Audiobook Platforms for Authors
They are multiplying like rabbits. Here's what I've found so far...
Being an author doesn’t mean just writing books. This career requires an understanding of exactly how your reader consumes your books. Because I live in two countries, I also cannot limit my knowledge of book distribution just to the United States. I have to look at what is happening around the world. Therein lies the need for audiobooks.
Audiobooks are becoming increasingly important worldwide. They are no longer just for drive time to work or when cleaning house. In the United States and the UK, we look to text first, then audio. In the rest of the world, it appears the reverse is occurring. Please take a few seconds to review the excerpt from Mark Williams’s post from the beginning of December. If you are uncomfortable with AI narration, keep in mind that the rest of the world is not.1
Recording Your Novel Yourself
If you are a new author interested in adding audiobooks to your available formats, where do you begin? I began by trying to narrate my own books. I am used to speaking in public, and as an attorney, I was on my feet in the courtroom, making sure my voice was easily understood.
But I have an extreme Southern accent. I’m never sure if my accent is interesting to people or will cause them to immediately drop off to sleep. For the Substack audio I’ve recorded (only a few), I have used my voice, but prefer the narrator's voice I selected in my settings. (I have no idea which one you hear. Can you choose?) Dictating an entire novel in my voice seemed, last year, when it was time to record, to be a critical mistake.
So I didn’t. Well, I did. After several chapters, I could no longer stand the sound of my voice, so I stopped.
Is it possible to narrate your own books? Of course. There is free audio software and microphones on the market that do a great job and are very inexpensive. If you have the patience to learn the engineering needed to create your individual chapters in accordance with the platform’s specifications, then get going!
Using a Human Narrator
As a new author, it was critical to be as professional as possible from the beginning. We have all heard the constant gripes on social media, in newsletters, and in general conversation about the rapidly increasing amount of garbage being passed off as reading or listening material. This has been happening for years. This was another reason I decided to ditch my own recording and find someone who knew what they were doing.
I went to the behemoth, ACX (yes, the Zon again), opened an account (it uses much of the same information from your KDP account), and with samples from my novel, opened Forever Gone for auditions. The first day, I received two dozen offers to record at various prices.2 These offers presented narrators with some to no experience. A few had significant experience (and prices), but I did not like their voices.
ACX allows you to find your own author and ask them to audition. I requested samples of two dozen more narrators, and from that mix I narrowed it down to three. Then I asked my family and the Marketing Genie to listen and give me their thoughts. They all selected Susanna without hesitation, and a relationship was born—but not until I had to choke down the cost and decide if it would be worth it.
From an engineering perspective? Yes, it was worth it. In ACX, I requested that there be no restrictions on my distribution (even though that means lower royalty amounts from ACX). My goal is wide distribution for everything, and now I’ve gone direct as well.3 When uploading the files to the other platforms, the engineering became critical, and I was glad I had used professionals the first time around.
But again, it is pricey. As an Indie author beginning to sell directly to readers through my website, providing an audiobook at a reasonable cost with a human narrator is difficult. Just one professional narrator costs thousands of dollars per book. Was it worth it? Susanna did a great job, yes. But I have to price those books accordingly to pay for that initial cost.
For at least one of the books I’m working on this year, using a Digital Narrator will be more cost-effective for both the reader and me, and I cannot wait to experiment.4
Using Digital Narration
What is digital narration? Uploading your book as an epub or pdf and having a software application convert it into an audiobook. This technology is changing rapidly. By the time you read this, there may be other reputable (that’s a key word) companies that can assist you with creating an audiobook at a reasonable (that’s a subjective word) price.
ElevenLabs, as of the writing of this post, is the leader in high-quality digital narration. I have quickly learned that my “Creator” account at $11 per month provides just enough credits to create a chapter, maybe two—definitely not a full novel. For my last audio project, I saved up for an entire year and still only had 2/3 of a story by the end of my credits. The next level, Pro, is $99 per month, which I consider expensive, but still less than human narration.
Are the voices realistic? Yes, and no. The book sounds great until you get to any dialogue containing unusual words. The AI hallucinates if it does not understand the word. Proofing this work is critical.
Spoken.Press is where I will experiment next. This system uses ElevenLabs voices as well as other voices. I have talked extensively with the head of this company, listened to his “test” book, which used 100 characters (Yikes!) to see how it would handle that, and thoroughly tested his own system. Their “pay after you are satisfied with the result” method is extremely enticing.
