Further to my post about writing great descriptions here’s a real life example. Here is what was submitted by one of our authors about a spiritual book he has written:
“This book encompasses various aspects of the Avatar, Sathya Sai Baba’s teachings that put us on the Spiritual Path. By judicious repetition and timeless emphasis, consolidation is fostered. Living at a time when the Avatar walks this earth is our great good fortune. Robin Bamber and DR. Rajen Cooppan’s contribution in this book to enhance the Spititual Journey is to be welcomed.”
It’s factual but it needs more benefits to the potential buyer. Why should I listen to this? What will I get from it? Even spiritual books need to be sold. Here’s the description of Dr Wayne Dyer’s latest book “Excuses Be Gone” – a book that I just love by the way. See how well it describes the book. Is it any wonder Dr Dyer is a best selling author!
“Within the pages of this transformational book, Dr. Wayne W. Dyer reveals how to change the self-defeating thinking patterns that have prevented you from living at the highest levels of success, happiness, and health. Even though you may know what to think, actually changing those thinking habits that have been with you since childhood might be somewhat challenging.
If I changed, it would create family dramas . . . I’m too old or too young . . . I’m far too busy and tired . . . I can’t afford the things I truly want . . . It would be very difficult for me to do things differently . . . and I’ve always been this way . . . may all seem to be true, but they’re in fact just excuses. So the business of modifying habituated thinking patterns really comes down to tossing out the same tired old excuses and examining your beliefs in a new and truthful light.
In this groundbreaking work, Wayne presents a compendium of conscious and subconscious crutches employed by virtually everyone, along with ways to cast them aside once and for all. You’ll learn to apply specific questions to any excuse, and then proceed through the steps of a new paradigm. The old, habituated ways of thinking will melt away as you experience the absurdity of hanging on to them.
You’ll ultimately realize that there are no excuses worth defending, ever, even if they’ve always been part of your life—and the joy of releasing them will resonate throughout your very being. When you eliminate the need to explain your shortcomings or failures, you’ll awaken to the life of your dreams.”
If you are stuck on trying to write a description for your book, jump into Audible.com or iTunes and read the descriptions of some of the best sellers in your category. You must learn to sell your work!
I don’t know about you, but I love watching videos about interesting people. Here’s a video that will inspire our Voice Over friends. Creating audio books is such a great space that requires creative talent, a little marketing skill and mostly people working together toward a common goal.
I am sorry but the offer outlines below is now closed. We were absolutely overwhelmed with willing participants and we don’t have enough books to go around.
I really want to complete this test project before opening it up again to see how it pans out for all involved.
Again, a big thank you to the Voice Over community for your kind support of what we are trying to achieve here. Hudson Audio Publishing is a young company and we are finding our way by trialing new ways of doing business in the publishing space.
Earlier today I decided to test what I believe is a totally new business model. To date our clients (authors) have paid voice over talent to read and produce their audio books up front. This works great but once the talent has been paid that’s it for them financially.
Here at Hudson Audio Publishing we get all kinds of authors though. Some wouldn’t dream of sharing their royalties with the voice talent because they believe the royalties will far outweigh the talent fees over the term of the audio book (and they are often right), while others take a different view and are happy to share royalties in exchange for the talent taking the risk on the project – like we do. In fact, just this morning I was speaking with a very accomplished author based in San Diego who has had more than 130 books published in print throughout his long career. This client is willing to partner with voice over talent in this ‘profit share experiment’ and will share the royalties in exchange for their contribution to the process.
So here’s a the deal.
I have 100 books here, a mix of fiction and non-fiction, written by a published author and ready for immediate production. We are offering any reader who is up to standard and willing to produce the audio files for free, 30% of the royalties on the audio books for life – the same as Hudson Audio Publishing makes. You will be paid every 90 days, the same as the author, in US dollars via PayPal. The audio books will be sold worldwide through iTunes stores, Audible.com as well as Amazon.
On average these books are 60,000 words and each must be recorded chapter by chapter as MP3 files with a bit rate of at least 128 kbps.
If you want to participate in this experiment and grow your passive income, you will need to send an email to courtney@hudsonaudiopublishing.com . She will give you a short script which will serve as your audition. We will need to know how many of the 100 books you want and will allocate a maximum of ten to any one author, depending on how quickly you can do them. At this stage we are looking for North American readers only.
I will keep you posted on this blog in regard to how this project turns out. Good luck and we look forward to sharing the long term love with a few entrepreneurial readers.
