Audiobook Rights in Publishing
By Mary Kole
Mary Kole is a former literary agent, freelance editor, writing teacher, author of Writing Irresistible Kidlit, and IP developer for major publishers, with over a decade in the publishing industry.
If you’ve written a book and are now contemplating taking it to the audio world, it’s time to learn about audiobook rights in the publishing world. Audiobook rights can be a source of secondary income that shouldn’t be overlooked. However, it can be confusing, overwhelming, and a bit intimidating for a first-timer to learn the audio space. Don’t worry. This article will dive into audiobook rights and everything else you need to know about them.
Audiobook Rights: Who Retains Them?
The first thing that comes to mind when you’re thinking about audiobook rights and your book deal is: Who gets to retain the audiobook rights, the author or publisher? The answer is not as straightforward as one might expect. It depends on contractual negotiations between the publisher and author (or their literary agent). But in most instances, the audio rights are granted to the publisher, which means that the publisher has the authority to sell your audiobook subrights to an audiobook publisher, or produce an audiobook in house. The author would have to default to the publisher’s timeframe for the audiobook, and the traditional publishing house will be making the creative decisions.
Audiobook Rights: Splitting the Money
Once you’ve determined which entity owns the audiobook rights, you may be asking how much of the profit you might get to keep if those rights are exploited. The profit split is typically 50/50 between the author and the publisher, or in some cases 75/25 in favor of the author. However, how much of the proportion of the share the audiobook narrator, for instance, would have to be negotiated between the author, publisher, audiobook publishing company, the narrator, and any audiobook retailer platform such as Audible.
Audiobook Rights: Going Independent
It’s now easier than ever for authors to publish audiobooks independently, or to add an audiobook format of their book project if you’re self-publishing, even with no prior experience. CreateSpace or ACX (Amazon) are audiobook self-publishing platforms that have made the publishing process much easier for authors. You’ll only need to upload your book and follow specific guidelines to get your book published into an audiobook. You will either have to pay a narrator up-front or find a narrator who is open to doing a royalty split. Before publishing an audiobook on your own, ensure that you do have rights to do so in the first place.
Audiobook Rights: How to Exploit Audiobook Opportunities
Once you’ve landed your audiobook rights, if possible, the next step is to market your book and the audio format of it. Doing this involves exploiting every opportunity to get the book noticed. After it is available for purchase on platforms like Audible, market it over social media for writers and other digital media platforms such as podcasts. Good collaboration with good audiobook narrators can be a good start to getting more listeners, especially if you hire a popular narrator who has their own author platform.
The topic of audiobook rights can be quite overwhelming and intimidating. But I hope that I’ve made it more straightforward and that you’re now feeling more empowered. Audiobook listening is a growing market, and your target audience might want to hear your work, so it’s a good idea to explore publishing your book in an audio format. There’s nothing quite as exciting as experiencing a different format of your book.
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