Transcripts
1. Do you want to learn how to narrate and publish audio books?: do you love listening to audiobooks? I know I do. And that's why I took the time to learn how to publish my own audiobooks on Audible, using adobe addition to narrate the audio in and then the audiobook creation exchange or a C X to get the books actually up on Audible. If you'd like to learn how to do the same thing, I trust you will love this course because I walk you through my exact workflow that I've used to publish 14 audiobooks on Audible and what's worked to make over 3000 in sales. With new sales coming in every month automatically, this course will walk you through my work flow, the basics of Audible and how to get the book uploaded and published on a C X. I imagine you'll love this course, and I'm so excited to get started with you.
2. Our class project is to share your in progress or published audio book!: thank you very much for getting to the second video on skill share. I'm very grateful you've started this class and I'm available to help you. The best way to help me help you is to get into the class project. When you go down to projects and resource, you'll see it says project description. The project is the place for you to share with me and all of your classmates. What you are doing as a result of watching this class, you can do it one of two ways. I suggest the best way to do it is follow what you've seen in the class. Go all the way through the class, watch it and narrate your own audiobook. Get it on audible, then share with us Exactly how you did that. The challenges you had. Cut the book cover from your audiobook and the name of it. And that way you can help me discover your audiobook and give you feedback on it. You can also essentially help teach the class then and help others learn from your experience. Alternatively, if you are in the idea phase or you're working on it and you're struggling, you've got questions You can use the Create Project button to share screen shots, show what you're doing with your audiobook and progress, and I'm available to help you figure out what you can do to get it published. If you've got questions or to provide any feedback, the class project is the best place to connect with me and the other students, and I hope you'll join us by hitting that creative project button and sharing what you're doing with publishing audiobooks today.
3. Introduction to Audible: If you would like to publish books to audible using a C X, I highly recommend that you are inaudible. Subscriber. Before I ever attempted to publish anything online, I was the subscriber, a listener, a reader first. And I think all of us have been readers of books. Long before we ever thought to write one for me, I find specifically the audiobook experience. It's very helpful toe listen to audio books to understand what is important in an audio book. The narration is so critical in an audio book that if you want to put audiobooks on Audible , I highly recommend listening to other audio books to help understand what kind of experience you have as a listener. And then that will help put better books on Audible. Now. That said, I've listened to hundreds of books on Audible and My audiobooks. Some of them people don't like that much. Some of them have gotten ratings as low as 3.3 on 26 ratings, which as far as most audiobooks go, that's pretty bad. However, some of my books people seem to like and consistently rate four or five stars. What I hope to communicate is that there's an opportunity for anyone today to get a book published on Audible and to get people to buy it. Why? Because the competition is really low in many places on Audible. And that's why I suggest being an audible subscriber, because when you start looking for audiobooks, you'll be able to find great opportunities. For example, if I want to take a look for a Polonia Expo, Polonia X is one of the largest online crypto currency exchanges. If I search for Pony X, there's not one book unalterable about Polonia Axe. Now I'm considering making one, and I may have one soon. The purpose in doing this is to learn what a good audiobook experience provides. And then, in your own search for things that you want to learn about, you end up seeing where the gaps are and the gaps are the opportunities when there's no results for something, that means there's no competition either. Sure, this might only be good for a few sales a month, but it also means there's no competition. You don't have to try and fight with someone else for sales. You will get all the sales, and I find generally in life when I can show up in a place where there's no competition, that's my best opportunity and every audiobook purchase. As you see when you are an audiobook customer. When you find a narrator you like When you find an author you like, especially on audio, I tend to be a very sticky listener. That means when I bought Eckhart, Tolle is the power of now. I've bought a whole bunch of other books by him. When I'm just reading a book, there's no narration and it can be very impersonal. Then you may have found this reading books. When you just read a book by an author, you want to read all of that author's books. That effect is magnified in audio books, especially where the author actually narrates their own book. I find it twice is powerful to listen to the author, narrate their own book, and that gets me to repeatedly by books, and the same thing happens with my books. I have audible listeners who will go over and by all of my different audiobooks, and that's where there's a great opportunity on Audible. Today is not just to publish one or two books but to start building a following. If you can put a book in a category where there's no competition, it's really easy to start building a following. And if there's no competition in an area, it's easier to earn a bounty in that area as well, especially if you can tell your friends and family about audible and you've got the only book on a subject there. I hope explaining this right away helps show some of the opportunities that are available on Audible. I hope talking about this gives you an idea of how to see the whole sales funnel inaudible . When you're a customer on a website, it gets very easy to start understanding the funnel, the search process, how people go about buying books, and when you understand all that, it gets much easier toe actually going published a book and have people listen to it and love it
4. Audible is full of bestsellers and opportunities to make sales: what kind of books are already on Audible on Audible. I'm in extremely good company is an author because most of the best sellers I go to look for most of the books I want to read. At least 70 or 80% of them are on audible, horrible as a massive library of books. For example, Harry Potter is on audible and nearly every book at least 80% of the books I've wanted to listen to. I've found on audible the other 20% either the and narrations not very good or they don't have a non audible. Therefore, Audible is a comprehensive collection off the best sellers of the books you'd want to listen to, both in fiction and a nonfiction in business books. In self Help. The selection on Audible is absolutely unbelievable. Audible has an outstanding group of authors on it. All nobles done an amazing job to get an incredible library of books, and that's why it's a great opportunity. While people may sign up to listen to a book like Harry Potter, or they may sign up to listen to something like Eckhart Tolle, the power of Now, I signed up and found some book I never had heard of before. Anywhere else. That's what makes Audible great is that when you sign up on it, you've got this massive library and then once you are signed up, intends to keep you there, and then the longer you signed up, you tend to keep looking for more and more books. And I love learning things on Audible because I can just take it on my mobile device and listen anywhere. Audibles. The number one way I've learned in the last six years and what I have been motivated to give my books on Audible is the more I've searched for things. I searched for Facebook on audible Ah, year ago, and I looked around and said, Wow, there's not very many good Facebook books unalterable that I can have a good shot and putting up a Facebook book that actually people find interesting. So I put up a Facebook book, which at the time it did very well, and then it sank down. Since then, a bit and now I search for YouTube, and after I got my Facebook book of a couple of months later, I put my YouTube book and now If you search on YouTube on Audible, you will find that I have the top book on YouTube unalterable now, which I'm very grateful for. Because my books and video courses tend to draw a polarizing reaction, I tend to get a lot of five star and one star ratings, and that means it's difficult to maintain a high rating because some people just can't stand it and they leave a one star review. And it takes a lot of five star reviews to just balance out them to a four star review. That's the great opportunity on Audible is that massive library off books leave a lot of long tail opportunities. There's so many bestsellers on Audible that there's a bunch of smaller categories that haven't been paid much attention to now on some websites courses on you to make thousands of dollars of sales every month. Uh, and it's very competitive to get a new YouTube course up there. Meanwhile, inaudible for me is relatively easy to get the top listing on YouTube. There's so many other opportunities like that, which is why I'm here to share this with you today so that you can build out record audio books that for me is the listener I might enjoy listening to. I want to have the very best selection as a listener on Audible, and I hope you are empowered today to get your books on audible.
