SNM124: Boost Your Income By 30% With the Power of Audiobooks

speaker 0: 0:00 booster income by 30% with the power of audio books on today's episode days episode is brought to you by writing jobs. You're number one resource for high paying writing jobs to join the thousands of other writers who have already been paid over $8 million so far. Go to serve no master dot com Backslash Writing jobs Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated?

If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now then you've come to the right place. Welcome to serve no master podcast where you learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host. I've gotten a few eat mostly about audio books. I thought I'd be a great topic to share with you today.

Getting early this morning record this special podcasts in a light rain. Audiobooks are very intimidating. For some reason, they're the category there, the space that people are the most hesitant to get into, and they're a couple of reasons But the first reason is that we assume we got to read the book ourselves. Now, if you've read any of my books, you know that that's not true, because I don't read any of my own books.

Even when I create a book by dictation, there's so many problems with the audio. I would never try to turn my own voice into the audio book. It's a lot of work. It's very daunting, and I simply don't have that time allocation now.

Some people I work with, some people I coach, you're part of a partnership, whether you're the publisher of the author and you have more free time when you're working as part of a team and you can then recorded on audio books, I just don't have the patience to sit down and record myself talking without making any mistakes.

Additionally, I don't know if I could get the background noise perfect enough to please the good people at audible dot com who have to decide if your stuff is good enough. But there are so many pieces of an audio book that we have fear about, but it's all because of assumptions. When I first started in books. I thought I could very good audio book. I don't know howto do it.

It seems like it's really hard to get an audio book out there, and I certainly can't use my own voice even right now for the past week. And there's a reason that I've been a little bit slow with a couple of things is that my kids are sick with colds and it's been getting into my throat. My throat hurts right now. Normally, I get up in the morning and record to podcast episodes have a little bit of a buffer.

But this morning I think it might be able to do one again because my throat's already hurting the thought of sitting down a recording myself for eight hours straight or however long it takes too tough. Additionally, for your I, a book to kind of hit a certain classifications on Amazon, it has to be perfect means you have to match every bird to every word in your book. That sinking up is how they allow you to your Amazon listing.

It will say you get the audio version, too. It will say, like our sink Tup. I forget the exact phrasing. I'm camera what it says, but it will offer the book an audio book as a package if you get the timing perfectly, if every word is correct. So if you release your audible gonna make a few edits to the book, they'll go out of sync and then you'll be would offer that any more.

And I say offered that I mean Amazon will do whether you want it to or not, so it will hurt your sales. Also, my voice isn't that great Someone who does so much audio. I don't have the dulcet tones of an audiobook if you listen. Ideo conservative as that sounds amazing, I found this guy with an amazing British voice sounds so much more eloquent than me, and my favorite is people who find me by audio book. And this is the whole audiobook.

And in this new podcast episode and the message we go, what happened? Your voice, I say exactly. I sound a little bit like a frog, and I know that So getting an audio books can be very, very good, but it's very intimidating, and I wantto basically break through a couple of those fears right now, from my technical understanding, there's two ways to create audiobooks.

One is to create the audiobook download, which is an MP three downloadable file, and the other way is to create a CD that you can send someone in the mail. Now they're our service is or both. It's not easy to directly deliver your own audio files. You kind of have to go through a middleman in either place. The minimum that I often talk about the one owned by Amazon and a c x dot com 86 dot com is really great for two types of people.

It's great if you want to be a book reader. It's actually great place to find work. And it's also great for people like me who have books, and you're always looking for people to read them. The process is actually really recent because Amazon owns it. The process is that you search for the name of your book once your books on Amazon once you're in, the book is live and you click a book and say, This is my book. I want to hire someone to read it.

They actually give me three choices. You can say I want to record it myself. I want to upload a recording I've already made and I want to hire someone. And once you say you want to hire someone, you start answering questions. But the questions are really, really simple. How many words is the book? What's the genre of the book? Do you want a male or female voice? Yet so much these questions and I usually say, just the gender to match whatever the pen name is.

So for my female books, it's a female and for my books for some bastard's males, I've actually mostly hired female audio people voices. Once you list your book and kind of see what you're looking for, you do have to provide a sample. I tend to provide a couple 100 words like three or 400 words of a section from the book.

You have to upload that so that someone has a demo script, and then people who were interested will message you and say, Here's my audition and we'll send you these little addition files. It's really great. Now there are a couple of steps in this process where people get stuck. The first step is not knowing about a sex dot com. The second step is thinking You have to do your own voice.

