My Audiobooks On Spotify

 

I am happy to announce that a selection of my stories will be available as audiobooks on Spotify.

Spotify recently announced that they will be offering to convert ebooks into auto-narrated audiobooks at no cost to indie-publishers. So, of course, I've taken advantage of their offer. I must admit that I've not made any deep study of audiobooks on Spotify, but I've heard here and there, that they have a growing business in audiobooks, and that Audible, though still commanding the majority of audiobook sales is seeing its market share fall as a result of competition like Spotify.

The best news, for me, is that I can offer them for free on Spotify. That said, I have very guarded expectations. The other venues offering my audiobooks, are more focused on readers, with the audiobooks offered as an alternative to ebooks. With Spotify it is an audiobook play only, and I'm not sure how many people, if anyone, will come across my books. However, I don't believe in passing up opportunities. We'll get to see just how free audiobooks on Spotify fare.

There are, however significant limitations at present. The first is the length of books they are willing to convert. That limit is 500,000 characters. When I tried to upload my first published book, A Summer in Amber I discovered it was too long to be made into an audiobook. My next attempt, The Darval-Mers Dossier which I knew to be shorter, worked. The Darval-Mers Dossier comes in with about 290,000 characters. To put that into real terms, its print version runs 164 pages. On the other hand, A Summer in Amber comes in at 626,000 characters, with a print version running 335 pages. 

Given those character limit, I will be able to offer only a limited selection of my books. I believe I'll focus on the two series that I know will come in under the limit. They are:

The Red Wine stories that include;

The Darval-Mers Dossier, The Founders' Tribunal, The Isle House Ghost, and The Poison Pill Will

And the Nine Star Nebula Mystery/Adventure stories;

The Secret of the Tsarista Moon, The Secrets of Valsummer House, Shadows of an Iron Kingdom, and The Aeirie of a Pirate Prince 

While I have several other books that would likely clock in under 500,000 characters including, Keiree, A Night in Isvalar and Some Day Days, I will hold off on those at least until I see what, if any, sales and feedback I garner from Spotify.

Like any new service there is a learning curve. 

You first have to find where to apply. It isn't on their usual web page. You'll have to Google to find it. Try "Spotify for Authors." You have to sign up for Spotify, if you aren't already.

It is only open to residents of the United States. You'll have to register your bank and tax info, so they can distribute your royalties, and file tax info to the tax people.

Once signed up and on the site you'll be given, or choose some company id, since this system is also used for companies uploading their self-produced audiobooks as well. To upload your ebook, you'll need to select the ebook input option. You then upload you ePub file... and the funny thing is that it generates your blub automatically. No doubt some AI scraped it off Amazon or some other site, which was weird. You then put in all the usual information, title, genre, categories, etc.

They offer a modest selection of voices, some 4 or 5 for each sex, to choose from, including an English voice, which is the one I always choose. It sounded pretty darn human. They also provide a list of words that you might need to edit the pronunciation for, which is helpful.

An interesting twist is that you can select a 3-5 minute selection from your story to act as a free teaser for the book, making it easy for listeners to sample your writing and the narration without buying.

All in all, while the set up is different form the other services, it is also the same. The same basic pieces looking and acting a little differently. Audiobook covers have to be 2400x2400 pixels or larger.

As of this post I have only uploaded my trial story, The Darval-Mers Dossier, but I will be uploading the rest of the planned books over the next week or two.

Spotify users should be able to find The Darval-Mers Dossier on Spotify HERE for free.

I'll let you know how this experiment goes. Stay tuned.