In this episode of the Self-Publishing with ALLi Member Q&A podcast, hosts Michael La Ronn and Sacha Black discuss whether authors who narrate their own audiobooks should file for copyright registration of the performance rights in addition to registering the text.
Other questions include:
- What affordable alternatives exist to expensive PO boxes for UK authors who need a postal address for their newsletter
- Should authors delay book publication if they cannot obtain a Library of Congress control number during a government shutdown
- How can middle-grade authors market their books while complying with laws around children and content
- What should authors do when experiencing quality control problems with IngramSpark orders
- Should authors enable or disable DRM on Amazon in light of new policies allowing readers to download epub files
And more!
Listen to the Podcast: Should Authors Copyright Their Audiobook Performances?
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About the Hosts
Michael La Ronn is ALLi’s Outreach Manager. He is the author of over 80 science fiction & fantasy books and self-help books for writers. He writes from the great plains of Iowa and has managed to write while raising a family, working a full-time job, and even attending law school classes in the evenings (now graduated!). You can find his fiction at www.michaellaronn.com and his videos and books for writers at www.authorlevelup.com.
Sacha Black is a bestselling and competition winning author, rebel podcaster, speaker and casual rule breaker. She writes fiction under a secret pen name and other books about the art of writing. She lives in England, with her wife and genius, giant of a son. You can find her on her website, her podcast, and on Instagram.
Read the Transcript
Michael La Ronn: Hello and welcome to Self-Publishing with ALLi. This is the Member Q&A Podcast and we're here to answer your most burning self-publishing questions. My name is Michael La Ronn and I'm joined by Sacha Black. What's up, Sacha?
Sacha Black: Hey! How are you?
Michael La Ronn: I'm hanging in there. I went on a family vacation to Guatemala — two weeks in the mountains, on the beach, in the jungle. Came back super relaxed. And I actually didn't use my phone at all. I brought an old iPhone 6 just in case, but I got locked out of my Google account the moment I landed, so I might as well have not had it. I took eight paperback books and read all of them. When I got back I thought: I need to make some changes in my relationship with technology.
Sacha Black: I totally agree. When we go on our family vacation I read something like 17 books in 14 days. I take my Kindle but that's it. You come back so refreshed and so present. There's something about that disconnect that's really healthy for creators.
Today's theme is business — we've prioritized business questions for this episode. We'll also each share a success and a failure from the past year at the end of the show, and announce the theme for next time.
Question 1: UK Postal Address for Newsletter (Matt)
Michael La Ronn: First question is from Matt. UK law requires newsletters to include a full postal address, but for personal reasons he doesn't want to use his home address. He's looked into PO boxes but they cost $45 a month, which is more than he can afford. What do other authors use?
Sacha Black: I came across this same problem when I was starting out. The key is in the keywords — postal boxes in the UK are very expensive, but you don't have to use a traditional PO box. Try searching for ‘ghost mail,' ‘virtual mail,' or ‘virtual office.' I use one that's about £120 a year, and then I top up with credit — if nobody sends physical mail, the credit just sits there. I had another ghost mail service that was about £60 a year. If you also want to register your business at that address, it's a bit more, since UK business addresses are searchable. But there are definitely cheaper solutions — you just need the right search terms.
Michael La Ronn: Here in the US, UPS Stores offer something similar — you get a PO box but with a real street address, which satisfies state LLC requirements. And many of these virtual mail services will scan your incoming mail and send you a PDF, which is really convenient. There are a lot of YouTube reviews of these services, so you can find UK-specific ones there too.
Question 2: Library of Congress Numbers During a Government Shutdown (WW)
Michael La Ronn: Next question is from WW. This was asked during the US government shutdown in late 2025. She's preparing to publish her first book and has requested a Library of Congress control number, but no new numbers are being issued during the shutdown. Does she need it before publication, or can she add it later?
When the government shuts down, a lot of things stop or get delayed — the Library of Congress is one of them. Fortunately the government is back open, so hopefully WW was able to get her number. But for anyone this happens to in the future: a Library of Congress control number should not hold up publication. Publish the book and revise it when you get the number. There's no requirement that you have it before publishing — you can always go back and update. I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.
