5 Steps to Better Audiobooks

An Indie Author's Guide to Awesome Audio Productions (5 Steps Series)

By: Julie C. Gilbert

Narrated by: Eleanor Caudill

Want to see your book become an awesome audiobook?

This is a great place to start. Before you get lost in the audioworld acronyms, borrow money for this grand adventure, or inadvertently tick off the narrators you may wish to hire, let me help.

Inside, you will find....

• The many lessons I've learned commissioning 25+ audiobooks
• Three major reality checks
• An overview of the three main payment paths
• An overview of my process
• Five detailed steps to creating awesome audiobooks

Bonuses:

• Some dos and don'ts that will make narrator relations easier
• An introduction to audiobook promotions
• The basics of audiobook email writing
• A section about seeing both sides of the business

©2019 Julie C. Gilbert (P)2020 Julie C. Gilbert

good insight

I listened to this book to gain insight. Overall well written & very insightful. Narration is good.

An author who Gets it!

Julie Gilbert has dozens of audiobooks that she's written and partnered with multiple narrators for. Her insight in this book is very useful for both authors and narrators & doesn't come across as one sided at all. She's an author who is committed to providing a great experience for the end user & also willing to learn and grow along the way with narrators, recognizing the talent, training & time commitment that goes into producing a good audiobook. Great tips and practical too.

Eleanor Caudill's Narration is also easy to follow & shows that Julie practices what she preaches in partnering with a narrator.

Very helpful

Lots of information and helpful tips for audio production. I’ll probably have to give it a second listen to glean all I can. Thanks to the author for this step by step procedural.

Missing the most basic step! Prepping your book!

The author states she has competed over 25 audiobooks and that’s her credibility. While I believe that, what’s hard for me to understand is how she never describes what it takes to get a book ready for audio production. By this I mean how one should modify their manuscript for the narrator.

I write non-fiction, and I’m a visual learner so I use a lot of graphics in my books. Should I leave it to the narrator how to describe the graphics? Do I let the narrator state that there is a pdf download of the graphics? Or, so I write a description of each graphic when it makes sense to do so, and still provide a pdf download?

When providing a pdf download, is it best to upload that do Audible, or should I have it on my own site and have people sign up to get it as a means to collect email addresses of my reader?

I was hoping for answers to questions like these and more about the setup that’s entirely missing from an audiobook about making audiobooks that’s over hours long, and in some cases filled with fluff like “decide which book to make an audiobook”. What a dumb statement! I already know that which is why I bought this audiobook, as I’m quite sure anyone else buying it would know as well.