5. My Workflow from idea to audio book, Kindle book, and video class: how to get started on the Audio Book Creation exchange or a c x dot com. The key first step is to just use your Amazon account to sign up or sign in. If you've already published Kindle books, you want to use that exact same account and sign up with it so that you can then Polier kindle books into your A C X account. If you do not have any Kindle books, you currently cannot put the audio up on a C X now. Technically, yes, there are other ways you might be able to skirt around that, but practically I haven't found any that are easier than just putting out a Kindle book. When you then go in and you try and start a new project, you go up, Teoh your project, you click on that and then you search. You do search results for yourself on Amazon. It will show you the books you can publish as I see when I go into my account, I see Speaker meaning 2017. I see the opportunity to claim this as my book that allows me, then to put this in my audible account and go ahead and publish it on audible. Anything that is not listed here, I'm not able to publish it on Audible. That means you have to have this Kindle version done first. If you need help doing the Kindle version, I have an entire video course available that shows how to do that for publishing books on Amazon one. The Kindle. I think you can easily research and learn how to do the formatting and get the book up there. If you are the narrator of the audiobook, for example, I just dictate my audiobooks. I don't even write my books. I just dictate them. I get a transcriber to take the words I say and transcribe them down into a document. Then I give that document over to a friend. The friend then puts the into a kindle, and it's it gets it all formatted, gives it to me. I then put that in Kindle, as I've done with my new speaker, meaning 2017 book. Then I can go in and claim this inaudible using a C X, and then I have the chance to upload the audio that I recorded and put that on as a book. That's my entire workflow, which you might think it's kind of backwards. However, for me, it goes much faster than actually typing out a book. Why? Because in one hour Aiken talk anywhere from 5 to 10,000 words, but the best I can usually write an hour is 2 to 3000. Now think about this. I can talk, say up to 10,000 words an hour. However, if I write those 2000 words in an hour, so that's five times faster in terms of just raw word production. If I type out the 2000 words an hour, then I still need to go through and narrate those 2000 words. Also, writing things tends to require a lot of editing and awkwardness. Why? Because I haven't spent nearly as much time writing as I have spent talking. As you can tell, I've spent a lot of my life talking. All the talking I've done is the child and all the way up. For 30 years. I have 30 years of experience. I've probably talked at least an hour, if not 2 to 5 hours every day off my life. That is a lot of experience talking, whereas writing. I don't have nearly that much experience. There been periods of my life or didn't write hardly anything for months. That means it's much easier for me to just naturally speak things. Inter creation. It's much more difficult to write. Not only does it take five times longer for me to write something out, but then I have to go through and read it. And for me, reading things that are written down is much more challenging than simply speaking. Right now, I'm talking to you just the way I talk to my mom like a mom. If you want to get an audiobook up on audible, here's how you do it. I'm explaining this the same way I tell my mom how to do it. I've had a lot of practice doing that. Now, if I had to write my mom and email or right my mom Kindle book to explain or how to do this , that will be a lot harder. And then if I went to narrate that, it would be even harder. I can't outsource the narration I can, but as I've suggested about being an audiobook listener, going through and hiring a narrator often crushes the quality of an audiobook. There's nothing like the original authors narration now, sure, sometimes the original authors actually worse than a professional narrator. In most cases, the original author is a gigantic difference between a narrator. Why? Because it's your book. You wrote it. You care about it. You're passionate about it. If I hire someone else to do this, they're just doing it for money. And if it's okay, if they just do it for money and do the editing and of it, if they're trying narrating it, the passion makes a huge difference. That's why, for my creation process, I simply dictate my audiobooks. And then I get a transcriber. It doesn't matter if they're passionate about the transcription or not. Words are words Now. Sure, I, a person who doesn't care about it's just trying to get through it and do as fast as they can. For money may mess up a word or two, but it's still basically the same book. An editor who has passion for it will make sure it's edited. Even if English isn't his first language, he may still is, does a really good job editing the book. Now the narration is one of the hardest things to substitute for. And here's the best part. When I narrate to start with Guess what? I can just have my computer screen on record the screen and look, I've got a video course to that way. What I can actually do is just record a video course, strip the audio out of it, put that in the audiobook, get that transcribed, have subtitles available for it and have it on ah, video class and then use the transcription to put it into a Kindle book. Now this makes kind of a nightmarish workflow for me in the sense that I record a video class. I then get it transcribed. I then get that back into a Kindle book. I then finally getting audio book out of it. I think this is worth it, though The results. I've got the thousands of dollars in sales. I think it's worth it to go through this extra effort to make an audiobook. And if I can make an audiobook in a video class in nearly the same effort than why not? This is what it takes to get an audiobook on Audible, and I hope in sharing my entire workflow with you. What I've shown is how to do the very most in the shortest amount of time. I can essentially make a video class an audiobook in a Kindle book, and then it's easy to outsource the transcription and the editing of the transcription into a Kindle book. This way, the highest quality experience in video and an audio book narration is done directly by me and then everything that can be substituted out easily. The transcription and the Kindle book editing and creation is done by someone else for a much lower price. This allows me to maximize my time doing audiobooks and doing video classes. I'm very grateful for this work process. I hope looking at just what's required in the basics and then explaining more of an advanced way to record all of this than the very most efficient format possible is helpful for you wherever you're at today,
