Asked plainly, answered plainly
The Answer Hall
Most of this trade answers a price question with “it depends”. Here the arithmetic is published, the runtime is measured against what the house actually delivers, and every answer hands you a free instrument to work out your own number before you speak to anyone.
How much does it cost to make an audiobook?
At this house an audio book is priced as arithmetic, not negotiation: 7.000000000000001% of your manuscript's word count in dollars. A 90,000-word novel is $6,300. You can work out your own number before you speak to anyone.
The Sound Ledger — free
What is a film book?
A film book is an entire book performed as film — narrated, cast, scored and cut to picture from first page to last. It is not a trailer of a book and not an audiobook with a still image; it is the whole work, watchable.
The Vellum Bench — free
How long is an audiobook by word count?
Reckon about one minute of finished runtime for every thousand words. A 90,000-word novel runs roughly ninety minutes as a finished production. Raw narration-speed arithmetic will tell you otherwise — and it is wrong about the finished thing.
The Reader's Clock — free
How much does a book trailer cost?
A book trailer's price is driven by three things only: how much original motion it carries, whether a voice is cast for it, and whether the score is licensed and mixed to picture. A still-image slideshow costs almost nothing to make and does almost nothing; a cinematic cut is a production.
The Trailer Cutter — free
How many voices does an audiobook need?
Count the parts that carry real dialogue, not every character who speaks once. Most novels are well served by one narrator; books whose scenes turn on argument between two or three principals earn a small cast.
The Cast List — free
How do you turn a book into a video?
In this order: lock the manuscript, cast the voices, record the narration, choose and cut the score, build the picture to the narration, then master and deliver. Every stage out of order costs money twice.
The Herald's Calendar — free
Can I narrate my own audiobook?
You can. Whether you should depends on whether your book is one voice or many, and on how many hours you are willing to spend in front of a microphone. There is also a third road most authors do not know exists: cloning your own voice once and letting the house narrate in it.
The Cast List — free
What is the difference between a film book and a book trailer?
A book trailer is marketing: under two minutes, built to make a stranger want the book. A film book is the work itself: the whole manuscript cast, narrated, scored and cut like film, running about one minute per thousand words. One sells the book. The other is the book.
The Trailer Cutter — free
How long does it take to make an audiobook?
Count it backwards from your release date, not forwards from today. The stages that hold real dates are manuscript lock, casting, recording, editing and mastering, then retail filing — and retail filing is the one most authors forget, because storefronts take their own time after you deliver.
The Herald's Calendar — free
How do you make an audiobook?
An audiobook is made in six movements: lock the manuscript, cast the voices, record, edit, master to retail specification, and file with the storefronts. Everything that goes wrong in an audiobook goes wrong because one of those six was taken out of order.
The Sound Ledger — free
How do you make a book trailer?
A book trailer works when it makes one promise, keeps it for thirty seconds, and ends with the title held long enough to be remembered. Everything else — footage, music, effects — exists to serve that single promise.
The Trailer Cutter — free
Should I use ACX or a professional audiobook producer?
ACX is a marketplace, not a production house: it matches you with a narrator and takes distribution. A producer builds the book — casting, direction, editing, mastering, delivery — and hands you the finished masters. The choice is really about who carries the risk and who keeps the rights.
The Ledger of Rights — free
How much does a film book cost?
A film book is 12% of your manuscript's word count in dollars. A 90,000-word novel is $10,800 for base production, and the matching audio book edition rides with it at 33% of that figure.
The Reckoning — free
How do I get my audiobook on Audible and Spotify?
You get in by meeting the specification exactly: chapter-per-file audio mastered to the storefront's loudness target, an opening and closing credit, a square cover at 3000×3000 pixels, and metadata that matches your ebook edition word for word. Nothing else delays a filing more often than a mismatch in those four.
The Retail Sheet — free