Should You Turn Your Book into an Audiobook?
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Audiobooks are the fastest-growing segment of the publishing industry with a current global market value of over three billion dollars and a forecasted growth rate of 24.4 percent, which means it could reach an estimated $15 billion by 2027.
While audiobooks can be a viable medium for both fiction and nonfiction alike, not every book is well suited to the format. So, how do you know if your book will benefit from an audiobook adaptation?
Here are 3 important factors to help you decide if you should turn your book into an audiobook:
1. Your Book's Contents
The first question you need to answer: is the content of my book suited to the audio format?
Most books have a single focus on text, but there are some that also intertwine (or are entirely dependent on) the accompanying visuals. For instance, if you’re writing a dense academic book with many graphs and tables to support your argument, it can be difficult to communicate the same information in an audiobook without just reciting everything in a dry and uninteresting way. In some cases, to remedy this issue, you can refer people to your website to download a PDF with the necessary visuals.
Sometimes that still isn’t enough for image-dependent books like cookbooks and photography books that simply don’t effectively translate into a listening experience. However, that’s not always the case for illustration-dominant children’s books with more than a few words per page. Parents and young readers can use an audiobook as a fun read-along tool.
If your book experiments with formatting and depends on that formatting for the reader to draw meaning from your story, it will likely be too jarring to turn into an audiobook. For instance, Mark Danielewski’s novel House of Leaves uses spacing and unique text orientation to drive the reading experience, which means it loses or diminishes its meaning when the visual is replicated in audio. This is an extreme example of format experimentation — but no matter the degree of story-dependent formatting, it’s important to recognize what can and can’t be adapted for audio.
In general, most books focus on the text alone and make just as much sense when converted into an audiobook, while any visuals are merely auxiliary pieces.
2. Your Audience's Needs
Now that you know whether your book is well suited to be converted into an audiobook, it’s important to consider the expectations and possibilities of your potential audience.
Recent demographic data about the usage of audiobooks indicates that “57% of frequent audiobook listeners are under the age of 45” with the most likely group of frequent listeners being aged 18–29, tech-savvy, and tending to be university graduates with a high income. With some quick research on recents trends of audiobook consumption and a thorough understanding of your potential audience, you can better determine the probability of success with your audiobook.
One notable expectation from listeners of nonfiction is that the author is, in the majority of cases, also the narrator. Remember, your voice is your brand — it adds authority, conviction, and meaning to the content. A great example of this is the audiobook memoir. Hearing the voice of the subject adds an entirely new dimension to the book. There is no better way to convey the subtleties and emotion of the story than with the natural voice and timbre of the author themself. It creates a closeness with the listener that just isn’t possible with any other narrator and (especially) in text alone.
Not only can an audiobook satisfy your current audience but it can increase your potential audience when you add a new platform. An audiobook is a new touchpoint of discovery that offers better visibility in a much less saturated market relative to physical books and ebooks. There are millions of books on Amazon compared to the hundreds of thousands on Audible. It can introduce you to readers who may not have come across your book(s) otherwise, and because of that you can benefit from an increase in the sale of your physical and ebooks as they discover you as an author.
An audiobook can also open you up to non-readers who would have never sought you out because they either have difficulty reading a physical or ebook (for example: those with visual impairments or dyslexia) or they simply prefer to listen.
3. Your Publishing Goals
When you set out to publish your manuscript, you likely have certain goals for your book and a plan to achieve them. Where does an audiobook fit into your grand plan? There’s no universal answer that applies to every author.
Producing an audiobook takes time, focus, and money. While an audiobook provides a new revenue stream and enhances your visibility and marketability, it may pull attention and funds away from your text-based book promotional efforts. Those are valuable resources you could use to further market your book, purchase the services of a public relations expert, or even polish your text with another round of editing. We at FriesenPress often see authors producing audiobooks as part of their ‘second phase’ of book marketing, 6-8 months after the launch of their print and digital versions. Not only does this spread the production cost over a longer period, but it also creates a newsworthiness and buzz that renews reader interest in the book.
An additional prerequisite to your book being “audiobook ready” is to ensure that it is “publishing ready.” If you have a fantasy epic of 200,000 words, that’s a considerable amount of time and money for a team of professionals to produce a polished audiobook experience. Therefore you should always consider the importance of first professionally editing — and possibly condensing — that 200,000 words to ensure your budget maximizes the potential of your text before pursuing audio.
Despite such a length, you can certainly still make a riveting listening experience, but a longer book will have a higher cost to produce. Also, consider that a longer-than-average audiobook can sometimes be a more difficult sell to listeners.
The good news is that most books are at a comfortable word count that will allow you to benefit from the audio platform’s less saturated market not only with its new potential audience, but with an increase to the credibility of your author brand. While audiobooks have grown rapidly in recent years, there is still a lower proportion of self-published titles in audiobooks as compared to physical books and ebooks. Ebooks in particular can be effortlessly published by anyone at any level of quality and, as a result, have over-saturated the market and reduced the prestige of simply having one. This has not happened with audiobooks. Instead of being lumped in with a dense forest of amateur titles, you’re much more likely to be seen side-by-side with accomplished authors of classics and bestsellers.
If you have a place for an audiobook in your strategic marketing plan, it can be an effective demonstration of your professionalism to have a full suite of options for readers to consume your book.
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The rapid increase in audiobook popularity brings with it a meaningful question to authors about whether they should publish one and if an audiobook is actually right for them.
If your book is presented in a way where it won’t change the meaning of your writing when it’s read aloud, your audience demands it, and it fits nicely into your strategic publishing plans — the potential benefits of an audiobook are undeniable.