6. How to get the initial sales?: if you're like me, are you already thinking ahead to sales? Like Okay, I can probably get my book up there. But how Maney sales am I going to make? How am I going to sell it? What I find is essential for Audible is to bring the initial sales. Don't depend on audible listeners who've never heard of me before to bring in those very first sales. My whole strategy with Audible is to get a book up there and then to get the initial sales directly with the people already following me. My existing audience. If you have nobody following you online, that's okay, because friends and family can be very powerful. First sales on Audible Guess who I asked to buy my audiobooks. My mother Guess who got me into audible to start with my mother When you ask your friends and family to buy your audio books to start with, that is enough initial mo mentum to get a little bit of boost in the ranking and to be able to have a chance then to get found now. Sure, if you're the 9000 book on a popular category, having your mom by the book is not likely to make a huge difference. What I hope to demonstrate in here is effective asking, being willing to ask people to buy your book and being willing to help someone else out to . So let me didn't lead by example. If you've never signed up for audible before, if you are thinking about being an audible subscriber and published, therefore learning how to publish books on Audible and using Audible for your own benefit. But you haven't bought the book yet. Would you please buy one of my books? You can just go on audible and search for Jerry Band Field. If you type in and search for Jerry banned film, I will come up and you'll see I have eight books on audible. Would you please make one of those books your very first purchase? Because I get not only whatever the revenue is, which I get about 40% of the actual either the credit, which is about $5 or if you buy on a sale price, I might get $4 or something. Not only that, but if you are the very first book, if you buy your very first book through me, I get a $50 bounty. If you're thinking about signing up for audible, would you please, by my audio book first, and then I get $50 for having told you about it. That $50 means a lot to me. I'm very grateful for every single bounty I get. You noticed when I looked at the dashboard and tracked the sales. I've got 15 of them in a year. Those bounties are price level there, $50 but they're very helpful when you are willing to ask like I just did. Then you will get friends and family who will help you out. Who? ERM you. Those bounties that will help make back the initial money or whatever you invested in it and help give you those very first sales and likely some of those very first reviews that will help get your book out there. If you know someone's already inaudible listener, let's do that. If you already are an audiobook member, which you may be depending on how you are consuming this, if you already are an audible subscriber, would you please buy another one of my books and listen to it? You know what you like listening to me on some degree or you wouldn't be here with me right now. Would you please buy another book with me on? Although I think the World History Reloaded is a lot of fun, if you want to expanded your mind on looking at world history, I think that's a lot of fun. This 28 strategies to experience peace and Love in Your Life. My mom really enjoyed listening to this and the start of freelance business today. Book I have that seems to be the best reviewed book I have so far. If you want some inspiration for other ways to make money online, I have a book called 100 Ways. I made money online. I think you might enjoy hearing about all these. What I'll show you as a part of this is putting my ninth book on Audible called Speaker Meeting 2000 and 17. I think this is the very best I've created so far. It's simply stories off my life, especially in addiction. I will go through and get this up as a part of showing you how to do it. Would you buy this if it's available by the time you see it on audible. It takes often Ah, weaker couple weeks for audible to review and approve things. So depending on when you're seeing this, that might not be there yet. What I hope to have just demonstrated. Look, it's that easy. Ask people to buy your book. That's how you get sales. It's that easy. Just ask and look, you you can see how it works on the other end of you kind of squirming around like, No, I don't really want to buy one of your books are No, I don't really want to do that. The response you get from others will tend to reflect your own attitude. I get a pretty good response today when I ask because I'm also willing to go through and buy books from others. I'm willing to go and try new things all the time. I'm willing if you give to me to give back to you. If you've bought my books and listen to my course, then you want me to listen to something you've created. I you try and be open to it, but I'm not always open to it. Today I say no lots of times people say made this video for you. Well, thank you. If I have time, I'll go watch it. Will you buy my book or product? No, it doesn't look like it's worth listening to. Based on how you pitched it, I'm grateful today. I can also take no for an answer because I've asked lots of people to buy my books by my course. And guess what? The answer is very often been. No, no, Jerry, I'm not gonna buy your books. And I'm grateful today that I still continue creating and sharing even when I get so money . No answers. This is how you make sales. You go out and ask those initial sales. I think it's critical to do what I just showed you on an individual basis to start with directly. Hey, Mom, or you buy my book where you sign up for Audible and some people will just have a bad attitude, and you don't want to fight with them or sell them on it. I have a family member. I asked for $5 a month on Patron, and the family members spent 20 or 30 minutes telling me why that was completely unacceptable. You're not doing anything for me. You already have enough money. I don't have that much money. This family member makes six figures at a job. I thought nothing of dropping as thousands, tens of thousands of dollars to buy a new car and then to buy are huge house and then would not give $5 a month to me. Sometimes people you ask are going to have their own money problems so much that they just won't say yes. And that's fine. Just asked someone else. As you can see, my mom said yes to buying my book, and I've continued to ask more people just like you behind my books. And guess what? People keep buying them Then Now, once you've made those initial sales, it's way easier to get more sales. You see when a book A looks like and has about four ratings on it, and generally, if you ask a friend or family member, you've got really good odds on them leaving good review. When you get those initial reviews, then it will essentially go out to the masses. That's what I did. My Facebook book originally got really good reviews, essentially just from my own followers, but then it went out to the masses. The people never heard of me before who just finding it on audible and they start listening like God, this is terrible. He rambles on for an hour. About why, before he tells me anything else and yes, that that's a valid point if you want to get sales, I hope what I've shown you is exactly how to get sales. I hope what I've shown you give you the courage to just ask and hit. Mom and brother, sister, family, friends, Children, neighbours Ask everyone to get that audio book and guess what? Once you've got those initial sales, it's much easier than to make even more sales directly on Audible. If you're publishing books that you're not proud of, enoughto ask friends and family Well, it might take thinking about that. I'm comfortable asking all my friends and family to buy any of my books on Audible. Now that doesn't mean, for example, my mom might not want to listen to 100 ways I made money online. That's why try and just ask and pitched a specific book to a specific person my mom really like to this 28 strategies to experience love in your life. And she listened to that book and then I ask people following me online to grab the Facebook or the YouTube. I've asked you here to check out the world History Reloaded. Maybe I'll ask my mom to check that out, too. So thank you for seeing how I get sales, those initial sales on my audiobooks, because now that gives, I hope, peace of mind that the rest of this process is worth following.
