Audiobooks have increasingly evolved from a means of allowing those who have difficulties with reading or their vision to still enjoy the world of literature into a fairly mainstream way of reading. You can stick an audiobook on in the car on your drive to work or while you’re out jogging and still the benefits of the book without needing to set aside time just for reading.
Of course, audiobooks take time and effort to make. As is often the case, if you’re willing to put in that time and effort, even on behalf of someone else, you could potentially create a source of passive income for yourself.
TL;DR
- Passive income – if successful, this can provide a true and long term passive income
- Easy – it takes no special skills and little special equipment to get started
- Enjoyable – you’re being paid to read a story aloud – what’s not to like?
- Time-consuming – it can take about 12 hours to complete a full project
- Competitive – new narrators may need to take a few low-value contracts to build up their profile in order to get the more interesting jobs
What is Audiobook Narration?
Books on tape have been a thing since…well, since cassette tapes were a thing, and even before then. They’re now quite a big thing, in particular thanks to Audible. Founded in 1995 and bought by Amazon 2008, it has become a major branch of the eCommerce brand’s efforts to change the way we think about reading – an effort led by their development of the Kindle e-reader.
It’s an effort that has been massively successful as audiobooks are now the fastest-growing form of digital publishing, making more than $2.5 billion in 2017. That year, more than 26 per cent of the US population listened to at least one audiobook and the number of them published continues to increase exponentially. It’s now pretty much common practise for audiobooks, ebooks and hardcopy books to be released at the same time, and there are even a few instances of audiobook exclusives emerging.
Anyway, you almost certainly know what an audiobook is – we’re not going to waste your time with backstory. The point is that they’re big business. Understandably, self-published authors are now looking to get their own slice of the pie, too. However, as much as they might love to have the dulcet tones of Stephen Fry or Morgan Freeman reading their texts, hiring professional narrators of that calibre is expensive.
This is where you come in. Amazon being smart enough to spot a profitable opportunity, they launched the Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX) in 2011 – a platform where authors, agents, publishers and narrators can meet and make deals. It basically does for audiobooks what Kindle Direct Publishing did for ebooks, making this media accessible to first-time authors. Just as there’s always an opening for a new author, there’s always an opportunity for a new narrator, which could be you.
Effectively, all you will need to do is read someone else’s book aloud, recorded it, edit it as required and send it back to the writer. That done, and depending how you chose to be paid for the project, you could potentially make up to 40 per cent of the money from each sale of that audiobook. Do enough books of high enough quality and you could potentially create a solid source of passive income for yourself.
There are a couple of essentials you will need to have before you consider getting started as an audiobook narrator. For one thing, you need to be pretty good at reading aloud. There are various challenging circumstances that might make this impractical for you. If you are dyslexic, for example, or have difficulty speaking clearly, you won’t be actively prevented from trying but this might not be the income stream for you.
You will also need a good recording set-up. This isn’t the sort of thing you can just record on your iPhone. You will need a reasonably good microphone at the very least, though more equipment may be required. If you don’t have a quiet room with plenty of soft furnishings, you might need some soundproofing foam to absorb stray sounds and prevent echos from ruining the recording.
How to Get Started with Narrating Audiobooks
Once you have the requirement equipment set up, you will need to sign up to ACX as a narrator. Having set up a profile, you will need to populated it with samples so that prospective authors and publishers have an idea of how your voice sounds. As with most freelance marketplaces, those with proven experience of delivering good results will inevitably get more visits to their profile and, from there, more work. There are ways you can promote yourself, especially through social media, but getting your first contract will still be a bit of a hurdle.
How actually finding contracts works is that authors put their books into the marketplace and narrators offer their services. The author will provide a summary of their text and a sample of it. It’s advisable to check both of these with care. Investing a lot of time and effort into reading a book that doesn’t interest you will be a lot more of a chore than reading a well-written book with a good story.
Your application for being the book’s narrator will require you to read the sample. At its most basic, this means simply reading the text with a bit of verve in your voice. If your voice is flat and you sound bored reading it, you probably won’t get the job. Be aware of the pace of the story – it might be smart to speak quicker and in more clipped tones during points when the story is getting exciting. Putting on different voices for different characters is an option, but it is not always appropriate and bear in mind that you might have to maintain those voices for the entire story.
The author will listen to the various offers and will then approach those narrators they like the sound of, offering one of a couple of deal offers. You can either be paid per finished hour of recording work or make a Royalty Share Deal. There’s also a third option, which is just a combination of the other two. The lump sum is obvious nice because it guarantees your income regardless of how the book sells. However, many new authors are reluctant to use this approach because it’s expensive for them.
The Royalty Share Deal is actually the better option for you as a narrator. How it works is that you get paid no initial income for your work, but you make money every time the book is sold. ACX gets their cut of the sale and the rest is divided between the author and the narrator. This has the potential of becoming a good source of passive income since a popular book may continue getting sales for years to come. That being the case, it is also advisable to be as choosy as you can about contracts as soon as you can – it’ll result in less wasted time on your part. Get the right group of contracts, voice a selection of books, and you can hang up your microphone and enjoy a steady stream of income for years to come. Get it wrong and you’ve given up a lot of your free time for no real gain.
Things to Consider
Sadly, due to the fact that being an audiobook narrator is technically work that Amazon is paying you for and that taxes therefore need to be paid on that income, the number of countries where becoming a narrator is possible is currently limited. At time of writing, ACX is only open to residents of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Ireland, and only to those with a mailing address and a valid local Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN).
Assuming you are in one of those countries or you find narrating jobs through another platform (virtually any freelancing platform, including Fiverr and Upwork, for example), the next concern is the amount of time you will need to invest in any given recording. Obviously it depends on the contracts you take but, as a guide, we’ll use the average book length of about 100,000 words. You want to be speaking at a steady pace of about 3 words per second, so that’s a minimum of 9 and a quarter hours or reading per book, not including going back to correct mistakes. You’ll also need to edit the recording to remove those errors, ensuring the whole thing flows together and sounds natural before you can call the job done. If you use the Royalty Share Deal and the book doesn’t sell, that’s a good 12 hours of your free time effectively wasted.
Finally, it’s worth noting that the royalty percentage you can earn is quite limited. ACX takes a 60 per cent cut, leaving only 40 per cent to be split between the author and the narrator. If the book is priced low, that could potentially mean that you make just a few dollars per sale, if that. Of course, as with any royalty ownership, there’s the potential for that tiny trickle of income to become a flood and, even if it doesn’t, there’s the potential for that trickle to continue trickling for a long time, which will still amount to a tidy sum in the end.
Cost to Getting Started
There is no cost for joining ACX as a narrator as they make their income by taking a cut of each contract. However, a reasonably good recording suite is required to help you to get the better, more profitable gigs. This will require at least a good USB microphone and a pop filter. For software, Audacity is perfectly good and entirely free. The total cost should be no more than about $200 for a more-than-adequate setup.