Why would I be interested in digital narration?
My third novel, The Expedient Wife, has male and female characters. Several of the male characters have Turkish accents (the book is set in Türkiye). In attempting to find human narrators, male and female, the price for narrating this book is in excess of $5000. And I have yet to find a professional narrator who can do a Turkish accent proficiently. Spoken is advancing into other countries, and I want to test them for a Turkish male narrator.
Where else? Apple Books — To upload an ebook into Apple Books, an author is required to use iTunes. This procedure is so unbelievably irritating and tedious that I will not try Apple for digital recording until I have no other choice.
BEWARE:
There are a LOT of “audiobook publishing services” that offer various forms of digital narration, marketing, and other things wrapped in a package you don’t need and can do yourself inexpensively. READ THE FINE PRINT. GET ALL THE COSTS.
Audio Distribution Platforms Where Your Readers Can Find Your Book
Rather than reinvent the wheel, here is a relatively recent article on Audiobook Distributors that has all the information that you need.
I have uploaded my first audiobook to the following platforms for distribution: ACX, Author’s Republic (including Apple, Google Play, and Barnes & Noble), InAudio, Spotify for Authors, YouTube, and Kobo.
There is some overlap as I understand the royalty payments and the effectiveness of each platform’s distribution methods. This has been the easiest part of all the various format uploads.
The Bottom Line
Audiobooks and other audio media are growing rapidly. Even if I decide not to use some of the services above, I still need to know how they perform. As I create more books, I will become more selective about platform distribution, especially since it will be easier for readers to visit my website, purchase the book with a discount code, and then upload it to wherever they prefer to read or listen. For an author, other platforms may become redundant, even though, as a reader, they are critical.
But we’ll see. That’s why I’m a serial entrepreneur. I like building things to see how they work.
Happy Writing!
The Voice Revolution: Beyond Books to Total Media Engagement - Mark Williams of The New Publishing Standard
The Great Reversal: How India’s AI Leap Will Transform Global Publishing, December 12, 2025
Whilst Western publishers obsess over AI’s impact on text – fretting about book piracy and “AI slop” – a more profound transformation is already underway. Voice AI is becoming the dominant interface in emerging markets, fundamentally altering not just how content is consumed but who can consume it.
ElevenLabs, a voice AI company, reports that India has become its largest market by user registrations and second-largest by enterprise revenue in just twelve months. The company now supports twelve Indian languages, with native Hindi and Tamil already integrated into core models. Indian enterprises like Meesho automate 60,000 customer support calls daily in Hindi and English. Cars24 processes 20,000 multilingual conversations monthly. Audio content platforms Pocket FM and Kuku FM have reduced content production costs by 90 per cent whilst scaling multilingual storytelling.
The interface breakthrough that keyboards and screens never achieved for billions of people is happening through conversational AI.
The interface breakthrough that keyboards and screens never achieved for billions of people is happening through conversational AI.
This represents far more than translation. Voice AI with emotional expressiveness, accent diversity, and contextual awareness is creating entirely new content consumption patterns. India’s 900 million internet users – many in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities with limited literacy or English proficiency – can now access services, shop, learn, and consume media entirely through voice. The interface breakthrough that keyboards and screens never achieved for billions of people is happening through conversational AI.
For publishing, the implications are seismic. The Western publishing model assumes literate readers engaging with text on screens or paper. Our concession to voice is in passive, one-way-street audiobooks and podcasts.
Your prices will be quoted for “Finished Hours” of product, or the number of hours it will take you to listen to your book when finished. Mine are around ten hours, as I write 380 - 410 page books.
This is book-selling lingo. “Wide” means I sell to the world. “Direct” means that you can buy all of my products, e-book, print (paperback), and audio, directly from me on my website.
If you are anti-AI, you can stop reading here.
Excellent post!
Fantastic breakdown of the audiobook landscape right now. The pay-after-satisfaction model from Spoken.Press is really intruiging because it shifts the risk away from authors who are already spending thousands on covers and editing. I helped a friend record some sample chapters last year and the proofing alone was exhausting even with just a few dialogue scenes. Dunno if AI narration will ever fully replace human voices but the cost gap is definitley shrinking.