How to Distribute Your Audiobook Globally: The Self-Publishing with ALLi Podcast Featuring Anna Featherstone.

In this episode of the Self-Publishing with ALLi Podcast, Anna Featherstone speaks with audiobook marketing and distribution expert Lindsay Senior about how to distribute your audiobook globally. They discuss distribution platforms, library access, pricing strategies, and ways indie authors can reach more listeners.

Listen to the Podcast: How to Distribute Your Audiobook Globally

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About the Host

Anna Featherstone is ALLi’s nonfiction adviser and an author advocate and mentor. A judge of The Australian Business Book Awards and Australian Society of Travel Writers awards, she’s also the founder of Bold Authors and presents author marketing and self-publishing workshops for organizations, including Byron Writers Festival. Anna has authored books including how-to and memoirs and her book Look-It’s Your Book! about writing, publishing, marketing, and leveraging nonfiction is on the Australian Society of Authors recommended reading list. When she’s not being bookish, Anna’s into bees, beings, and the big issues of our time.

About the Guest

Lindsay Senior is a seasoned audiobook marketing and distribution expert with a passion for helping authors bring their stories to life in audio. As the head of marketing at Author’s Republic, she works closely with independent authors and publishers to maximize their audiobook sales across 50+ global platforms—including Audible, Apple, Spotify, Google, and major library networks. Lindsay brings a deep understanding of the audiobook publishing landscape and audience engagement.

Read the Transcripts

Anna Featherstone: Hello out there to all you writers living and creating in both hemispheres of this beautiful planet.

I'm Anna Featherstone, recording from the mid-north coast of Australia on the unceded lands of the Birpai people, the original storytellers and custodians of this remarkable place. I'm also ALLi's non-fiction advisor, though I have been sneaking in some fiction titles to my reading list lately too, and this episode will be of value no matter your genre.

As an author mentor helping writers at all stages of book creation and marketing process, I think we're all going to get a lot of value from this podcast today, which is all about producing and distributing audiobooks.

We're being joined by Lindsay Senior from Authors Republic. Lindsay is a seasoned audiobook marketing and distribution expert with a passion for helping authors bring their stories to life in audio.

As the head of marketing at Authors Republic, she works closely with independent authors and publishers to maximize their audiobook sales across more than 50 global platforms. Lots of big ones and some small ones she'll be talking about too, and also major library networks. So, Lindsay brings a deep understanding of the audiobook publishing landscape and audience engagement.

Welcome to you, Lindsay!

Lindsay Senior: Thank you so much. It's great to be here. I'm so happy to join you.

Anna Featherstone: So, tell me, what audiobooks have you been listening to lately?

Lindsay Senior: So lately, one of my favorite things to do is listen to audiobooks in the car with my kids. So, that's a favorite for everybody and keeps the journey pretty calm. We've been listening to the Green Ember series and trying to get through that because they have some new books that have come out also by SD Smith. It's a crowd pleaser for when we're all together, so that's been played frequently lately.

Anna Featherstone: Yeah, isn't that great that audiobooks can bring generations together as well?

It's like sitting around the campfire listening to stories but you're driving.

Lindsay Senior: It's great, and they're so accessible now that you don't have to carry around physical copies. For example, my kids and their friends are just so used to having all these audiobooks at their fingertips and listening to them when they fall asleep or learning how to read while they listen to the book and have the physical copy in their hands.

Anna Featherstone: I've been listening to a memoir by Maggie Walters. She's an author that I've been working with for a while and her book's called Split: A Life Shared Living with Multiple Personality Disorder. It's an incredible book. She crowdfunded the audiobook production, and one of the things in the process I found really amazing, and there's all different ways you can produce a book, but Maggie in her memoir, her alters, which is what the other personalities are called, they actually contribute to the book. So, they have parts in the book, and I thought, how is that going to play out in the audio book?

In the end, they decided not to use voice actors for those parts, because some of the voices are younger and they're all different ages and have different personalities. In the end, Maggie recorded it all herself, but then they made these micro changes to the speed, the pitch, and the tone of those different sections.

It's just quite remarkable how they're able to just slow her voice down or speed it up or just change the pitch a bit so that you can really tell who the different person is speaking. So, it's fascinating what you can actually do creatively with an audiobook.