The third step is when you're in this interview process, they'll send you all the audio files. And it will say, Do you want to download the file or listen to it through the website? A six dot com is notorious for making audio sound bad. So if you play all these files on the website, you know why they only had on the terrible people message to me. You play the audio Basel sound terrible, but if you download them, they all actually sound pretty good.

Now when you have create the final version of an audio book and it gets uploaded onto Amazon audible dot com, which again are both owned by Amazon, they do a lower quality than you're expecting. The audio won't be the same qualities a CD, no matter what they say, it's a lower bit rate. What does it matter? You must most of you Listen, my audiobook sounds okay.

That is one thing that will come up as we talk about alternatives that people who care about if you're obsessed with audio fidelity and I get that. I spent a year studying audio engineering's. I've been around people that are obsessed with audio engineering, the only listen to music. That's an F L A C format, which means fully lossless audio Kodak There, people who would never listen to MP three. They'd rather die now for music.

I understand that if you listen to the same song, especially a song alive, if you look to do recording for a concert, If you listen to the MP three and in the f l A C file, you can hear the difference. It's the same as when you listen to a CD, and then you listen to a piece of vinyl. Final actually records twice the width of signal so people will often say final sounds warmer because they're sound.

We can't officially hear certain Spectrum's like dogs can hear a wider spectrum. You can't hear dog whistle, but there's a part of us that could kind of detect them because the waves are still hitting our body. And that's why people who are obsessive audio fidelity hate lower and lower bit rates because it means last data's being covered. This is something to think about, but since my audio books have no music, it's not really a big issue because people don't speak in a wide spectrum.

But I do understand why people who use a sex sometimes you're upset that it's not using the correct bit rate. It claims that CD quality that's not It's not using the bit rate of a CD. The next area were. People really struggles. You put your book on audible dot com. You've got your whole description and no one sends you any requests. And now this happened to me on my think fourth book, I put on a C X.

So my 1st 3 I got tons of people who asked to do it. So it's really easy. I just chosen town. But then, in the 4th 1 No. One message to me, I think one person, they weren't very good. So I said, You know what? I'll be proactive given up here. At first I was a little down, but I bet there's a way over this and I started messaging.

People has sent e mails to about 20 people, just with an A C exciter going through a C X. And I said, you know what for this book. I want a lady. Let's say that she's got a voice that sounds fortyish, let you choose pretty extensively in the age bands. So I said the other.

This book is a little bit older, I wonder some forties 14 up and I messaged maybe 20 women who have good voices that I said, Oh my gosh, your voices I may using I would love for you to read my audiobook. Please just take a quick look. The book is already doing really well. It's already selling copies every day, and I know that I can sell a ton more copies with your amazing voice. With my words combined with your beautiful voice, we could do something magical.

Police. Just check it out and I got seven and about seven more auditions. So about what? Out of three people I messaged sent in an audition, not everything worked out. Some of the people sometimes your message people. It turns out someone's running there, a sex account, and it gets a little. I don't know that it's naughty, but it felt sketchy to me. One person said, Hey, we're actually in audio company, so if you wanna hire this lady.

You have to pay a fee studio fee and we'll split it with you. And then you have to split the money with RC audible. You either pay a person of flat feet or you do a 50 50 revenue share. There's no other options. So these people wanted me to do but very naughty, not illegal but naughty and made me uncomfortable. And I said, the voices, ladies. Amazing. But just know I'm getting going down that rabbit hole. So I found another voice. And you know what?

I don't even remember. I can't remember what book I'm talking about right now because I've done so many I just for the experience. And then it goes to show the voice wasn't and voice isn't that important as long as always is good or above. You're fine. The reason you have to do this step and this is a step that most people miss is because it's a search engine. So what? People log in and their readers, they can just see the latest books that have been posted.

So if your book was posted yesterday, anyone logs in today won't see it unless they scroll back five or six pages, depending upon people to find you through. What I would say is pretty rough search engine that's they can add in, like what gender they looking forward agent before. But it's pretty hard to get a good sync up. And there's a lot of just a lot of books and Amazon and a lot of books and a C exit known has read this. People posted the books.

It's just really crowded. All these books have never sold a digital copy that trying to get someone in a sex to do it. Now the people on a C X there want to make money. It's our job if you have a good voice. And I know some of you do because some people have, ah, send me emails or videos and have, like these deep, amazing voices or this really eloquent voices like an angel.