7. Start with the shortest book or an easy throw away project: the deeper we get into this, you might start to think. Well, Jerry, this is pretty complicated. Is there a way can kind of test this out? Yes, that's exactly what I did. I'm going to pitch you the term now called a throwaway book. What does it throw away? Book Jerry? Ah, throwaway book is the book you don't care about. Ah, book that you just run through the process to verify your set up. If you've got a book that say 8 10 12 hours of audio long you might not want to run that through is your very first book. If you're like me, Ah, bunch of things will be a little bit messed up for I didn't have the benefit off what you're experiencing now. All I could find were a few blood posts on the subject, which helped. But still, when I went to submit my first book, it went through smooth. But when I submitted my 2nd 1 that was eight plus hours long. It did not. It took something like a month toe, actually get it published. Ah, bunch of back and forth audio editing. It was frustrating. I recommend do this process on a small book, maybe even do the whole process from start to finish. Like I talked about. Just narrate a really short, quick book like 30 minutes or an hour, narrate the whole thing and then follow this whole process for it. Maybe even get it transcribed and put it into a short Kindle book. Get that up there and go through this whole process. Quick What I did. I had a book out on Amazon called Video game Addiction stories that I published in 2012. Then in 2000 and 16 when I finally figured out how to use a C X to get books published for Audible, I just went in and claimed video game addiction stories, and I figured, let me test my set up after reading the requirements that Audible has for audio. I'm like, What the heck is our RMS a negative 23 d B. I didn't know what any of this stuff meme, so I just went through and ran a quick test book into Audible. I literally recorded an hour and 15 minutes of new audio that does not match the Kindle version at all. I just simply recorded Ah, little bit about video game addiction stories and then put it into an audiobook and submitted him and they approved it, and that made the process seem like something I could actually handle. It seemed pretty easy, like, Okay, I got this first little book approved that I don't care about. I don't care if it makes any sales. It actually has earned something like $100 now, which is funny. This was just a test book just to verify that I could jump through this hoop successfully. Now, on the next book I did, I did. My second book was this Facebook advertising and marketing book. Now this book, seven hours and 21 minutes. You'll see. It's a month later. After I did the video game addiction stores, I recorded this entire book. But then I had a bunch of problems getting it published because while for some reason I didn't talk loud enough at any one point in video game addiction stories to trip the sound engineer at Audible, in other words, by just dumb luck, I fit within the formats. Or maybe they didn't pay close attention or whatever. On this second book, they sent me my audio back and said, This is all messed up And that's when I realized I it hadn't even though I'd tried to go within the guidelines, I had no idea what I was doing. And then this book has got some low ratings because I recorded This is an audiobook and I rambled on a bit too much in it. According to several of the reviewers. God, he rambles on. It's just junk. You don't learn anything. And yes, I also looked at it that this is my first kind of riel book. I'm going to just test this out. What I encourages toe. Look at this as an iterative process that you're not necessarily going to come knock a home run out of the park right away toe. Look at it that you want to be able to learn on your first few books. Now I'm hoping that in speaker meeting 2017 after doing eight audiobooks, I've got a chance to have a book that people love and a book that's evergreen. I encourage doing an evergreen book. You see, I went the not evergreen approach with this Facebook marketing and advertising in 2016. So guess what year it is 2017. I've automatically made a book that goes out of date with this, which is good for an initial test book, but bad for long term sales. If I want to have a best seller, I want to have something that's evergreen on the YouTube book. I did not brand it specifically by year, and in fact, the YouTube book could at actually continue to increase sales over time. I start a freelance business book could do that as well. But it's nice for just testing out a book to just throw something out there and have this process completed once in a way that's a simple assed possible. It gets easier and easier each time you do it. And that to me, from what I've heard out of best selling authors, most authors didn't just write one book or put one audiobook up and get a best seller. This is an iterative process. You work out, over and over and over again, and if you keep jumping through the hoop, it's like jump rope. When you first try and do it, you're really awkward. But if you keep practicing you can do some amazing tricks. The nice thing is to make getting started as simple as possible. What I'm doing is up loading a 12 hour audiobook. I show you here in this class, I don't recommend starting with that. This is the longest audiobook I will have created. The others or six hours seven hours six hours, five hours, seven hours. But the 1st 1 was just an hour and 15 minutes. Real quick. If you've got a throwaway book you don't care about, grab that off the Amazon. Record something short. Make sure you get loud in it. Raise your voice at some point, Learn how to do all the audio. Make sure you get the whole process correct, and then you're ready to go and do a good job. Their best book. The worst thing you could do if you've got a bunch of Kindle books out, is to essentially try and do your very first, best book on audible right away and have a bunch of problems I would suggest. Do your worst book. 1st 1 You don't care about it all and then work into your better books. If you don't have any books up yet. Knowing this process, I hope, will give you ah, clear view of where to start. Start with a really short Quikbook just to make sure you get the process and then consistently scale it up to bigger, more ambitious books going forward.