Lindsay Senior: It is, and we do have authors from time to time who have stories with many different viewpoints, and they ask about casting multiple narrators, which is certainly a path that they can take.

There's nothing wrong with that, but there is a lot that you can do, or even voice actors can change their voice in so many ways that it's not always a necessity to do that. You could have one narrator fulfil many roles between technology and acting and everything that's available with audiobooks.

Anna Featherstone: Yeah, it's just amazing.

So, I first came across Authors Republic maybe five/six years ago, because Australian authors in other countries around the world, we don't all get direct access to ACX, which is the Amazon side of audiobook production and distribution. So, the only way we could get our books onto Audible was through a service such as Authors Republic.

You guys were a lifesaver for me because I had a memoir, Honey Farm Dreaming, and I just remember, it got uploaded and I've never needed to think about it again, because you guys just send it everywhere. Even today, I get random messages from people all over the world, like from Bermuda, from all these random places, and they tell me that while they've been gardening, they've been listening, or they're out on their tractor having a laugh. So, it's just amazing.

I found it quite seamless. So, I'm, pretty excited to talk to you today.

For people who aren't aware of what Authors Republic is or does, can you tell us a little about the company and what you do?

Lindsay Senior: Yes, of course. So, Authors Republic started about 10 years ago as an audiobook distribution aggregator. Having one place where an author can come, upload their audiobook, and have that audiobook pushed out to multiple different retail and library platforms.

We've grown now where we work with 50 plus distribution partners.

So, that's still the retail channels, libraries and streaming services now, as well, as they continue to grow. Then more recently, we continue to do distribution, obviously, and we're focused on audiobooks still, but more recently, we've also introduced production capabilities for authors who need that, and we also do some marketing tools for authors to utilize to market their own audiobooks into our platform as well.

So, we've really grown into a one-stop audiobook platform to try to meet needs of self-published authors or indie publishers who are looking for audiobook support.

Anna Featherstone: Okay, so let's focus on the distribution side for a minute.

Who are some of the platforms that you distribute to? So, if someone puts their audiobook up on your site, who can you send it out to?

Lindsay Senior: It's going to be all of the major platforms that you might expect. So, Amazon, Audible, Spotify, obviously is prominent in the market now, Google, Apple, the library channels, like Hoopla and Overdrive, Bibliotheca.

Then we also have some that might not be as well known. Kobo, obviously, has their audiobooks division. We have Storytel. We have BookBeat, which might be more popular in Europe or Asia. We also have some retail platforms that are specific for certain genres. We even have a manga platform, and we have some manga series that have been doing really well.

Interestingly enough, I wouldn't have thought that before getting into audiobooks, but there's all sorts of different series that can perform well. We really have something for everybody.

Anna Featherstone: Okay. So, can an author choose who out of those that they want you to distribute to? Like, for some reason, they might not want to be on a certain service.

Lindsay Senior: Yes, they can. So, while we always recommend going as wide as possible to increase your chances of finding all listeners, authors can opt-out of channels. So, there are some ways that they can opt-out as part of our platform, when they're going through the distribution process. But if there are specific channels that they'd like to opt-out of, they can just contact our customer support team. They can opt them out. We just ask that's done at the start of the process before their book goes into distribution because once a book is out, it takes some time to pull it down, to do the takedown process. But authors are able to choose where their audiobook goes.

Anna Featherstone: Do some of your distribution partners turn books down, and why might they do that?

Lindsay Senior: Yes, some of our distribution partners will turn books down. In some cases, it might be because they only accept certain genres, maybe only children's stories or again, manga or faith based. That can be the case with a couple.

There could also be technical spec issues, which is what we see most frequently if something is turned down. If they don't meet all the technical specs, and with audiobooks there are many, then they will be rejected.

If we hear that happens, we will let authors know, and we'll give them advice on how to fix it. But typically, it could be an audio quality issue. So, if there's background noise or inconsistent volume levels or metadata issues, so missing credits or if their cover art doesn't meet the guidelines, those can be some reasons.

We also have had retail platforms turn away AI-generated titles as well, so that's another thing to consider.

Anna Featherstone: What's the payment look like? Do authors pay you, or what's the commission breakdown? How does pricing work?

