. I only have free Audacity software and a USB microphone. And imagine all the editing involved every time I screwed up. (I also don't have a soundproof booth.)

Of course, there's AI, and you can do it for free with Google Play, I wouldn't. There are pay sites out there, too, but you have to create an account to hear samples, and call me skeptical; there's no disguising an AI narrator, and I can't think of a bigger turnoff to a reader. Maybe it's due to repetition, but the best AI voice I've found is the one available in Microsoft Word. Her problem is, she can't pronounce my main character's name, so I just can't hire her.

There are authors who've used Kickstarter to try to finance their projects, and out of curiosity I've browsed the book projects there. Sadly, most of them are woefully underfunded; some with zero backers. I think it's a niche venture ~ most of the books are fantasy, some are romance ~ the big two. I doubt that any other genres would be successful. And no offense to the authors, but every project looks really cheesy. 

My financial limitations don't necessarily bother me. I can do most things myself; unfortunately creating an audiobook isn't one of those things. But I know there's a big audiobook market out there, so an author with the means to produce one would be a fool not to.