ACX on What Audiobooks Can Do for Indie Authors

GoodEReader sat down with audiobook creation platform ACX at last week’s BookExpo America event to talk about the popularity of audiobooks. More importantly, the discussion evolved into what their creation and marketing can do in terms of discovery, sales, and reader fan base for indie authors. What most indie authors may not be aware of is that platform’s like Amazon’s ACX and the opportunities to reach even more readers exist at all. “ACX is the Audiobook Creation Exchange,” said Jason Ojalvo, VP of Content Creation at ACX.  “We are a marketplace where audio rights holders, like authors and publishers, can meet audio producers, like actors and recording studios. When they come together, they can meet one another and create their audiobook through the ACX system, upload it when its completed, and it goes for sale through our distribution network.” That network includes ACX’s portal, Audible, and iTunes. This distribution system to a broader reading audience can include exclusive or non-exclusive distribution. Under exclusive distribution, the royalty rate can be as high as 90%, while under non-exclusive it can still be distributed to those three major outlets but can also be pressed to CD, or sold through other websites or brick-and-mortar stores, but the royalty rate is significantly lower. But is this actually lucrative for the self-published authors? According to the variety of ways to create the audio file and the different methods of finding and compensating the voice talent, at the very least it stands to not be a risky investment, but many authors are finding the even more of their sales come from the audio version than from their print or ebook sales. “Indie authors are finding a lot of success, in fact, the majority of our books are from indie authors. We have a few Big Six publishers who use ACX, but the indie authors are really our bread-and-butter. They’re selling extremely well, and one of Audible’s bestsellers last year came through ACX, we had a couple of audio award nominees who came through ACX, and it’s becoming more mainstream. “That’s really our goal for ACX, to bring audiobooks more into the mainstream and have it be a form of entertainment along side film, TV, video games, newspapers, and audiobooks.” Ojalvo appreciates the comparison some people have made between ACX and Amazon’s other do-it-yourself platforms like Kindle Direct Publishing, as though it is the KDP of audiobooks, but it is especially the sentiment surrounding Amazon’s print-on-demand platform that he connected with. Much as with the idea that there’s no longer any reason an author should not make his indie title available in print, there’s no longer a reason not to create the audiobook edition. “I love that comparison. There’s no reason not to make an audiobook. That’s one of  the reasons that ACX launched. We did the research and found that only about five percent of professionally published books were turned into audiobooks. What about the other 95%? They deserve to be heard. So we created ACX so that any author or publisher can turn their books into audiobooks. There’s no reason for any audio right to lie fallow.” ACX on What Audiobooks Can Do for Indie Authors is a post from: E-Reader News

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