8. Starting a new book project on Audible: what happens on audible after you claim your book. Assuming you've got your Kindle book up and or hard copier paper back US search on audible on a C X, then you go down and hit. This is my book. Once you hit, this is my book, then a C X has three different options. If you are an author and you go through a normal process of writing your book, publishing it and you're looking for someone to narrate your book, you can use a C X to simply put your book on a C X and get a narrative for I highly recommend against this because there's nothing like hearing the author actually read their book. It's worth the energy and effort to learn how to do it most of the time. Now I realize if you have a certain situation than absolutely prevent you from considering their raining your book, then this is a great opportunity to get your audiobook available. By collaborating with a narrator, I would encourage you to figure out how to do it before getting on a C X, find someone who will narrate your audiobook and just give you the audio files if you find someone to do it on the audible creation exchange and my theory, at least you're likely to end up paying more and having to split the royalties at a bigger rate than if you just say, found a freelance or somewhere else to get you the actual audio files and give you copyright to them. Then you could use the second option, which is what I use. I already have the audio files for this book, and I want to sell it. That's the main option that you want to use. If your brand new you might click. I want to find out how to narrate this book and upload files later. But hopefully this that you're here with me is satisfying that requirement. So what I do, I click on I already have the audio files for this book, and I want to narrate it.
9. Writing the description and finishing the project creation process: before submitting the audio files. There's one last step to prepare the book for publication on a C X. This is where, after you agree to the royalty option, you then get to put in the information about my book. What I do is I use the details directly from my Kindle book on Amazon. It allows me on Katie P to go through and write in a description which appears on my landing page. I think out of this description, the very first sentence is the most important, and I will read you the one I have on here, the first sentence of mine says for speaker meeting 2000 and 17. Will you read the story of my life through addiction, depression and loneliness into a beautiful life today in recovery, health and service? You see, in the first sentence, I've asked something specific. Will you read the story and then I want story through addiction, depression and loneliness into a beautiful life of recovery. Often service in one sentence. I've summarised the whole point of the book. I've qualified the audience, and I've asked, will you actually read this instead of just trying to sell the person on reading and I asked, Look, while you read this just a simple down earth approach. I therefore used the same thing on my Amazon Description Page as I do in a C X. I go over and copy description. Now Kindle and Amazon. Give me more room than Audible does to talk about my book. So what I had to do, I went through and edited out. I shortened up my description for Audible. I still go with the same first sentence approach, except instead of saying Read my book because it's an audiobook, I say, Will you hear the story of my life through addiction, depression and loneliness into a beautiful life today in recovery, health and service. I then explained my thinking for creating the book. I saying creating Speaker Meeting 2017. I share my experience, strength and hope with all my addictions and candid detail, which I think might be helpful for you and identifying similar challenges in your life and overcoming them through our combined experience. What I do then is explained the basic story of the book, what I'm going to share, and then I wrap it up and I like to end it. I say thank you for learning about speaker meaning 2017 and I hope you love it. And then I'd like to say sincerely, Jerry Banfield to make this feel more personal. Not like some publisher just generically wrote it and tried to sell you on it. But look, this is really personal. This is a story of my life. I think this description could be very helpful because if you look at audiobook listings, you see that in ah publisher summary. You've got this description off the book and this is where people start deciding if they're going to read it or not. This publisher summaries where you sell of people on reading the book, now the title, obviously the title and the subtitle and the ratings and the release date and the length All will do the initial selling and the audio sample, which will talk about later, is critical on Audible for making a book sale. However, some people will go down in here and read inside the description to see exactly what they can get out of the book. So it's important to have the description well done. And hopefully he went through and did a good job on the description. Now on Kindle, you can simply go through and change the description, however, on I E. C X, it's not so easy to just want you publish it. It's kind of done, so it's important to go through, get a description you're happy with. Do it on something like Kindle, preferably first, and then essentially just go through and re read it again. Maybe make small edits to get it to fit and put it in there. From there, it's pretty easy to finish up. Once you've got the description, you've got your copyright name in years. You can easily put those in. If you're self published, you can just put your same name in in every different spot. That simple, then what I do to pick my book is I just go through and choose a ah selection here. Arts and entertainment bios and memoirs, Business classics, comedy. I end up choosing, I think, just bios and memoirs, because that's the most accurate category since it's an autobiography. Now there's finally there's a reviews and reward section at the bottom, but more than likely, if you're here with me, you don't have reviews and awards. This is a a All right, Joe, what do you say in Jerry? If you're here with me, you're probably a guy or gal like me who's looking. Get your book published and you don't have a whole bunch of critics talking about it. I leave the reviews and awards blank because Audible says this optional fields should Onley be filled out. If you would like to advertise strong, critical acclaim around the audiobook you're uploading, do you really need to put what critics say in the section of the audiobook? Because where are you going to get those? If it's available? Is that print book and you've got a bunch of reviews you could put it in there. However Audible has the option to qualify that as well. I don't put anything in the reviews and rewards. I just go forward because there's a reviews section. There's an entire reviews section where everyone can then put what they actually have to say. So why would I bother with the critical acclaim? Once you finish getting the initial process of adding a project done, then it's just down to putting the cover art in and the audio files in and then you're in the home stretch, although this to me has been the most challenging part coming up.