Question 3: PR and Media Services in Europe (Danieli)
Michael La Ronn: Next question is from Danieli: are there PR and media outreach companies that promote books in Europe?
Sacha Black: I don't know of any Europe-specific companies off the top of my head. There are companies that do bookish social media marketing, but their client base is global rather than specifically European.
Michael La Ronn: I'd start with our service ratings directory at selfpublishingadvice.org/ratings, and ask in the member forum too. But this also comes down to the question we ask all the time on this show: how do you know if the marketing they're going to do will actually work? The honest answer is you don't. Be careful about how you're spending your money. You might get a bigger return by understanding your market and doing the work yourself — or at least being very selective about which services you use and vetting their results carefully.
Question 4: Should I Register Copyright for My Audiobook? (Dharma)
Michael La Ronn: Next question is from Dharma. She's in the US, narrates her own audiobooks, and has filed for copyright registration for the text of her upcoming novel. Should she also file for the performance rights of the audiobook since she's narrating and producing it?
Sacha Black: That's a great question. I find myself thinking about the implications of licensing your voice down the line — if you license your voice later, could that conflict with pre-registered audio you'd narrated? I'm not sure. I think it depends on your risk tolerance and what you want to protect: the integrity of the story as yours, or specifically your voice.
Michael La Ronn: I looked this up while we were talking. Traditional publishers do register the copyright for audiobook recordings, so you can do it as an indie too. The question is whether you should. Copyright registration in the US serves two main purposes: proving ownership of the work, and giving you the ability to sue for infringement. The recording of your audiobook is a separate work from the text, so it can be registered separately.
My honest recommendation: just look at the Anthropic settlement and think about how much bigger that settlement would have been if every affected author had registered every one of their books. A lot of people are kicking themselves right now. The general advice up until a few years ago was ‘register if you can, but you don't have to.' I think now it's no longer optional — you really should register your works. History tends to rhyme, and what happened with the text of books could happen with audiobook recordings. If you have the income and inclination, register the audiobook recording too. It's not common in self-publishing yet, but it's not a bad idea.
Question 5: Which Print-on-Demand Service Should I Use? (Joe)
Michael La Ronn: Next question is from Joe. His manuscript is complete and cover art is done. He's looking for a print-on-demand publisher and wants to know what to ask when vetting them.
Sacha Black: Print on demand is a pretty established system, so the main thing to understand is your royalty split — what percentage of the sale price you actually receive. The main POD options are KDP Print, IngramSpark, BookVault, and Lulu. You get limited choices compared to offset printing — paper weight, cream or white paper, book size. It's relatively straightforward.
Michael La Ronn: At a minimum you should publish your paperback with both KDP Print and IngramSpark. That's just the reality of being competitive. Amazon is its own ecosystem, and Ingram is the largest book distributor in the world — if you want bookstores to be able to order your book, you need to be in Ingram. That doesn't mean you'll automatically get into bookstores, but it makes it possible.
BookVault and Lulu offer some attractive features that KDP and Ingram don't, like wire-bound books and a wide range of special edition options that authors use for Kickstarters. Sacha's books are a great example of what BookVault can produce. But for global distribution, KDP and Ingram are your foundation.
Question 6: Marketing Middle Grade Books Within Legal Limits (Rick)
Michael La Ronn: Next question is from Rick: how do you market middle grade books — websites, emails, newsletters — while respecting laws around marketing to children?
Sacha Black: You don't market to children — you market to their parents. Your readers might be children, but your audience is parents. Think about how you can make parents' lives easier: why would they want to read your books to their children, what are the benefits, can you bundle and offer a discount, can you do seasonal promotions? Kids are really in their teens by the time they start getting email addresses, so your email list is parents.
I'd also strongly recommend the ALLi guidebook on this — it's Self-Publishing Children's and YA Books by Karen Inglis, also known as ALLi's Guide to Kid Lit Publishing for Authors. If you're an ALLi member, you can download it free from your dashboard. If not, it's available at selfpublishingstore.com, with proceeds going to ALLi. Karen also has her own version worth looking at.
