I tried something new myself a few months ago, and while it hasn't turned into a windfall, writing is a long-game, and it certainly seems to be helping with that.
One of my shorter works available for purchase is PATHS: Three Short Horror Stories. It's just three short stories, unconnected, to give people a cheap little entry into my writing styles and moods. The stories themselves are more gothic than gore, and include a scientist taking part in a rare tribal ritual, a man trying to take advantage of the discovery of time travel, and a man haunted by the ghost of his wife that discovers things may be different than he knows.
So a few months ago, after seeing some projects from one of my fellow authors, Karl Drinkwater (Seriously, go read his stuff, it's awesome!), I decided to try an experiment and make PATHS available as an audiobook.
Like setting up for Kindle, the process is actually pretty simple, as there's a single website, ACX.com, that has most of the work already done for you. I just had to sign up and put my information in as a content creator, and away I went.
It starts with an audition. I selected a short piece from PATHS to represent what I thought would be the hardest challenge to a narrator, and posted it up. After a week I had 35 auditions of people reading the piece to choose from, a lot more than I expected, and after listening to 35 different versions of a two minute section of PATHS, I narrowed it down to four, and then chose my narrator.
From there, ACX has a pre-written contract where I fill in the dates I would like to see the project completed by, and how much I'm willing to pay for it, and I send it as an offer. If the narrator accepts, then it's on to the next stage, and not falling back to another audition.
Like setting up for Kindle, the process is actually pretty simple, as there's a single website, ACX.com, that has most of the work already done for you. I just had to sign up and put my information in as a content creator, and away I went.
It starts with an audition. I selected a short piece from PATHS to represent what I thought would be the hardest challenge to a narrator, and posted it up. After a week I had 35 auditions of people reading the piece to choose from, a lot more than I expected, and after listening to 35 different versions of a two minute section of PATHS, I narrowed it down to four, and then chose my narrator.
From there, ACX has a pre-written contract where I fill in the dates I would like to see the project completed by, and how much I'm willing to pay for it, and I send it as an offer. If the narrator accepts, then it's on to the next stage, and not falling back to another audition.
Thankfully, I haven't had to fall back to my second choice yet. The narrator I chose accepted, and we were off to the races. About a month and a half later, and PATHS was available to purchase as an audiobook. Not just on Amazon, but also on Audible, and even on iTunes! So it's expanding my reach to places I hadn't actually been on before! Sales were decent and it's already got two ratings / reviews, so I'd consider that a success for the long-run.
With that, I decided to wander a little further down this path and make Cenote an audiobook as well. It's well into the process now, in fact, we're just waiting for QA approval and for it to go live. So watch my Twitter and Facebook page for the announcement which should be coming up in a few weeks.
In the meantime, go check out Merphy Napier on Youtube! She's the narrator for Cenote, and she also does video book reviews.
I'm happy to say all this excitement has me back into a writer/author mode, so hopefully I'll also have some new reading material for all of you to check out soon too!
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