You don't want to spend a week working on audiobook in the making. $4. I could tell you right now that the lady who did my potty training book has made a killing. She makes her audio books exactly as much as I do every time I sell potty training on your book. We split the money 50 50. I like to do revenue share with people because I want the never skin in the game, and this is valuable for a couple of reasons.

That means that when there's a mistake that put in more effort to improve it, they're gonna put their absolute best into the book because the better they do them or they'll make, they want to get those really good five star reviews and also Amazon. The process on a sex is that once the book is recorded and they us of minute, you have to approve it first, and then a sex has to approve it. So if you prove something in the A C excess.

Nope, I have to go back to that person say, Hey, can you fix it? And if you've already released the payment to them, you've got a problem now. I don't know that Amazon does it that way. Amazon may not release the payment until after they approve the book. I haven't never paid anyone, so I don't know for sure. I've always done the revenue share with the revenue share model. The person is also that the reader the voice is motivated to drive traffic.

So my readers will post hey, check out the books I've read on their Facebook goods or people who follow voices, so they'll generated another on traffic. Additionally, on audible dot com, it will say other books read by this narrator. So when they're giving recommendations, you can get recommendations based on the voice. So getting a really good voice getting with a skin in the game would drive people through all of these pieces of process. Additionally, and it's just having me.

Last week, someone out there was violating my copyright. Now, normally, I don't know anything about it. What can I do if someone has downloads a stolen, copied my book, he gives to a friend or puts a bit Torrent site. You can try and become someone's always sending cease and assists, but it's a real big hassle. However, if someone's trying to sell my book now, that's not cool. If you're gonna steal for me and sell it, that's not okay.

Someone out there had taken from one of my readers had stolen his resume, which means he had a two minute clip of him reading my book and they put it on YouTube and blow. It was a link to another website that tried to look like audible dot com to get people to sign up for audio books. I don't know if that site has a stolen copied my book that they're trying to sell.

I didn't sign up to the site and look for It was all It leads you like a sketchy Russian like it doesn't lead her like a real domain was all letters and nothing made sense, and it certainly wasn't readable was on YouTube's on YouTube. Someone's playing a stolen piece of this guy's voice, which he's not happy about. He owns righteous voice, but I own the copyright to the content so he can't file the cease and assist with YouTube.

So he e mailed all the people who have used in the past is that someone's using my voice. Can you deal with this? And so I found a much a cease and desist on YouTube said, Hey, don't let someone steal my content and send people to buy something to buy more of it. That's ridiculous. You to do a better job, and they took them all down.

I never thought I would do one of those millennia back copyright takedowns, but to my steal my book but part of it on YouTube, and then get people to pay 30 bucks the rest of it, that's not cool. I would have to be honest. You. I probably wouldn't have had a problem with it if they were sending people to audible. If they were sending him, where were you can actually buy? And they were audible dot com affiliates.

They'll probably find by me, to be honest with you, if they're sending people back to the correct place and they're just trying to get an affiliate commission, I would let him get away with it because, hey, they're trying to drive me traffic. Fine.

But because they're sending traffic toe competitors that stealing all that no way and I got alerted by the guy name in cinemas is you know, a lot of people would have told their client base, and I also discovered that it wasn't just him because all of my books were up there. So products that had under other pendants that he hadn't read run there as well. So it's not him. It wasn't just him, they got stolen. It was the entire audible dot com preview catalog.

Someone stole it, uploaded it to YouTube, using probably piece of software automation. And it all has these links. So eventually the law get taken down. But he noticed and told everyone I thought I was pretty honorable. So it helps to have someone is on your team, because guess what? He gets paid every time I make a sale. So he's motivated to make sure no one steals miss stuff.

If you pay someone flat fee, which is fine, you have a heavy upfront investment, one of things that holds people back. And I read an article today that said You should spend 2 to $10,000 to get your audiobook put together. What? No thanks. I would never recommend doing that. I don't think it's a good investment that some people I work with, Some people who coached have chosen to go that route. It's not for me.

In the long run, I sometimes pay the person more for the potty training book. The woman would have read the whole book for, I think, 2 to $40 remember what she said. Since Since that book came out and hit 50 50 she's been played more than 2 to $4000 so she's made 10 times more money. But that's okay. I totally appreciate that. She has skin in the game. I don't mind paying people percentage when the have done good work. And she did it.

Inspectors want the book tanked. I mean, the book was ready Number one when I brought her on board to do it, but it was really I want to reward people when they do great work, and I think the voice is very important for the audio book. So if you listen to arrest, you heard that guy's voice. Yeah, he gets a CZ much as I do every time in the audio book, and that's fine. Don't feel bad for me.