Lindsay Senior: So, Authors Republic, with distribution, it is a straight royalty share. Once an author is up and selling, and their audiobook is on platforms, they will get a monthly payment, and that will be all the earned royalties across all the platforms in one monthly payment. So, retailers take their cut and then they pay Authors Republic out, what we call earned royalties. From the earned royalties, we pay authors 80 percent, and we retain 20 percent. So, there's no additional setup fees or monthly subscriptions or anything like that.

We do what authors to do well, so we always try to provide any advice or anything that we can do to help the audio book sell well.

Anna Featherstone: And what kind of percentage are the platforms taking before it comes to you?

Lindsay Senior: It's a great question. There's so many different models within the audiobook space, but typically we negotiate some of the best rates possible with the different audiobook retailers. For a la carte, for example, it's usually 50 percent, where the distributor will keep 50 percent and pay us out 50 percent, which is those earned royalties.

Anna Featherstone: Okay, and then from that 50 percent, the author gets 80 percent and you guys retain 20 percent for managing everything?

Lindsay Senior: That's right.

Anna Featherstone: Do some people list their book direct with certain platforms and then use you to reach the rest?

Lindsay Senior: Some do. There's not as many opportunities in the audiobook space to go direct, just because of all the different files and technical specs.

So, in comparison to the eBook world, there's just not as many opportunities to go direct in the audiobook world, but there are some, and in that case, there are times where authors prefer to go direct, and then they manage those multiple relationships. Or they can do everything through us or choose select channels, however they want to do it.

Anna Featherstone: Is there a minimum or maximum listening time for the books you accept?

Lindsay Senior: We don't have a minimum or a maximum time. Some platforms will want at least five minutes, just to make it where people will listen. You'll probably get better engagement if it's a bit longer than that, but where there really are length requirements is when it comes down to section or chapter lengths.

So, our technical requirements, because we're trying to make sure that every single platform we distribute to, we want to make sure that they will accept it. We're doing universal sort of technical specs to make sure that happens for authors.

So, we require that the chapter section lengths are not longer than 78 minutes. They'll also need to make sure there's a sample file, which is between 1 and 5 minutes. Those are really more of where the length of time becomes very specific with requirements.

Anna Featherstone: I've got to say, 78 minutes is a very long chapter. I don't think I've ever written a chapter that long and I hope never to. It would need its own index, I think.

Okay. It's fairly easy for us authors to be able to make changes to an eBook. So, let's say we've produced it and then we're like, oh no, I found an error somewhere. How does that work with an audiobook file and then getting you to then send that out again?

Lindsay Senior: With audiobooks, as you might guess or probably already know, it's not as straightforward as with eBooks. So, authors can make updates. We can put a title into editing, there's ways to do that. Obviously, there could be some time and money on the author's part to make those. So, that's a consideration. And then we will have to, once we have the corrected files, push that back out to the retailer.

So, it will be on the retailers as to how quickly they can review that and get that backup on their platform. It's not immediate. So, there is some delay with that.

We have a pretty comprehensive help center that has all these different requirements, all these specs laid out, and I always really recommend that authors look through that carefully and make sure their files are up to spec.

Things happen, so of course they can update, but if they can avoid having technical mistakes, and that's the reason there needs to be an update, that can save them a lot of time and lost sales and extra money to fix a production.

Anna Featherstone: Yeah, I think that's what I found with audiobooks. They take a bit longer than you think, and you really need it to be as perfect as possible before uploading.

I think when we come to launch a book, we're like, all I have to do is upload the file and it's going to be live the next day. So, when someone hits upload on their audiobook to you, what cushion do you suggest they build into their launch and everything around that book being live?

Lindsay Senior: With audiobooks it can depend on the retailer. So, we will usually recommend that you want your files, if there's a very specific date, at least a month out.

There are times when retailers can get backed up. Typically, that can be around the end of a year or the beginning of a new year. But it can take retailers anywhere from a day or two to a month to get a title up. They might have a delay on their end where it's just taking a while to go and do their QA process to check all the files, or there could be some sort of technical issue where now the audiobook is coming back, we at Authors Republic are informing the author, and now we're in a cycle of edits if it didn't meet technical specs to go live on that platform.

But usually, the holdup is just somewhere in the retailer QA process and the length of time it takes them to review the files to ensure they're able to go on their platform.

Anna Featherstone: Okay, and I know more and more authors are selling audiobooks direct from their own site as well, using different tools and techniques. So, if we're doing that, can we still use you to distribute the audiobook?

