I Narrated 3 Audiobooks for Passive Income. Here are the Full Results…
Is this the MOST underrated passive income stream?
This month I decided to do something I’ve been meaning to do for a year and a half — finally record the audiobook to my 3rd book Save Half, Retire Fast.
I’ve recorded audiobooks previously for my first book The Money Resolution and my second book Money, You Can Hack It — but those books were much shorter: 140 and 190 pages respectively.
This third book is nearly 300 pages long! I finally committed to it, got it done, and I’m here to share it all.
I accomplished this via ACX, Audiobook Creation Exchange. In doing so, ACX will list your audiobook on Amazon, Audible, and even iTunes.
Today I’ll cover:
- How much money you can realistically make from audiobooks
- How to record an audiobook
- My personal tips
- How you can be an audiobook narrator and earn passive income, even if you don’t have your own book.
INCOME
How much can you expect to make? I can’t answer that for everyone but I’ll share my numbers as an indie-author.
My first audiobook — when I had no audience and no idea what I was doing — went live on May 8th, 2019. I’ve sold 180 units and earned 0 bounties, which you get if people sign up to Audible using your referral link.
ACX says you can earn up to $75 for each referred member that remains a member for at least 61 days. I’ve never promoted my link but maybe you could or I should. Here’s my link. :)
My second audiobook was published on April 13, 2021. I’ve since sold 81 units.
All told, between my 2 audiobooks, I’ve sold 261 units. That’s around 65 units a year or roughly 6 a month.
Here’s how my 261 sales break down:
- 162 sales are AL Units which means audiobook units bought by Audible Listener members using their membership credits. I earn 40% of the sales for all audiobooks in theory but it looks like I end up with around 25% for AL Unit sales.
- 60 sales are ALOP Units which means audiobook units bought by Audible Listener members not using their membership credit. I get 40% of this revenue.
- 39 sales are ALC Units which means audiobook units bought by customers that are not Audible Listener members. I earn 40% of these sales.
- And -1 was a return.
As an example, if you get 40% of the revenue on a $20 book you earn $8 a sale. That said, you can’t control your Audible price. My first audiobook is currently on sale for $5.99 and my second audiobook is $17.35. They are priced based mainly on length but do vary.
ACX reports are monthly PDFs you have to download manually, making it difficult to give you a grand total. I went through my bank account and added up my income over the years:
I’ve earned a grand total of ~$1,250 from 261 units. That’s $4.79 a unit. Let’s round up and call it $5 a unit.
Anecdotally, I make around $25 a month with my 2 books. I do nothing to promote these so it’s passive income and a nice surprise when it hits my bank.
HOW TO RECORD AND AUDIOBOOK
I have now recorded all 3 of my audiobooks using Garageband, a free program. Other programs people recommend are Audacity, Adobe Audition, ProTools, Twisted Wave, Studio One, and Reaper.
You don’t need a super expensive microphone. I recorded my first two with an $80 mic by audio technica and a $10 pop filter. You do need a quiet room because background noise will get flagged. Most people aren’t aware of how noisy their house or even computer is…
Years ago I had to re-record several chapters because background rain got picked up. Also, be aware of room echo. Hang sheets or drapes to deaden the sound or even record in the closet. I’m not kidding. People do this.
Here’s a look at what my final garage band file looked like. It was 37 chapters and 44 total recordings:
THE RECORDING PROCESS
The entire process is pretty tedious and time-consuming. My book ended up being close to 7 hours long when all was said and done. I estimate it took 14 additional hours to edit, export, upload, and master the tracks to meet Audible requirements.
How long will it take you? My book was 72,000 words and 7 hours long. Let’s call it an hour per 10,000 words.
From there, quadruple the audiobook length for the total time commitment. Therefore, a 40,000-word book would be 4 hours long. The total audiobook project time commitment is 16 hours.
I recorded my first two books in one very dedicated weekend. I recorded it all first and edited it all after. This time I tackled 3 to 5 chapters at a time in the morning over 3 weeks and I edited as I went in the evening.
It was nice to break it up but eventually, I wished I had just locked myself in a room for a weekend again because it felt like I was barely making progress over time.
I also hit lots of audio issues at the time of upload for the first time. I’m not an audio technician so it took me 6 or 7 hours to fix all the tracks and re-export and re-upload when I thought I was done. But I learned a lot about compressors and limiters and noise gates!
It’s ironic because I invested in a new Shure MV7 $300 microphone but I didn’t have the settings dialed in before I hit record.
IS RECORDING AN AUDIOBOOK FUN?
I hit on the commitment and some negatives but is it fun at all? It can be!
There is an element to reading that is a performance, which I liked. You should get really into it to keep it interesting for the reader. Plus, I had fun going back through my book I hadn’t looked at in over a year. I’m certainly proud of the book and its content.
However, I found typos and each one stung a little. In fact, I found 40+ small typos. I wrote them down as I edited and now I need to go back and update my master document to fix them all. Making the audiobook will help you find and fix any issues in the book.
TIPS
Here are a few final quick tips and tricks:
- Monitor your recording. This means listening to yourself with plugged-in headphones (not Bluetooth) while recording. This helps you hear when you read something wrong or catch background noise getting picked up.
- Record the audiobook as soon as you publish the book so the content will be extremely familiar. It helps with the performance aspect of reading. Plus, you’ll get more sales overall if it’s available when the book launches. There are people who only listen to books.
- Drink water as you go. Yes, to stay hydrated but also so your voice doesn’t sound dry. Never drink carbonated beverages.
- Stay consistent in terms of reading speed and distance from the mic.
- If you aren’t technical at all or if this sounds like too much work, hire a book narrator through ACX or Voices.com. Or hire an audio technician to master the tracks. Obviously, there’s a cost to all that. With a narrator, you can pay a flat fee or split royalties. But expect to pay hundreds or likely thousands for help.
HOW TO BE A NARRATOR
Yes, you can earn money from narrating other people’s books. Sign up to be a narrator through ACX.com or Voices.com.
It’s pretty straightforward. You sign-up, fill out information about yourself, and submit audio samples. If you’re a match in terms of what people need (think gender, age, type of voice, etc.) you could get hired.
It could be a great side hustle for you and you could even get hired on Voices.com for advertisements, video narrations, courses, and all kinds of other audio gigs. No matter your voice, there’s probably somebody that could use it.
Just bring that enthusiasm!
SHAMELESS PLUG
My audiobook should be live now or very soon after I post this video. It takes roughly a week to get final approval from the ACX team and I submitted it on May 23rd. I’ll soon share the price it was set at, how many copies I sold, and update my earnings throughout the year on this new “passive” income stream.
If you buy it — you’ll love it! I gave the performance my all. You get 7 hours of my best content. You’ll learn a LOT about the FIRE movement and how to retire early — the easy way. Plus, you’ll be supporting indie authors and creators like myself.
It would mean so much to me if you’d snag a copy and consider leaving a review.
GIVEAWAY
I’m giving out a copy of the audiobook to one random commenter on this article! Any comment will do. Ask a question or just say hello and you’re entered to win. I’ll reach out to the winner by replying to your comment.
I hope this helped you out. If you want more passive income videos from me, subscribe and check out this recent article all about my April 30-day challenge taking and selling stock photography as a total amateur:
Watch the video version of today’s article on YouTube here.
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Frankie Calkins (M. Ed) is a Digital Marketing Director by day. On nights and weekends, he’s an author, YouTuber, and course creator. He lives in the Seattle, Washington area. Contact: [email protected]