10. Exclusive versus non exclusive distribution: what type of distribution is the best on audible. I used the exclusive distribution because I get 40% royalty. Then if I make a $10 sale on audible, I get $4. If you use non exclusive distribution and you make a $10 sale, you get $2.50. That's a big difference. Let's say you make $100,000 in sales. If you have exclusive distribution, you get $40,000. If you have not exclusive, you get $25,000. That is a huge difference in terms of how much money you get. I choose exclusive because it also offers simplicity. Audible, then, is the only place I distribute and sell my audiobooks. This means when you choose exclusive, you're not allowed to go sell the audiobook file on your own website or to go upload it on another website as an audiobook and sell it there. If you choose nonexclusive, you are allowed to upload it. Other places. My question is, which has the very best value for me personally in it. I've considered selling audio books on my own website. It's attractive in the short term because I come out with a new audio book and instead of telling people go by the book on Audible, where I get perhaps $5 on a sale, I could sell it on my website and make 10 or $15 on a sale for the exact same prices, selling it on audible now. It's certainly more attractive in the short term to offer it on my website. But what about the long term? What about the very best results? You see? There is the big problem I have. I sell things on my website. There's no positive reinforcement loop and everything I've found. That's amazing. That's ever happened in the 5.5 years of having my business online earning more than a 1,000,000 1/2 dollars without any company or anyone else making me or financing me outside of just individual customer purchases and client. So working with me, the very best things that have happened with me are a result of positive reinforcement loops from one customer buying a product, loving it, leaving a review and then the organic traffic, the natural marketplace ranking, giving me more sales based off of that initial customer. When I do that on my website. I have to do everything. If I make a sale to a customer, I have to follow up with them. I am completely responsible for notifying them of any of my future products. Now this is easier to get started with in the sense of making your own income making very highest amount and is so attractive to make the maximum profit in the short term. What about in the long term? The attractiveness to me of using audible is the fact that gigantic sales are possible and this is an essential element. I found of having an amazing business, setting things up in a way where gigantic sales are possible. When I just sell things on my website, I'm also limiting myself. I have to do everything to make a sale on my website. I have to deliver the book. I have to provide customer service. I have to follow up with future sales and deals. I am responsible for keeping the book available. Why would I bother with all of those things when Audible is willing to do that? Not only that, but if I choose not exclusive, I'm tempted to offer people an option to say, Well, you can go get it on my website for less or you can go get in on Audible In which case I've cut into my royalties. The big opportunity I see inaudible is to get a bestseller, which I'm not going to do on my website. And if I'm using non exclusive, it's gonna minimize the likelihood of me getting a bestseller on Audible because I'll be funneling too much time and energy in the selling it through my website. After all, why would I tell people to go to Audible if I put my book on there is nonexclusive. Why would I tell them to go there when I knew I'd only make $2.50 if they go buy a book? When I'd make say, $10 they bought it on my website and they would actually get a cheaper price buying it on my website. Why would I do that with the amazing opportunity on Audible is to have a book that gets those initial reviews and then hits that positive reinforcement loop where the very first customers, the same people who might have bought the book on my website and given me a greater profit . Let's say the 1st 100 people that buy book I could have got them all to buy it on my website. I could have made $1000 on those 1st 100 people buying the book, but instead I make 400 on them buying an inaudible Those initial people who buy the book on Audible, then leave reviews on it. Some of my books do well. Some of them don't do well, but the ones that do well now have the chance to get really good organic traffic. And the thing is about audible. If you crack into the higher level on audible, fantastic sales are possible when I focus all of my energy on selling just my audiobooks on Audible. I'm giving myself the chance to hit a home run, and it might take 15 2030 books to hit a home run. But one home run is likely to make more money than all the other books combined. I won't ever hit a home run on my website. I did this teaching classes on you. To me. I hit a couple of home runs. I had two courses that made more than $100,000. I had a Facebook course that I made an egg, cracked $100,000 in money that I actually was paid. It made much more in sales, and I had a hacking course. It paid me over $250,000. It actually made something like a $1,000,000 in sales. That's because I sent everyone to go by on you. To me, them initial traffic then snowballed, audible. The very best opportunities to snowball. Now, assuming either way, let's say either way you're going to snowball. Let's say you've got such a great book that either way you're going to make a 1,000,000 in sales on audible us. Even assuming you did it on your website, let's just say your books that good, that you're going to make a $1,000,000 in sales on Audible. Would you prefer 400,000 off the sales in royalty or 2200 and 50,000 and sales in the royalty? I prefer 400,000 and just keep it simple. Just sell my audiobooks this way. I don't waste time setting up a secondary system to sell my audiobooks. Now the nice thing as far as I can see in the terms and conditions, this royalty is exclusive toe audiobooks. If I want to put my audio book into a video class as I dio, that doesn't impact the exclusive royalty as far as I can see, because just the same as a written book is not the same as an audiobook. A video class is not the same as an audiobook, either. This allows me, then to make video classes and strip them down into audiobook, which is Onley available on Audible, and then have a Kindle book. Also, this allows me I can sell my video classes somewhere else. I can sell the audiobook on Audible and I have the written book on Lee on Kindle or than on Create Space in paperback. This allows me to have the most positive reinforcement with the least amount of work. I simply record upload, get help to have the Kindle book, and I get the maximum royalty with the maximum chance to hit home runs repeatedly. This is why I used the exclusive distribution, and I hope this is helpful for planning out sales and setting up and thinking of the marketing plans for the book.
