Daphne Blazefire Series
I’m currently investigating Audible for the Daphne series. I’ve already crossed over the barrier of “if” I’ll do it and I’m in the phase of “when” I’ll do it and how to make that happen.
TL;DR
Audible will happen for Novis Terminal by Summer at the latest.
Details, Details…
I’m in the process of getting my ACX account set up. Normally setting up an account like this takes about an hour, but unfortunately… my tax information won’t propertly update, so I had to download the W9, sign it and upload the thing. Yesterday, after the thing was still stuck in “Pending Validation.” I decided to submit a case to get someone to look at it. I had to do this for Amazon earlier because my address changed a while back, and I didn’t notice that my tax info on their site was actually wrong.
I see you’re eyes glazing over…Tax stuff… ew.
OK, so I had several decisions to make. I can hire a voice artist and pay $300 per 10k words. Novis Terminal is about 66k words, so the rough price I’d pay would be…$2,000. It’s a lot, but I can afford it, and if I were just going to do one book, I’d just write them a check (well, click the “add to cart” button) and be done with it. Extrapolating that price out to 10 books is $20k. Sounds like I’m buying a motorcycle or something. That means that Audible for all of the books at the same time is out, for now.
There is a much cheaper option… well, I’d have to trade my time for money. That option is to purchase a high-quality microphone (which I already did) and record it myself. I haven’t gotten to that stage yet. There’s a whole process of how it has to be done, plus I need a quiet space. Fortunately, our house has a large walk-in closet in the downstairs guest bedroom that is full of spare blankets, towels, and some clothes. There are no furnace registers in that closet, and when you stand inside and close the door, it has excellent deadening sound.
So…
- Microphone: check.
- Sound booth: check.
- I have a laptop: check.
- Time to record: Not yet.
There are a couple of things going through my mind about recording the book myself (probably the same questions that you’re thinking). First of all, there will be a learning period, which means the first book will take longer than the rest. Second, I don’t know how long it will take me to record a book. My wife and I do the Read-Out-Loud for 70k-word books on a weekend. It takes us about 10 hours on Saturday and another 8 on Sunday (average). When we do the ROL, we’re not doing quality voice, and sometimes we trip over our lips. So, I can use our ROL timing and double it to account for me reading at a high-quality.
The only thing that makes me hesitate about recording my own Daphne books is that Daphne is female, and it would be much nicer if I could hire a female voice artist to record the books. Then it’ll feel like it’s coming from Daphne’s voice. I could just record it, see how well it’s received, and then hire a voice artist to re-record it since my recording doesn’t cost anything (other than my time, which actually costs something).
Recording myself has a downside, and that is that I’d have to use time that I’m not using to write my books. Because I have a lot of writing to do, and right now I’m spending more time per day on my writing. Hence, the reason that The Missing Link is so early. I originally estimated that the book would be ready at the end of March, but now it’ll be published on March 1st. I want to keep up the momentum and finish the 10th book, To End the Silence. This leaves me with no time to record.
There is another option for Audible…
That is the Amazon AI-generated Audible. It’s built into the Kindle control panel, and I tried it out for The Travelever trilogy. Unfortunately, it’s not that great, and it comes with an awesome glaring warning on the purchase page stating that it uses virtual voice narration. That cuts off anyone from just listening to a sample because most people have a knee-jerk aversion to AI-anything. I’ve listened to the recording for each of those books, and it’s not bad. Someday, the tech will become so good that nobody will be able to tell the difference, but today is not that day (so, I sympathize with those who hate computer-read books).
The bottom line is that the Daphne series will never be recorded using the virtual voice option.
My Current Decision
Once my tax information clears and I can do something with my control panel on ACX, I’ll find a voice artist for Novis Terminal and plunk down the cash and get it done ASAP. That could start next week sometime, and I’m not sure how long it takes a narrator to do the recording. I also have to get an Audible cover art to match my book. I sent an email to my cover designer this morning for an estimate; he’s pretty fast, so that’s a nothingburger.
What about the rest of the books in the series?
That’s still up in the air. I’d like to gauge the income that will come from Audiobooks for the first book. It could be really poor, causing me to abandon any future releases on Audiobook. I don’t anticipate that happening, but one never knows. Those who only do Audiobooks and don’t read will probably skip the entire series if Audiobooks are not an option. That would affect the numbers, so I can’t get an accurate account of how much income Audiobooks would bring in for the series, and that’s a serious problem, because Audiobooks cost $2k per book, and the only cost for writing a book is the custom cover, which I’m paying $200 for each.
I’ll keep my readers updated on my Audiobook progress. There will definitely be a big announcement when I publish Novis Terminal on Audiobook. If you want to be notified, you can sign up for the newsletter on this website, or subscribe to this site, or go to my Amazon author webpage and hit the follow button (click here to go now), or follow me on Facebook.