UPDATE – 10 books have been taken in the first 24 hours! Let us know if you want to get involved. It’s a great way to build a portfolio and a long term income stream.
When someone is considering buying your audio book there are six things they use to make up their mind.
1) Price
2) Length
3) Testimonials
4) The thumbnail image
5) The description
6) The audio sample provided
Of all of these, the description is one of the most important. It’s the equivalent of the back jacket of a book. So often our clients take no time to really write a killer description. It’s sad and such a waste! How long did it take you to write the book – and how long does one paragraph take?
You really need to sell the potential buyer or they will simply click away. Why should I buy this? Why is it worth my money? What is unique? Think about how good restaurants sell you on their menu. They never simply say “It’s a steak with salad”. It’s always – “A tender grain fed tenderloin from the organic fields of New Zealand. Marinated in an exquisite special blend of fine herbs and Australian wine served warm over a bed of smashed golden potatoes and jus.” You get the idea. After reading your description the buyer should be salivating!
Other things to keep in mind…
- Never use language that could date the listing.
- Always think about it from the buyers perspective. What does your reader want as opposed to what do you want?
- Always be honest.
As I have said in previous posts on this blog, how good your book actually is doesn’t matter if nobody buys it! If your cover sucks, no one is going to pick it up (click through to the description). If your description sucks, nobody is going to listen to the sample. You get the idea.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE – slow down and take your time before submitting your book description to us. We really want to see a big royalty check for you but so often authors have spent so long writing the book that by the time they get to the little things like ’selling’ the book they have lost interest. If you need feedback – we are here to help.
If you going to attempt a self-recording of your audio book, ALWAYS use headphones to hear what you are producing. Simply holding the speaker of your computer to your ear will not work. Remember, your customer will be most likely be listening to your audio book on their iPod or mobile phone – through headphones. Headphones cancel out a great deal of ambient noise around the listener and amplify any errors in your production. It is quite common for self-recorders to have buzzing noises, background noises and all kinds of other issues.
Here at Hudson Audio Publishing we always ask our readers (professional or not) to submit one chapter to us BEFORE they go and record the whole audio book. That way we can listen to the sample and make sure that your quality is up to scratch. Audible, iTunes and Amazon are not going to too happy if they start getting complaints from their clients.
Headphones will enable you to hear much more and should always be used.
One of the most popular services we offer here is getting your audio book recorded and produced by a professional. Many authors set out to do it themselves to avoid the cost, but then discover that it really is quite a skill – a bit like painting I suppose. It’s not easy to keep your energy up, to read without error and to record all at once.
If you do decide to engage us to help there are some things we would like you to know, just so that the expectations are being set correctly.
First of all, the most common issue around using a professional voice over artist (and studio and editor) is the cost. Nearly every author we work with is very conscious of money (we don’t get many Dan Browns, Stephanie Myers or J K Rowlings – not yet any way). With this in mind, we always try to find the absolute best value readers that we can. To give you an idea, when we tendered out our first books the quotes ranged from $300 to $35,000 for the same 100,000 word book. Like any creative field the cost of talent varies greatly. Brad Pitt gets a lot more than some D-Grade actor for the same lines even though technically speaking there may not be a lot of difference.
So the first point is this. When we quote between $1,000 and $2,500 to read, record, edit and produce an average length audio book we are talking about the low end of the market. Mostly these artists are working from home based studios which is how they can do the work at such affordable rates. Professional studios alone costs hundreds of dollars an hour to hire, not counting the voice over talent, technical staff and post production time.
Working from home though does not mean a massive reduction in quality – not these days. Today, the home based voice over market is extremely competitive, probably more competitive than at any time before, so rates are low and standards are high.
It is important to understand though that your brief to the reader, if it is in this price range, must be as clear as possible and you cannot expect them to slightly change their inflection on this word or that word, or to re-record this two seconds or that five seconds because you could hear them breath. This level of creative direction is possible but that’s what you pay the $10,000 and up readers for. In short, the quality we get at the $1,000 – $2,500 level is adequate for our purposes (and the purposes of the platforms) but if you want to direct your audio book like an Academy Award Winning Director might, then you have to be prepared to pay for it and you should tell us that up front – otherwise there will be some very unhappy production partners on your hands.
I know this might seem like anti-customer-service or a relaxing of quality control, but it isn’t. We absolutely value our clients and we want the highest quality possible (our relationship with the platforms would not last long if we submitted rubbish) but you must remember that reading, recording, editing and delivering an entire audio book using a professional voice is not quick, or easy and $1,000 – $2,500 is very, very good value for the average book.
