Listen Up!

I'm creating audiobooks for all my works except Running From Herself. I took a baby step with What We Conceal, then decided, why not go for it?

Let's face it; my books are going nowhere. My first novel, Once In a Blue Moon, was published on September 4, 2016. It sold four copies. Amazon doesn't even track its sales anymore. 

Sales? My sales record is deplorable. If it weren't for free downloads, for which I used both BookBub and FreeBooksy, well, most of my books' "sales" (in other words, giveaways) would be non-existent.

When an author doesn't publish in one of the hot categories, she has no right to be surprised when her books don't sell. I can't be the only writer in this boat. The five most popular genres are romance, mysteries and thrillers, science fiction, fantasy, and self-help. Then there's everything else. (Lookin' at you, literary fiction writers and poets.)

I've tried jettisoning the women's fiction label, with mixed success. For instance, with What We Conceal, KDP would not allow me to change genres, no matter how many times I tried. It wouldn't even let me add genres, even though the standard option is three. I've concluded that it's due to the novel's age; I would contact customer service, but they've never, ever responded to any of my queries. Google tells me changing genres can be done, but Google obviously lies. It's a niggling annoyance, mostly, since changing women's fiction to contemporary fiction isn't going to suddenly spike my sales; nothing will. At least with Running From Herself, I was smart enough to not choose women's fiction to begin with.

But I digress.

The popularity of audiobooks continues to grow, and speaking as a regular person, I can kind of understand it. Looking back on my working days, almost every one of my coworkers had earbuds firmly wedged inside their ear canals. We didn't interact with the public; our only interaction was with our computer screens, so we could make use of available distractions. Personally, I listened to talk radio, but most people chose music, while a very small minority listened to audiobooks. However, I do think that's changing. The most recent stats I could find are:

• 38% of American adults listened to an audiobook in the last year.
• 63% of audiobook listeners subscribe to an audiobook service.
• The top audiobook genres are general fiction at 21%, science fiction/fantasy at 14%, and romance at 11%. (I think this might be a bit outdated.)
• Fastest growing audiobook genres are history/biography/memoir, health and fitness, religious, and romance.  

While I'm glad to see general fiction right up there, that doesn't necessarily make a difference for me personally. I didn't choose to create audiobooks hoping I would sell any of them. It was more a matter of taking advantage of an option I was offered. 

Only three of my books are full-length novels, so I chose $6.99 and $5.99 for the two I converted. That's far less than the going rate for audiobooks, but I'm far less of a success than....everybody.

For my eight novellas, I went with the lowest pricing allowed, $3.99. Honestly, if there'd been a $1.99 option, that's what I would have gone with. 

I chose a mixture of virtual voices, just because. I noted in a previous post that KDP has 14 feminine American voices, and most of them are okay. You get what you pay for, which in my case was $0.00. Someone wrote on the KDP forum:

"...you get an AI generated voice from text that will mispronounce less commonly used words and will fail to provide accurate inflections on many words. So at best you get an OK (mediocre) voice recording."

I'm well aware. When I was reviewing and editing Running From Herself, I deployed Word's text-to-speech feature, and yes, it stumbled over a few things ~ not providing emphasis for a word, even when it was italicized (which can really affect the meaning), and as I mentioned before, it pronounced "Layah" as "LIE-a". Nope, not going to risk that again with KDP. But overall, virtual voice's drawbacks are somewhat exaggerated. My primary beef with virtual voice is its absence of emotion. (Damn cold-hearted bots!) 

Another person wrote:

"A "mediocre" effort will eat your time and tarnish your reputation as a writer."

To that I say, what reputation?  

As far as "time", the two minutes it took to create one?

Look, I knew what I was getting into. There's a reason why I'm holding Running From Herself close to the vest. If it ever becomes an audiobook, I'll need to win the lottery so I can afford to hire a human narrator. Virtual voice is not my preference. But I never would have converted ten books to audio if I had to pay to do it. And unlike most self-published authors, I really don't have anything to lose.

Just for kicks, here are the audiobook links:

Bad Blood

Find My Way Home 

Inn Dreams 

Lies and Love

New Kaitlyn

Once in a Blue Moon 

Shadow Song

The Diner Girl 

What We Conceal 

Whispers in the Dark

Shoot, I even converted a book of essays I wrote under a different pen name to an audiobook. If you're gonna do something, do it! 

I probably won't download any of them, even if Amazon gives me a deal. I know how they all go. 😀 And if they sound truly bad, why would I want to know that? You know what they say ~ avoidance is the best medicine (?)

As for Running From Herself, I just can't afford to go the live narrator route. I even checked Kickstarter again to see what my potential competition would look like. It's not for me. All the books are really shiny (read: fantasy), with a good helping of sci fi thrown into the mix. Kickstarter is definitely not my audience, plus I hate begging. I know that ACX has a royalty sharing option, but really? Who's gonna take that bet? "Here's your $5.39!"

Now I'm out of little things to do. Damn. I'm sure something just as useless will pop up soon, though.