11. ACX cover formatting requirements for audio books on Audible: what's the one thing you need to be able to dio? Besides, put audio in once you've got your book set up and you've got your project on the one thing besides, the audio you need to be able to do is the cover art. So I'll show you that first, because the cover art should be relatively simple. But you don't want to mess up the requirements here. The technical requirements the size should be 2400 pixels by 2400 pixels minimum, which means I think you do, ah, bigger book than that. If you would like Teoh, it also should be 24 bit minimum. The file size should be less than eight megabits. 72 d p i. It should be RBG color, which should be the standard urine and then J peg PNG RTF format Alfa numeric file Name on Lee. Now my first cover. I did the absolute simplest thing. I couldn't If you look at the book, you can tell it's just a video game controller by Jerry Band filled with the title again. If you're just getting started doing absolute simplest way possible. If you want to find someone to help you on Fiverr. You can pretty easily get a designer to do an audio book cover for you. Let's say you already got a Kindle book cover done. You can either put it in these requirements yourself if you know how to use photo shop or can va or another image editing. Or you could just get someone on Fiverr to pretty quickly turn your Kindle book cover into art. Then that's what I did. I didn't do the cover myself. I don't know what I'm doing with it that much. The first cover I did it myself ing sale That turned out. So I got a friend in my Master's of Business Administration group, which I now renamed the jury banned film friends. I got him to do the speaker meeting covers, and then he has the designs for me. So all I have to do then is upload the A C X design. So I go grab the A C X design that he's uploaded. And then I put that up there. So he did it create space Ah, Speaker meeting a C X and a kindle, and he used the same basic elements and just resize them. So I go to upload exactly what he did, and it will show me what it looks like. It'll check it and then once that's done, the cover is a simple thing to just get done and have it be done and finished with it. How important is the book cover? I think the book cover on Audible is not that big of a deal now. A terrible cover. Sure, like my video game addiction stories book. I mean, this is really basic. It kind of looks pixelated, and yet people are still buying the book anyway. I don't pay much attention to book covers on Audible. You'll see what I've got done here is plenty good enough. This looks nice, has got my face a little podium and as the title and the author on it, that's great. So I hit. Save That is what I call a good enough cover. I think it looks beautiful just looking at it, and then I've got the cover done Now from here, I finished the audio and I've got the audiobook done. I like to just get that cover done and have the cover planned out beforehand because of you got the whole audiobook done and you're sitting there screwing around with the cover. Then that feels kind of silly. That covers something you easily get done in advanced. Especially if you have freelancers helping out with the transcription and the Kindle. Just have them do the cover. And if you do the book to do all the covers at the same time, if you do like I do Kendall, create space and audible and then a video course. All those can be done at the exact same time. So what I've done, I uploaded the cover, but I don't click. I'm done after that. I just have the cover and it saves it from there, and now I'm ready to add the audio.
12. Audio file outline and retail audio sample explained: What is the basic set up for the audio in an audio book? What you need is toe have opening credits. In other words, for my speaker meeting 2017 0 sound like this Speaker Meeting 2000 and 17 Written and narrated by Jerry Banfield. Those were the opening credits, that simple, then the chapter section. This is where the entire book goes into place. After that, you just throw each individual chapter, and now the audio files can be a maximum of two hours each. Yes, I filmed one part of my speaker made in 2017. It's two hours and one minute long, so I need to edit out two minutes of it, and then I can stick that in the one chapter. I could just break it apart, but in each chapter you need to read the section heading allowed. That means when I say Chapter one, it sound like this. Chapter one. Welcome. That's reading this section heading allowed, and if I have to separate sections that I need to split it and read to different sections, and it's just simple, I just cut a minute or two of it. No big deal then the closing credits needs to say just I just put in mind the end and that simple. I put that in every book, the end. Then there's the retail audio sample, which is five minutes or less. This is where, although I see some have 10 minute once the retail audio sample is where you essentially sell your book. It should be the best part, or a part that clearly explains the value off the book. Maybe the very beginning of the book. Maybe a funny story in the book, maybe an executive summary at the end of the book that goes over everything you just said the retail audio sample. When you go over on Audible and you click on something like Say the book, then you get the play audio sample, and that's where you really sell the book. I know as an audible customer. If I haven't heard an author, a narrator, before I go click that play audio sample and this is make or break. There are a lot of books. I've decided not to buy the book based on listening to that audio sample. The audio sample is five minutes. That might be one of those little things that is really important for having a book that people enjoy, especially if someone's never heard of you before. If you're trying to get that home run hit on audible that retail audio samples huge for converting people who are interested, you've worked so hard to get them on your book page. Ah, good retail audio samples. The difference between having people come in and, ah, bunch of people by the book in the book getting ranked high or having people that don't understand the value of the book and leave. That said, if you're retail audio samples to good, if you really sell people hard on buying the book, then you can make this effect where, Ah, lot of people by my Facebook and marketing and adds book there, like the retail audio sample sounds great. The book. It looks exciting, and then they get into the book, and it's like, Wow, this is kind of disappointing. If you set the bar too high, then you're like like a Babel and not jump over that. So the retail audio sample you don't have to go through every single minute. Pick the very best five minutes you actually might even want to disqualify people if possible, say something or pick apart that some people realize when they listen to it, they don't want to buy the book. The trick and maximizing reviews is, too, but I acted like a gateway. You want to keep the people out, who are going to hate the book, and you want to let the people in who are going to love the book. If you're retail audio sample, just Oh my God, this is the best book in the world you're ever going to read is going to change your life. You're going to love this. 00 it's so good And then people get in the book and it's just ordinary. Then that's where you're likely to catch those one. Star reviews. I've learned this in selling probably 100 video class online. Now what I want to do is qualify my audience. I don't want every single person to buy it because I essentially don't want people to buy it that are going to hate it. I want to save them time. Look, here's my book. Honestly, if you don't like the sound of it, you better leave now, don't even think about getting this bar in the retail audio samples a great chance to minimize those negative reviews. If you hear or while you're making a part of your book, if you can clamp onto it like this, this is what I want to put in the retail audio sample. Ideally, it will effectively pitch to the people who want to listen to the book, and it will ideally discourage people who won't like it from buying it. This is the entire selection of the different tracks here. I've explained the retail audio sample the most because the rest of it's very straightforward opening credits. You just introduced the book chapter section. You put basically the whole book in here closing credits the end and then the retail audio sample I apply. Vicks effectively explained that to you.