Lindsay Senior: Yes, there's no issue with authors selling direct from their website or from a service that allows them to do that. We don't have any exclusivity agreements in that way. The only thing that we ask is that, if an author is distributing through us, they do not use another distribution aggregator. Because if we start to send the same audiobook to the same channels, that's going to cause issues where the audiobook could be rejected completely, or there will be duplicates.

One issue with that could be you're getting reviews on but they're not together, so you're hurting your own audiobook by not showing how many reviews you have. So, that's the only real thing that we ask is that you don't use another distribution aggregator to send out, but otherwise, yes, they can sell directly on their site, of course.

Anna Featherstone: That makes a lot of sense. Otherwise, everyone sees it when there's an ISBN used by different platforms and there's conflicts.

Okay. So, Amazon has a service called WhisperSync. Can you explain what that is and how, if authors want to be enabled for that, that might happen?

Lindsay Senior: Yes, Whisper Sync is a service that allows readers to switch between their Kindle eBook and then listening to their audiobook, and they stay in the same place as they're reading or listening.

So, for Whisper Sync to be enabled, an audiobook has to be available on Audible and it has to have a matching Kindle edition. It also needs to have pretty much identical text between the audiobook and the eBook, that's a really key thing.

It has to also meet Audible's technical requirements for synchronization. So, at the end of the day, Audible determines the eligibility automatically. It's not something that we manually enable for authors, or the authors do themselves, it's at the discretion of Audible, but that's the program and what it does.

Anna Featherstone: Yeah, okay. If you did want your book to be ready for WhisperSync, you really have to let your narrator know, no riffing, stick to the book.

Lindsay Senior: And the closer to a hundred percent, the better.

Anna Featherstone: Yeah, okay.

Being able to gift books to reviewers and important people is something that a lot of us indie authors do, because it's to get either reviews or just to spread the word. So, do you offer promotion codes to authors to use in that way?

Lindsay Senior: We do, and that's something that we love as a marketing tactic for authors, whether to get reviews or as some sort of giveaway. Say they have a series, and they can give the code for the first book in the series and encourage people to continue listening to the rest of the series that way.

But we do have the opportunity to have, we call them promo codes, redemption codes, review codes, same idea, and that can be done through our platform.

So, once an author has an account and they have a book in distribution with us, they can request promo codes straight from their account, and they're fulfilled within a week or two.

They can request promo codes from audiobooks.com, which we fulfil then, and that's unlimited in the number that they can request.

We also have the ability to have promo codes from Spotify as well, and that's capped at 100 codes per title. So, that can all just be done from their Authors Republic account.

Anna Featherstone: Yeah, and there's no charge to the author for that, but the author is giving away their book for free.

Lindsay Senior: That's right, yes.

Anna Featherstone: That's pretty cool, because that's a really good way to spread the word, that's for sure.

Okay, so let's get into the technical bits.

Firstly, there's a lot of requirements for all the different platforms to accept an audiobook. So, consistency of sound, including opening and closing credits in separate files, including one to five seconds of silence at the beginning and end of each track, and then lots of science- sounding terms, such as measure between minus 23 dB and minus 18 dB RMS.

That's when I tuned out.

I was like, okay, I don't think I can pull all that together, which is why I've got someone to help with my production. Some authors can handle all that and massive applause to you, but for people like me who can't handle all that, as well as narrate and produce because we're overwhelmed, what services do you offer when it comes to narration, recording, and production?

Lindsay Senior: So, Authors Republic, like I said, we launched some options for production in the last few years. There are really two main ones that we offer. One is we have a narrator marketplace, so our Authors Republic Studio. That is where, once somebody has an Authors Republic account, which is free to create, they can log in and they can see about 400 professional narrator profiles and their samples. It shows their per finished hour rates, which is the rate that a narrator sets based on what the anticipated final audiobook length is, and rule of thumb is typically every per finished hour takes about three hours of work for the narrator.

But they can see the entire roster that we offer, and authors can choose to hold open or closed auditions. They can request a specific narrator's audition to see if they're interested in voicing their audiobook. Then once they find a narrator, and the author and the narrator agree on the project and the price, the author then sends payment to Authors Republic, which we hold in escrow until the audiobook is completed.

