Over a month ago, I self-published my first-ever book.
Immediately, I got a flood of messages asking if there's an audiobook version. There wasn't. I only invested in paperback and ebook (for now).
So I went and asked my mentor, Nicolas Cole, on how he'd do that.
Three things he told me, and what I've learned since:
1. Expect that it’ll take 2-3x longer to record the narration than it is to read it.
One part of any long recording sessions nobody expects:
You lose your voice VERY quickly. Unless you drink tons of ginger and lemon tea. But even that caps you at 4h at a time max.
I learned it the hard way when I was making my digital course over the summer.
You don't want to push yourself beyond that for a few reasons:
- More hours don’t automatically mean better work. Research on expert performers suggests even highly trained people can sustain only a few hours of their most demanding practice each day.
- There's nothing worse than sounding tired, slow, or disoriented. Not only is it easy for the listener to notice, it forces you to re-record the whole thing, which adds more pressure and work to your plate.
- Your voice gets tired, too. One study of 50 women found that two hours of reading aloud was enough to raise vocal fatigue and throat discomfort, so powering through isn't the smartest recording strategy.
2. Hire an audio engineer.
If you're a vibe coder like me, I know what you're thinking:
"I can just ask Codex to edit my audio"
"I'm sure someone has figured it out on GitHub"
"I rebuilt one SaaS tool, how hard can audio be?"
Well, I asked my Claude Code and even it said I'm better off hiring a professional human.
And this is where, personally, I'd much rather invest in working with a person, spend extra time and money, and make it as authentic as possible with my own narration instead of AI because:
- Nobody wants to read an AI-generated book, so why should I expect any different from an AI-generated audiobook?
- AI voices are too obvious and easily recognisable. This is a great way to lose trust in your listener, especially if you don't disclose the content is AI-generated, and then they clock it.
- There's no legislation protecting my voice from being stolen and exploited. Just look up the recent video from Chris Williamson, host of the Modern Wisdom podcast: an AI voice he says was trained on him showed up in ads for products he'd never promote. ElevenLabs says the voice came from a voice actor, which is of course not true.
3. Put aside $3k-$5k for the whole project.
You know the biggest reason this kind of work commands premium these days?
The US audiobook market grew roughly 35% since 2022, from $1.8B to $2.43B. That means not only the demand is higher than ever, but the quality expected is higher too. I mean, I tried looking up Empire of the Vampire on the Apple Books app and the audiobook was €39.99 compared to €7.49 for the ebook.
It's quite crazy.
My personal plan is to make $3k from my current book version first so I can reinvest it into audio version. A few ways I'm doing this:
- Actively promoting it in my email newsletter. It's at the end of each email's footer. I also have several emails planned that tie directly to the book.
- Repurpose some of book's content into social media content. Each chapter has been getting dissected into LinkedIn and Substack posts.
- Use the Secret Chapter I offer at the end as a free lead magnet. This one's still a WIP, but the idea is that I give the readers a test before I promote my book.
It's gonna take a while because it's harder to sell a $17 product to 500 people than a $7,000 service to 2 people.
But it's gonna be so so worth it.
Till next time,
Roman
P.S. If you haven't grabbed the paperback or ebook yet, it's here: From Invisible to Investable
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