Question 7: What to Do When IngramSpark Has Problems (Sue)
Michael La Ronn: Next question is from Sue, who has been having IngramSpark issues — books ordered but not sent, and books that arrived with problems.
Sacha Black: Their contact desk has had its ups and downs over the years, but that's the first place to go. Be very clear and specific in every message, because different staff members may pick up the ticket and they don't always have the full history. Some Ingram country offices have a phone number — it's worth Googling for yours, because speaking to a human can resolve things faster. Like any company, the quality of the response depends on who picks it up.
Michael La Ronn: Be persistent. And if you're an ALLi member and you're not getting anywhere, reach out to us — we may be able to intervene and help.
DRM: Amazon's New Policy
Sacha Black: I want to add a quick business topic before we go to the lessons learned. DRM — Amazon is now enabling readers to fully download the epub if DRM is not applied to the book.
Michael La Ronn: I saw this and honestly, I think it's a win for readers. Kobo has allowed this for a long time — in fact I buy books on Kobo partly because I can download them to my third-party reading tablet. Yes, some authors will worry about piracy, but I still think piracy is the least of our problems today. Even pirated copies can bring fans into your ecosystem. DRM doesn't really work anyway — you can find tutorials on how to strip it from an ebook in minutes. I don't think this changes much for most authors. We have bigger fish to fry.
Successes and Failures: Lessons from the Year
Michael La Ronn: Let's close by sharing one success and one failure from the past year — something we're proud of and something that taught us a lesson.
Sacha Black: My biggest success was opening a warehouse. It's already too small and we need a bigger one, but it's been incredible. The story looks like it's going to break a quarter of a million pounds this year. I think it's succeeded for four reasons: I have books you can only buy direct from my website — not on Amazon or anywhere else — so there's an exclusivity factor. I've signed 14,000 books this year, because every book that leaves the warehouse is signed. We include goodies like character art and bookmarks. And if you pre-order direct, I ship before it goes live on Amazon or Kobo. Those four things together are why it's worked so well.
Michael La Ronn: My big success was getting a new mentor, which helped me mentally. But more broadly, my success this year was stopping — just stopping doing a lot of things I didn't need to do. And it didn't hurt the health of the business at all. I've only published a couple of books by design. After years of go-go-go, I needed to take a step back, focus on mental health, get a bit more grounded. And that was my biggest success.
Sacha Black: My biggest failure is the flip side of my biggest success. My one goal for the year was to get ahead of the publication schedule, and I didn't hit it. Opening the warehouse is the reason. It's my lowest word count year in probably five years — I haven't even hit 200,000 words, which is really frustrating. I made decisions that had consequences, and I didn't have the team infrastructure in place to protect my writing time from the warehouse demands. The lesson going into next year: I'm giving myself one goal only, which is to get ahead of publication. Nothing else.
What's strange is this is also my highest financial year ever, despite the lowest number of releases. So there's something in that.
Michael La Ronn: That's happened to me too — years where productivity was lower but income was higher. Maybe the universe's way of saying it's okay to slow down sometimes. My failure was consistency. I wasn't showing up to write as regularly as I normally do, which is very out of character for me. I did have work published — I was in three issues of Writer's Digest and had several short stories published — but the daily writing habit took a hit. That's something to correct next year.
The big takeaway for both of us, I think: just because you're having a bad year doesn't mean you're having a bad career. Technology makes us focus on the immediacy of the moment, but if you take the long view across twelve years in this business, you're going to have amazing years, not-so-great years, and a lot of years in the middle. That's just cyclical. As long as you're making your best effort consistently — whatever that looks like for you — the law of numbers works in your favor.
Closing: Next Theme is Money
Michael La Ronn: The theme for our next episode is money — income for authors, all things money-related. Send us your questions. The one caveat is we can't answer tax questions specific to your individual country, but we'll give everything else a go. If you're an ALLi member, log in at allianceindependentauthors.org and submit your question through the link in the menu. Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll talk to you next time. Bye.