At which point, when it's completed and approved, we pass the entire payment on to the narrator. So, we don't charge a setup fee or any sort of cut to Authors Republic for that, but it's a secure way for both parties to hold money until the project is completed. So, that's one way.

Then we also can recommend production studios for authors that might be in their area. There's plenty that are global as well, and we're happy to make recommendations or referrals so that they can have a production manager really take the entire project from start to finish. They can cast the narrator. They can go through the entire editing process and deliver final files that are ready to be uploaded for distribution.

That typically costs a little bit more, but it is where the author doesn't have to do all that work on their own, so it can be well worth it as well.

Anna Featherstone: Okay. I just want to ask a few questions about some of the things you said for people who don't know. What's the difference between an open and a closed audition?

Lindsay Senior: So, an open could be where narrators are just browsing through and they see that there's the opportunity that they could audition for an audiobook, and they could decide if it's something that seems like a good project for them. So, there could be multiple narrators just throwing their hat in the ring, basically.

If it's a closed audition, only narrators that the author invites are able to audition. So, it wouldn't be visible to all the narrators on the platform.

Anna Featherstone: How much text do they read in an audition? Do they actually read from the book?

Lindsay Senior: The author can have their manuscript there for them to look at, but there's also samples. So, every narrator already, as part of signing up, will do a reading of Little Women and they can also have other samples of their work already up.

So, some of it could be also bidding on the price that they think, when they take a look at the project, what their per finished hour rate would be.

Anna Featherstone: Okay, and how do narrators actually get on your list? Do you have people with accents from all over the world? How does that work for narrators?

Lindsay Senior: Yeah, we do, and narrators are also able to sign up for Authors Republic. So, we have a spot on our registration form where it can be selected that they're an author, somebody signing up as an author, or that they're a narrator.

If somebody signs up as a narrator, there are certain samples that they need to submit for our operations team to review, and then they're ultimately approved or told to try again another time, if their samples aren't up to spec, for example.

Then once they're approved, they're on our narrator marketplace and have a profile for authors to view.

Anna Featherstone: What are you seeing in that space? Is it mostly fiction books coming through for narration or non-fiction?

Lindsay Senior: I think we've got a little bit of everything. I would say that the majority of our books are coming from third parties. So, it's not required that people use us for production to distribute with us, and since we began as a distribution platform many people already know us in that way and are bringing finished audiobooks to us.

But we do have many authors that like to utilize the marketplace as well, and it really can be anything from self-help books to children's books and other fiction titles.

Anna Featherstone: Yeah. I do like that you offer authors different ways to access your service. So, people can bring their completed book or use bits and pieces of service where they need. It's really helpful.

So, what type of author would you say Authors Republic is ideal for?

Lindsay Senior: I would say it's ideal for self-published authors, obviously, who want really great customer support, maybe they're new to audiobooks and they just have some questions. So, our customer support team is very responsive, and we also have a really great help center to walk through those technical specs.

In addition, we have an audio validation tool. So, somebody could come and check their audiobook before submitting to see initially how it would QA.

Anna Featherstone: And QQA is quality assurance?

Lindsay Senior: That's right, yes.

Their audiobook would still go through our human quality assurance team to make sure it's top levels for everything before going on to our retailers. We also have some indie publishers that, it's easier to have everything housed in one spot than try to do everything themselves, so they also come to us. And authors that are outside of North America or places where they can access ACX, we're a great resource for them too to get to some of those channels.

Anna Featherstone: Yeah, true.

Okay. So, what interesting things are you seeing in the audiobook space?

Lindsay Senior: We continue to see, which is great to say, especially on a podcast like this or any time I get to talk to authors, but we continue to see just great growth in the audiobook space.

So, while some of the other formats are declining, audiobooks just continue to grow. I think the most recent sales report that I saw, we weren't double digits again, we've been double digits for about a decade, it was 9 percent growth year over year, which is still great.

We're seeing still some strength in fiction genres, but like I said, at the top of the call, children's stories are really making some headway and continue to grow in this space. There's still opportunity there, especially as kids get more and more used to having audiobooks and are comfortable with these streaming channels.

We're seeing continued growth in foreign languages as well. So, English is obviously huge in audiobooks, but there's continued growth in other markets like Spanish, German, French.