To be clear, you can expect a high energy, expressive, error free audio book at the $1,000 – $2,500 rates we usually target. What you cannot get is line by line, chapter by chapter involvement. Our process involves these steps:
1) Create a detailed brief of what kind of reader you want. Age, gender, race, accent, special requirements or instruction.
2) We tender the job out to our network of readers who then submit short MP3 samples taken from your actual book, together with a quote. The quotes vary because they are all independent contractors. There is no charge up until this point.
3) You select the reader you like and pay the fee via PayPal which we hold in trust.
4) The talent records the first chapter for your review and feedback before they continue with the rest of the audio book.
5) The reader then finishes the entire audio book based on your feedback after chapter one.
6) Once complete we release the funds to the reader and then submit the work ready for sale to the platforms.
If you have any questions about this process please ask us before you engage us. So far we have enjoyed a 100% satisfaction rate with authors and readers so the process works fine but we really want to make sure that the correct expectations are set and then met or surpassed. We are here to help and we know how important it is to keep costs down until you start making nice royalties from your work.
Hudson Audio Publishing is pleased to announce that we are now offering professionally designed audio book covers as a service to our clients. We have managed to secure one of the most talented entertainment designers in the world who has worked with artists including 50cent, Akon and many other celebrity actors, musicians and publishers. We have secured an unbelievable rate which means every serious audio book producer has no excuse NOT to have the best. We all know how important design is so ask us today about making your audio book cover phenomenal!
We get asked all the time – “How do I record my own audio book without spending any money”. Well here are three short videos that give you some great tips and also show you how to use free software for either a Mac or PC. I hope you find these useful.
Aside from these three, there are dozens of other free tutorials showing you how to use free voice recording software on You Tube. Just search “Record voice using Mac” or “Record voice using PC”.
If you do elect to record your audio book yourself, make sure you read this post which talks about quality issues. In regard to technical specs, we accept MP3 files only. MP3s must have a bit rate of at least 128 kbps for products with only narration, and 192 kbps for products with narration, sound effects, and/or music.
Take a look at the picture below. We’ve all been there right? Standing in a video store isle about to pick a movie that we will invest both time and money to enjoy (or not). Really try to think about what you actually do when faced with the isle below. Try to imagine you are there right now. What is the process you go through before picking your movie?
When you get to the store, you probably have some idea of what kind of movie you want or you may have even gone to pick up a specific movie that friend has told you about. So you shuffle over to the right isle and when you get there you start scanning covers. Immediately and without conscious thought, you pass over dozens of videos purely because their cover doesn’t grab your attention.
Before we go on, I think it is important to stop right here and think about what just happened. In seconds, you dismissed the creative passion of dozens of film makers, tens of millions of dollars of invested capital and millions of hours of people’s time that went into making those films – all because of a cover that didn’t work for you.
The simple fact is that you, along with the rest of the human race, have developed a highly attuned filtering system called your Reticular Activating System (RAS), that spends most of its time eliminating anything that is not going to add value to your experience of life. It drowns out the unnecessary and creates blind spots so that you can actually survive a day in this crazy world. If your RAS wasn’t there you would hear every car, every plane, tune in to every conversation within earshot and pay attention to every advertising message that is shot your way. When you go video shopping, it immediately sorts out the crap from the quality through nothing more than a glance, and you don’t even know you are doing it.
So how important is the cover of your book or the thumbnail image of your audio book? It is MORE important than the book itself! The biggest issue we see with Indie authors and the reason why most will only ever be small unknown authors, is because they think and act small when it comes to commercializing their work.
For many, they think nothing of spending two years working on their manuscript but it pains them to spend even a few hundred dollars on getting a professional to design their book cover or audio book thumbnail. With that mindset you will be automatically eliminated by shoppers because their subconscious will immediately spot your book as an amateur title and within a split second all of your hard work is for nil and you find yourself blaming the publisher or the platform or the buyers – the truth is, you suck at marketing.
There are some really great sites out there now that can help you get your audio book thumbnail in shape – one of them in particular is really cool. 99Designs.com runs a site where you upload your job and designers from all over the world will not only bid for the work, but they will actually finish the job and then you award ‘the prize money’ to the designer who produces the best cover. This flips around the risk scenario so that you are no longer hoping that after paying you get a good product – you actually see what they can do before you start.
