Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3
Listen carefully. The future is aural. Simon Whaley hears what two authors have to say about audiobooks.
As writers, it’s easy to think of our market as the printed word. However, the audiobook market has been in existence since 1932, and USA sales in this format have risen by 37.1% since 2017. Here in the UK, audiobook sales in 2017 rose by 22%. The spoken word market is becoming one we ignore at our peril. So how can we tap into this expanding business market?
Stella Riley (http://stellarileybooks.co.uk) is an independent historical fiction and romance author who found herself exploring the audiobook market at the request of her readers.
‘Loyal readers and regular reviewers were the ones who originally suggested I consider going into audio,’ she explains. ‘The fact that they suggested it because they wanted to hear my books performed was what persuaded me to take the idea seriously. I began by investigating how the ACX system worked.’
ACX is an Amazon company designed to bring rights holders, such as independent authors, together with narrators, engineers and other specialists, in order to produce an audiobook.
Although Stella was approached by her readers to produce audiobooks, bestselling ghostwriter turned contemporary novelist Roz Morris (https://rozmorris.wordpress.com) was approached directly by Amazon, just as they were establishing their UK self-publishing platform.
‘They spotted my debut novel, My Memories of a Future Life, she recalls, ‘and asked if I’d like to make it into an audiobook – with a stipend to cover production costs.’