Anna Featherstone: Is that something you offer as well, helping authors with foreign language translations of their books, or do they have to come with it already translated, or they bring the recording in, or they find a narrator who can speak in that language?

Lindsay Senior: Yeah, it'd be more of the latter. We don't have a service that explicitly provides that, but they could bring it in, and we do have narrators in our marketplace, for example. We don't have only English-speaking narrators, there are other languages represented as well. We have some studios that we could refer to also who could be able to help with that sort of thing.

Anna Featherstone: Population wise or listenership wise, what are some of the biggest other-language markets?

Lindsay Senior: German is quite big actually, and then Spanish and French as well.

Anna Featherstone: That's for all those authors out there who are looking at translations, I know a lot are.

Marketing. So, it's all well and good to spend however many thousands of dollars creating an audiobook or all your time, but if no one hears it, what's the point?

So, what are some of your hot marketing tips or what are you seeing people doing well with their marketing, with their audiobooks?

Lindsay Senior: So, a tactic that I think works quite well is, if an author has a good list of their readers and listeners, to survey them. It doesn't have to be audiobook specific, but in terms of audiobooks, to see what channels they're listening to their audiobooks on.

It can help to focus their energy and their time and their money on the channels where readers are hearing them. So, that can be a good tactic, just to survey the listeners they already have.

And then making use of tools available to them. For example, on Authors Republic, we have our promo codes. It's free to use in terms of you don't have to pay for them, there's obviously time an author might have to put into that, but see if those work, test things out.

See what works and keep running with that, and if it doesn't work, pause and try something else.

We also have lots of promotional opportunities with our retail partners. So, if somebody has an Authors Republic account, we list all the different promotional opportunities that are available at a given time and that cycles through the calendar depending on different themes throughout the year.

But an author could look at the entire calendar and just submit their audiobook. It's a nomination. It's ultimately up to the retailer editorial team if they'll be selected for that or not, but that's a great way to just get their audiobook out there.

Then there's retailers like Chirp who have some really interesting promotions, like their Chirp audiobook deals that can be submitted for, and we can assist with that.

But it's worth trying the different platforms to see where they can find listeners as well and trying different things. I think going with the low cost or free options that are available is a good way to start too.

Anna Featherstone: Have you seen any other interesting tactics being used, like on the ground or guerrilla type marketing for audiobooks?

Lindsay Senior: I think having that series, like we talked about with having the giveaway codes for the first book in a series, and lead into the rest, has been really great.

This maybe isn't a specific marketing piece, but when authors find other authors in their genre, especially if they're getting into a subgenre, and can reach out to them and maybe create some sort of author group to run ideas off of each other, because marketing and listeners can vary so much depending on genre.

We've seen that be really helpful for authors to see what's working for others in their space and just collaborate and help one another grow. That's another tip that I think is really beneficial.

Anna Featherstone: Yeah, there's a lady called Rebecca Hefner who does a lot of audio. She was great. I learned a lot from her about that collaborative marketing, and she's really out front with being wide with audio books and all the strategies around that.

I suppose for people who don't have a series, but just have that one book, when I'm talking with authors, it always depends on the book for me if I recommend they do an audiobook or not, but for those who it's worth it to, even if it's just the one book, it's giving the reader or the potential reader, the ability to enjoy their book in whatever format that suits them.

So, not everyone does read books. They prefer to listen, so that's a really interesting thing. Are people excluding people if they don't do an audiobook, because for some people now that's their preferential way to read.

Lindsay Senior: Yeah, and we have had several authors and what's important to them is accessibility and they would like an audiobook. They really like that they can reach the libraries as well, just to make sure that anyone who requires an audiobook is able to enjoy their work.

So, that's a top reason that some authors will come, not necessarily even for sales, not necessarily worried about the marketing of it, but just want to make sure it's available.

There are also others who, their fans, their readers just want to have the book in any way. So, they will get the hard cover, they will get the eBook, and they will want the audiobook as well to fully immerse themselves in that world. So, that's another aspect of it too.

Anna Featherstone: You just mentioned libraries there.

How do authors structure their pricing of their audiobook for library sales? How does that work?

Lindsay Senior: Audiobooks have different models as well, just like retail platforms. Some of them are where the library will actually purchase an audiobook and then they will rent that, let's say it's one copy, they will rent that one copy out. So, that is one way with libraries.