It's still a nice payday for both of us. It's really great. I love that that guy's getting rewarded cause I thought he did a great job. I thought his voice sounded really nice and actually got a couple of e mails where people come on the guy's voice, too, until they realize that I'm not British. But another hurdle in this came to me recently is that you're not allowed to join a C X or every country and initially was only in America.

I think now it's in Canada. The UK swell. I can't remember. They sent out email saying the new countries are adding in, but I know they don't have Australia right now, and I can't remember South America's inner route. I know they were talking about it, but if you're from these countries, how can you do audio books? And this was the second set of questions I've gotten recently, and there's a couple of ways to deal with this.

The first is that for a C X, you simply need to have, you know, it's it's tax I d. I've got this many Americans only, but actually someone I know who is in a VA heavy country, not a western country. An English speaking country called up the I R s and asked for a business tax I D. And they gave him what over the phone. In ways you don't talk about hours on hold.

Most of the time you answer a few questions is a I would start a business in United States. I just need a tax I d to be able to do it. It's actually not a complicated process. In a way, it makes sense because then the money make from a six. I'm not sure how the taxes work. Maybe it's beholden to US taxes. Or maybe it's not.

But either way, if you're only present in America's A sex until you make $800,000 a year, just Macy exhale your audio book sales. It doesn't matter. It's not taxable yet, so don't worry about it. That's one way to do it. And I was shocked at how use Iwas. I wasn't shocked was on hold for an hour, but a shock that he didn't know. He goes. I'm gonna go get a tax I D number so I can start to a sex American.

I said what you have to be. A few hours later, guys got one, and I mean, that's one way to do it, and that's probably what I reckon it because it's easier. But there is an alternative. And if you're an audio file and you really care about audio quality obsessed with that stuff, you can go to a service like CD, maybe it was CD, baby. They'll kind of process for it, but they're selling physical CDs. I've thought about that, actually, for a couple of reasons.

I like what I see books. And it says you can have this book and gentle paperback audiobook or MP three city, and I believe that the MP three city I haven't done this one. This is a little outside when I've done before, but I wanna share with you something I thought about. I believe the MP three CD thing is going through CD baby Now. The challenge is that how do I get someone's content to resect input on TV? Maybe make sure you pay that person fairly.

That's why I haven't done it. Because you end up in a bit of a copyright conundrum with a c X. I don't have to do any accounting, But if you go this other out with sea view, certainly. D'oh! So if you're good, record the book yourself or you're gonna pay the person that's different paying flat, see? Then you totally on the content. You know, whatever you want. I don't own the audio content for anyway audiobooks. I co own it.

Okay, I have a revenue share split, and I want to honor that so you can go the CD baby route. You could pay someone a flat fee, or you can do an arrangement. Record yourself and then you have that version. Now. I would love to figure out a way to take that my audiobook and move it to see the baby do the same thing. But it's a level of complex that haven't entered yet.

And if it's something you figured out, feel free to email me, explained how to do it or offer Help me do it very interesting that I'm always interested in stuff like that. Maybe I need to hire a second narrator to do the CD version. I don't even know if people want a CD in the mail. I don't know how much those cell because it's area having entered into. But I do know that CD Baby pays you much better than do inaudible, inaudible.

The percentage of that great it's okay. It's for me. It's just gravy. I really use Amazon for traffic. More than anything else. Amazon sends me lots of customers, and that's wonderful, but a CD baby. You also get higher quality audio. The audio sound much better because it's the highest level. It's way bigger bit rate than Amazon does better than a C X, and that means you get a really great quality recording the challenge.

And this is something I saw someone posting well aside on another block that I was following is that they could only put the book into one category because CD Baby is considered to be a music company when they do the book. When they put your audio book on Amazon, it can only go into the Amazon spoken word category. You can't choose what Kenny, where you want to go into your audiobook. Honestly, that's not that important to me.

Once you merge your audio book in your listing, then you're covered. You only get to choose one category anyways through a C X. You don't get a lot of patrol. You don't control your pricing, so I don't worry about that stuff. What I do worry about is that you're not an audible dot com, and a lot of my sales go through audible.

So when you publish a book through a sea exit goes on audible dot com and It goes on amazon dot com and goes on iTunes and a few other places. They're all controlled by a single platform, and Amazon owns Ottawa, where they treat it like it's a separate company. Since you kind of playing a little bit of a game, I want to be on Audible because that's where the majority of my audio book sales come from. Some come from Amazon, but not all.

