Are eBooks or Audiobooks better? Misty's Writing Update

May 03, 2024 7:55 pm

Hi friends,

It's almost time for another $7,000 to $8,000 expense to produce the audiobook for the third book in my Shieldwall Academy series.

It got me thinking about all of you and if you prefer to enjoy your stories as audiobooks, ebooks or paperbacks.

Would you click reply to this email really quickly and type one of the following answers of how you like your stories?

I read ebooks
I listen to audiobooks
I read paperbacks

. . . or some combination of the above, if you like to change things up.

Thanks for helping me figure out the best way to offer you what you like!

And here's a quick update on my goal to reach 1000 Amazon followers for my newest penname M. Zaugg. Sooo close! Thank you everyone!

If you missed it, just click and +Follow me (it's free in the top left corner by my avatar). You'll get notifications when I have new books come out.

Interested in my writing update? Scroll down below after taking a minute to click on this week's newsletter specials!

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Catalyst by Rachel Ford

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A world of absolute want and gaudy excess, nothing is done in half measures in the Tribari empire. When a push for reform is met with brutal crackdowns, a miner from an icy moon colony is caught up in a deadly game of survival

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Starved by Anne McCoy

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Managing a chronic illness like type 1 diabetes before the threat of an apocalypse sucked most of the time, but the rationing of food and medicine is quickly making it impossible.

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The Great Darkness by Alice Longo

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An apocalyptic disaster plunges the world into the chaos of winter darkness

where fighting for survival is the only option.

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Misty's Writing Update

As you've probably figured out, I would much rather write new chapters than go back to edit and fix ones I've already done.

So, I'm very thrilled to finally be back to writing new words this week after five weeks spent editing. On Tuesday, I sent off the final, edited version of Elemental Battleground to my narrator, JS Arquin.

If you're curious about the process:

JS usually reads through the manuscripts, marks it up and then, when it's time, narrates it. He actually keeps a little file of short examples of all the characters he's voiced for the previous books, so he makes sure to keep everyone sounding consistant.

Once he finishes, he sends it off to sound engineers who process everything to sound good and find any mistakes he needs to fix. Essentially, they're like editors, but for audio.

The final audiobook is billed per finished hour, often abreviated as PFH. For anyone considering producing books, this usually runs between $200 - $1000 for each finished hour, depending on the experience and popularity of a narrator. Since a ~95k word book is about 10 hours of finished audio, you can see why it gets pretty expensive to produce. My books in this series have been 20+ hours each.

Once JS is done, I get the final files and then go to Audible to upload each chapter until it's all ready. It's tedious but I have to pay attention, so I don't accidentally drag and drop chapters out of order. Eeek!

If I give Audible at least four weeks notice, they'll hopefully be able to put my audibook up for pre-order this time! Yay!

I hope that's an enjoyable little glimpse into what it takes to produce an audiobook. Let me know if you have any questions!