Here’s a screen shot I took of a current contest where the client is an RnB singer looking for a CD cover design. She offered $300 prize money and so far there are 212 entries. Look at the quality of these designs. For $300 she has created the impression that she is a pro – it is likely that if you were shopping for a new RnB talent that you would at least pick up her CD to have a look.
Aside from that site though, there are dozens of others that can help you. Just Google “Book Cover Design” and see what comes up. Another great site to source talent is www.elance.com but you don’t get to see the work in advance.
The main points of design are:
- It must be done by a professional. Unless you are formerly trained in design, do not trust yourself or a friend who dabbles in design.
- The cover/thumbnail must appeal to your target audience.
- The cover/thumbnail must capture the mood or essence of your book.
- The cover/thumbnail does not have the description on it. Just the book name and the author name together with an image.
So the first reason that crappy movies still get rented (and why bad books still sell) is because people buy the cover before they buy anything else. If you make that short list – the next thing you must have is a great description that sells. So what exactly is a great description?
In marketing there is a well known acronym – “WIIFM”. What’s In It Form Me? If I spend my money and invest my time – what do I get? Your description must draw the reader in and make them want to buy your audio book. If you are selling non-fiction, then talk about the problem your book solves and exactly how it solves it. Think benefits, benefits, benefits and forget about wording that is overly complex or ambiguous. Tell the shopper exactly how the book will benefit them in plain English. Too often non-fiction authors describe their work in way that simply doesn’t make sense. Just take a big step back and ask yourself – “If I knew nothing about me or my subject, does that description make me want to buy this audio book?”
If you are writing fiction the same thing applies. The description must draw the reader into the richness and color of your work immediately and spark an interest within them that makes them want to know more. The key is being objective. Bounce it off others or even create three or four versions and do a little survey among your friends. There’s a great little website called Survey Monkey that enables you to easily create free online surveys that you can email to your contacts and get votes on the best description. Author of New York Times best seller “The Four Hour Work Week” Tim Ferris says that he tested the title through his blog community rather than going with the title he thought was best – and that certainly paid off!
So there’s a two main things in this post that I hope I have hammered home hard! First, the cover of your book or the thumbnail image for your audio book is actually more important that the book itself. Second, if your cover or thumbnail is good enough to get clicked on, then your description is the next most important thing. How good your book actually is, how long it has taken you to write or what those who love you have told you about your work all count for ZERO to the random shopper clicking his or her way through iTunes, Audible or Amazon. You must think and act like a pro in order to get paid like a pro.
Earlier today I read this article about Sony and Smashwords inking a deal that will allow authors to self-publish their e-books through the Sony publishing portal. The deal allows authors and small publishers to go straight from manuscript to e-book publication in a matter of minutes.
So why is this important?
In the past, e-books have been viewed as the poor cousin of ‘real publishing’. They lower the barrier to entry and as such they have been viewed as the method for those who can’t really cut it or get a respectable deal. This story about Sony is just one of many warning bells that should be ringing in the minds of authors and big publishing companies – that is the bell of change.
In a recent story in Fast Company Jeff Bezos is being framed as the next Steve Jobs – probably the most visionary and disruptive figure ever to enter the music industry and now more recently the mobile phone industry. In both cases, Jobs lowered the barriers to entry for content producers and opened the flood gates by offering content in a way that nobody thought would ever take. Jobs has reshaped how we buy and consume music and he has reshaped how we use mobile phones. Is Bezos reshaping the way we will read books?
Ask yourself this question. What did you really think of the Kindle when you first learned of it? Most authors I know laughed out loud and said – “It will never work. People love their books.” The thought of reading a book on a machine to me still doesn’t feel right but look at this shot of Bezos earlier this year where he is talking about e-book sales purchased for the Kindle through Amazon:
Since the release of the new improved Kindle in February, e-book sales have jumped to 35% of Amazon’s book sales. What should stop you dead in your tracks is not just the number, 35%, but even more than that, how quickly that change occurred. We are talking a 20% increase within months. This coming year, Amazon alone is predicting e-Book sales to top $1.2 Billion. This is not some small website selling a few books, this is a website with around 4 million visitors a day dropping by.
The simple and sobering truth is that we are now living in a time where change occurs fast. When the likes of Amazon and Sony are moving in, with the media writing articles that compare what is happening in the book business to what happened in the music business, it is time to take stock. Are you preparing for a new business model? Is your work ready for global distribution in all formats? Tomorrow – the distribution costs will be almost nothing and the only game in town will be reach and marketing.