I have to get some for iTunes. Answer for other places. I don't track it to have that kind of Just look at the numbers at the end of the month and make sure that my trends air good. I don't really split up how I'm doing better. I tunes in here because of not always comes from Amazon or automobile. Don't look at the split too heavily in the numbers. I don't really dig in when you're looking at your plan for an audio book.

CD Baby is an option, and there are other options as well if you want to deliver it by CD. But I couldn't find and haven't found another way to get inaudible. Other than going through a sex. I don't know of another route. Amazon is very complicated because of the way they structured their business, and I know it has to do with laws and taxes. Who knows Amazon? Every country is a different business. So every month when I get paid, I can't pay by Amazon Japan.

Seven for Amazon, Mexico. Seven Her Amazon, UK. Some from Amazon can a separate Amazon. You separate from Amazon America, all separate businesses. They all send me separate wire transfer, direct deposit in the blood. That's fine. More complicated. Is that a sex audible dot com create space. They all pretend like they're different companies. And so they all do different things. Like recently, Kendall has started trying to get me to do our paperbacks to them. They say, Hey, your digital books done.

Why don't you do your pay back here? Book here, too. And I know people are gonna start asking about that. So I'm gonna talk about it now. I don't No. If that's worth doing a habit mess with that, it may be that running all of your books through the same platform is the right thing to do. Maybe that there's a benefit because you're tracking us a little more detail if you upload through KDP instead of uploading through, create space.

But I don't know because I haven't done it. I don't have a system that works. I like having great bass suffered from Kitty. Additionally, create space pays you faster. So for a Kindle books, you have to wait at the end of month plus 60 days. But for create space, it's only end a month plus 30 so we have to wait one extra month. What's even better is audiobooks. A sex actually pays me at the end of the month, plus about two weeks.

So I get paid the fastest for audiobooks. Fasten anything else. They pay me first. So for everything I sell this month, first look, you pay by audible by audio books than a month later, I get paid for the paperbacks, and a month after that, I get paid for the digital sales all from this month. I like having one of those cycles cause I've had months so crazy.

Last year had a month were my audiobooks did really bad that I had a month with my neighbor, actually bad that had a month were my digital Too bad, but because I get paid from the different months. It didn't get hit all at once. You kind of missed mixed them all up. And that's what's good about having these different payment cycles. I'm okay with it. What do you get going? It's great because even after you retire, you'll still get paid for a couple of months.

When you're looking at doing audiobooks, don't be overwhelmed by the complexity. It's really not that hard. The set of business complicated. If you buy a copy breaking orbit, I have, ah, step by step. Walk through that. You can get that step by step. Pdf. That takes you through each step of this process, which I kind of explained You big picture here, and it doesn't have to be overwhelming. Doesn't be complicated.

Just find someone great voice say we read my book, Let's split the money or you could ask them what they want to be paid. And I'll tell you the fee. Up front, people range anywhere from $20 an hour upto $500 an hour. There really is a wide spectrum, and if you're someone who's reading books, you can also get paid pretty good living you could build up your own catalog business because guess what?

If you were the voice that read all my books, you're making exactly what I do for audio books. Our salaries would be equal because everything I do audiobooks. It's 50 50 with the voice. This is a great market to enter. It doesn't need to be overwhelming. And, as always, with every challenge you face, you can either see an obstacle or opportunity. I love audiobooks because very few people do him. Most people don't understand it. Most people are intimidated, don't see the opportunity.

That means there's very little competition there. So I have a book on Amazon that has over 1000 books in the same category that direct competitors. What I look. Att audible dot com There are less than five. I dominate certain spaces and audio books because there aren't any other books in the category, and that's wonderful. So if you want to boost your income by 30 to 40% every single month, go out their head over a six dot com and make that audio first of your book.

And as a special treat below this recording blow, this episode at the bottom of the block post. I have a linked we can get the audio book version of Served master and Breaking orbit absolutely for free, but something very cool you could do with Audible as well as give away copies of your book for free. Your audio book will show you how in the bottom of this episode, thank you for listening to this week's episode of Serve No Master.

Make sure you subscribe, so you never miss another episode. We'll be back tomorrow with more tips and tactics on how to escape that rat race. Head over to serve no master dot com forward slash podcasts Now for your chance to win a free coffee of Jonathan's bestseller Serve No, master. All you have to do is leave a five star review of this podcast. See you tomorrow. Thank you for listening to this episode of the serve. No master podcast.

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