The other model is that there's just a cost per checkout. So, you could get more volume in that way. The cost for checkout is lower than the initial upfront cost an audiobook would be, but that's how audiobook pricing usually works.

Then for the library books, the price is usually higher than the retail price because it will be checked out many times. So, if an audiobook was purchased by a library at full price, the price would be typically higher than retail because it's going to be going out to multiple users over time, rather than just one person purchasing the audiobook.

Anna Featherstone: And sometimes that scares off indie authors. They think, oh, I don't want to just get one sale or a double sale for a book that might be loaned 100 times. But I find, regularly, with my books, that firstly, libraries give you great discoverability. People might only borrow from libraries, so that's how they're going to come across your book.

But so many people write to me and say, I borrowed your book from the library, but now I need my own copy, because they want to underline it, or they want to do more things with it. So, I say if, you write a great book, definitely get it into libraries because it's just a fantastic way to reach readers.

With the pricing as well. Audiobooks are a bit different in that, normally we think if we're a creator, we get to set our price, but it looks like the platforms take control of the pricing.

Lindsay Senior: There is a level of that with audiobooks and it's certainly different than eBooks in that way. We do allow authors to have a MSRP, which is the manufacturer's suggested retail price. So, they can suggest the price and some platforms will use that, and that's what they'll use for a la carte sales, for example. But not everybody.

There are other platforms that have their own scaling system for what the price will be. So, it's not definite. It's not up to Authors Republic. So, that is where the platforms in the audiobook space do have a bit more leeway, and it can also be dependent on their models. If they're credit based, what sort of subscription, which gets into all sorts of different details as well.

Anna Featherstone: Okay, and using your crystal ball, Lindsay, what do you see happening in the audiobook space going forward?

Lindsay Senior: I think it will continue to grow. It's obviously going to be interesting to see what continues to happen with AI, but the Audiobook Publishers Association recently had guidelines put out. So, hoping that those are abided by so there's not as much to weed through that's AI, rather than some of the quality audiobooks that we've grown accustomed to. I think that's something that we need to keep our eye on.

I think other genres who have not reached their full potential yet in the space will continue to grow as more and more listeners discover audiobooks and start to listen to their books, because we see it continuing to happen, whether it's younger readers now or it's just new regions worldwide as well.

Anna Featherstone: Yeah, this is random. I was driving up the highway on a bit of a road trip a few months ago and stopped in at, we call them service stations, highway fuel, basically. In the foyer, they literally had a huge audio book dispensing system, but they were all on CDs.

I thought that's a cool way to get people who maybe aren't as tech savvy into listening to audiobooks, and they were just free to take. So, I don't know if it was like old library book stock being put there, but I was like, that's such an interesting marketing tool.

Lindsay Senior: I haven't heard of that one before. That's really interesting, I'll have to keep that one in mind.

Anna Featherstone: Okay, Lindsay, anything else you would like to say to all of us indie authors out here about audiobooks or writing or anything?

Lindsay Senior: I think there's great reasons to do audiobooks. Obviously, I'm a big fan.

I think it's important for indie authors, especially to do their research and find out what path is right for them. Whether it's going the self-published route and paying for their production themselves, and then taking home a larger royalty once the book is selling, or indie authors can still go with traditional audiobook publishers for the audio side, and that might be what works best for them.

Then even once they decide on how they want to produce, if they do go self-published, there's different routes.

So, it's worth reaching out. They can always reach out to Authors Republic. We have all sorts of different recommendations or ways that we can help them out if they have questions about production or distribution.

Anna Featherstone: Yeah, and that is so true. Us indie authors, we do get to choose what we do with our rights. So, we can self-publish the eBook and the paperback, and then hand off the rights for the audio or vice versa. It's really cool to be able to pick and choose and change as we grow as well, and learn.

So, like any podcast, not everything may be relevant to you, the listener, out there today, but it's great information for you to help make decisions going forward.

Lindsay, I'm feeling a bit inspired to go write some more books so I can bring them to life in audio. So, now you've given me extra work to do.

Thanks, and thank you listeners. Here's to your project and here's to you.

Happy writing and publishing, and Lindsay, thank you again for joining us today.

Lindsay Senior: Thank you so much. It was great to be here.

Anna Featherstone: Fabulous. Okay. See you all next time on the podcast and enjoy.