The global audiobook industry is currently worth over two billion dollars and digital is the fastest growing segment. Major publishes have a tremendous amount of infrastructure to create audio editions of their bestselling novels, but indie authors don’t have many alternatives.
ListenUp Audiobooks is a new company that is exclusively focusing on indie authors who want to make an audiobook. They have over 100 narrators on their roster that cover a wide range of voice types and styles. The post production team is made up of about 50 quality control technicians, sound engineers, editors, and mastering professionals.
Audiobooks are produced in terms of finished hours – the price is based on running time, rather than how much actual time goes into the process. That price depends on the project, but they start out at $325 per finished hour and the average project costs an author $3,000.
Once an audiobook is recorded ListenUp Audiobooks handles the uploading and distribution of titles to Audible, Findaway, OverDrive, and Audiobooks.com.
I think the one thing that I like about this service is that they are global. The Audible Creation Exchange is limited to residents of the United States, which prevents hundreds of thousands of authors from ever creating a digital audiobook.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
