Spurred on by the COVID-19 crisis of the last two years, which saw most people “sheltering in place” for extended periods, eBooks and audiobooks saw a spike in popularity. This spike is part of an increasing trend for both mediums as they continue to gain on printed books in terms of sales.
According to Josh Howarth in his article on the Exploding Topics website, audiobook sales have seen continuous growth since 2012 with revenue up 14.3% each year and will likely continue through the decade.
He also notes that this is a place of untapped revenue for independent authors, and there are websites (such as Amazon’s ACX) that will package the author’s audio file and list it on Amazon, Audible, and Apple iBooks. There are startup costs involved in creating an environment for recording audio. While most authors already have a PC and headphones, and there are inexpensive (or even free) apps such as Audacity or Garageband that work great for recording vocal tracks, microphones can be expensive, although there are good ones available starting at around $100. Another issue is a decent recording environment that will prevent outside noise and create a dead space to prevent sound from reflecting off surfaces. Author imprints has a good article on how to set up an audiobook recording space. Rob Dircks discusses recording and uploading his files to ACX at length in his blog.
On the ACX website, it notes authors can either submit their own audio file or pay for production costs to have it done. For do-it-yourselfers, royalties are 25% (non-exclusive) or 40% (exclusive). Many authors choose to have professional freelance audiobook narrators do the work to avoid the time and expense of doing it themselves.
Another growing trend in audiobooks is AI narration. According to Kaelyn Barron in her article on AI Narration, NVIDIA’s graphic processing unit (GPU) and latest research has resulted in more natural-sounding speech. Use of this technology in audiobooks could result in less costly production and far more books would be available with narration. Listeners would be able to customize the voice they listen to for an even more user-friendly experience.
So far, the biggest player in audiobooks is Amazon, which has around 200,000 titles on Audible. Jacob Parker in his blog considers it the best, if arguably the most expensive, place to get audiobooks. Other good platforms included Apple iBooks, Google Audiobooks, Kobo Audiobooks, and Librivox. The titles on Librivox are free due to the titles being in the public domain and recorded by volunteers. Another good, and normally free, option is through an app (e.g., Hoopla) connected to a listener’s public library account.