13. ACX Audio quality guidelines: what is the most challenging part in my experience of publishing on a c X, getting my book available on audible by far. For me, the biggest challenge has been the sound and audio requirements, even though prior to publishing on Audible, I had 72 video courses published, which passed Third Party Review on another website. The audio requirements on Audible are so strict that I've had to learn basics of sound engineering in order to consistently get the books approved. What I hope to do is share with you what I've learned about that in a way that will make it much easier for you than it was for me. Audiobooks have a strict audio requirement that the A C X Quality Assurance Team is responsible for enforcing when you submit your audiobook for reprove on audible, then when you get it back, you'll either get it back saying it's approved or your get it back with recommendations to edit the audio accordingly. Here are the basic formatting requirements, which I'll show out to do in detail further. On a nautical, it says you're submitted. Audiobook must be consistent and overall sound and formatting. That means it shouldn't be really quiet in one section, and it shouldn't be horribly loud screaming crazy in another section. Now I actually have a microphone and preempt set up that allows me to record consistent audio in real time. I will talk more about exactly what I used in a little bit. You're submitted. Audiobook must be comprised all of Munnell or all stereo files. That means you can't have mono files for some files and stereo files. Rather, they'll have to be the same. It's easier to just save it in mono or put it in mono. Also, because each stereo file technically has its own audio channel then and you have to get each channel in stereo to conform to all the audio requirements. If you just put it in mono, you just have one thing. For example, if for some reason on the left side of your audio at one point it spikes. But you didn't notice that just on the left that happened, then the whole thing can be out of the audible requirements, whereas if you put it on mono, you've just got one channel to worry about. Your audiobook also must have opening and closing credits these air really easy to do. But if you've written a book, you might not think after you've read the whole chapter and all that to do it. I actually recorded the opening credits right before this for speaker meeting, because Audible has to have them in a consistent format. When I did in recording the original, I just started talking, and that didn't put it in a consistent format. Audible likes toe. Have a nice section heading right allowed something like, If I go take a part of my book Chapter one, Welcome to my unforgettable autobiographical experience. Pause. That is what all will expects for a section heading an audible expects all of them to be read out in the same format. They don't expect some to say Chapter one and the others to say Section one and still others to not have any chapter at all. You also have toe have a retail audio sample that's between one and five minutes long, and it has to be recorded by human. This seems pretty straightforward, but maybe there are exceptions somewhere for the actual technical audio requirements, you have to submit everything in an MP three file that is at least 192 kilobytes per second . It must have a constant bit rate at 44.1 kilohertz. If you try and submit a wave of file or some other format, it won't be accepted. It must be in MP three. It also can Onley have one chapter or section at once. So as you can see on mine, it's it on. My alcoholism section is just a little over two hours, so I need to edit that down so it's actually under two hours. Each chapter must be short in 120 minutes. However, if you do have a four hour chapter or one book, that kind of like a speech just runs on and on and on. You can then break it up in individual sections, using section headers at the beginning of each section. It also needs toe have room tone at the head and the tail. I think it's something like 1/2 2nd to a second of silence, right when you start this way, when the listener pushes the play button on, Audible doesn't immediately start blabbering at them, but it has 1/2 2nd to a second at the beginning of just silence to get the room toner head and then the same thing at the end, a second to two seconds or so of silence at the end. You can put this in if you didn't record it like that. If you're like me as soon as you hit the record button, you just start blabbering right away. Oh, my God. Let's see how fast again will come out of my mouth if you didn't record it that way is I haven't with some of mine. That's fine. You just hit. Insert silence, whatever you're using and put a little bit of silence in beforehand. If you've got some noise, like banging on a table or you've got, you know, some clicking or snapping. If you've got some beat in the background, then you turn it off. You hit off on left hand, right hand you hit record and you've still got them to that. You can just silence that beginning part so that you don't have some calamity at the beginning. Audible also asks that it be free of extraneous sounds. Now they're pretty flexible on this. I've had my dogs barking in the background Ah, little bit. I've had lots of extraneous sounds, but they just don't want the whole thing to be like traffic going by and cars honking the whole book as their reasonable. If there's an extraneous sound here there, I haven't got any my books rejected, even though I record my books in real time. Sometimes things fall down or make a little bit of noise, and I haven't even edited them. Now that's got me some bad reviews as well, but it's allowed me to put eight books out in the time it would have taken me to produce one or two. But generally you want to have his very little background noises possible. For example, I have a Mac pro. It's alter quiet. I turn off all my other computers. I've got the air conditioner off so that that's not running in the background, which in Florida when it gets hot, I'm pretty much guaranteed the whole rest of day. It's gonna be about 80 in the house, even when the air runs the whole rest of the day. You want to be free of as many background sounds as possible because it's much easier to make audio that's recorded correctly from the beginning than it is to go back and try and edit it. These final requirements were like in another language for me. I got most of the beginning things, but this measure between negative 23 d B and negative 18 db rms I Googled and looked these up repeatedly. This means the root mean square. It's an overall assessment of the volume throughout the entire chapter, and what I choose to do, I use I Adobe has a program that I show, and then I used to help me see exactly what these sounds are. Now, if you use something like garage Band, you can use it for free, and you can try and clock things out to get it just right. I like a program that has the ability to give me all the exact values, and then I can look at it Now. The Audible review team is a little bit flexible. If it comes in a little lower a little higher, they've been pretty understanding if you submit something like my Facebook ads book where I actually had clipping in there because I just had a USB mic plugged into my computer. I didn't do any processing on it and it clipped at a few points. They rejected that. This means your maximum volume at no time can go above negative three db Now they actually have a file on their website. That is negative. 2.5 db or something like that. What I'm about to submit the maximum was negative 2.5 db on it. So again, they just don't want you clipping or going over there loud formatting. However, if you are using some programs like GarageBand, at least I couldn't find exactly where all these numbers were. It just had a bunch of knobs. And like what I do with this I choose to use, I think it's Adobe Audition. It helps me to actually look and see exactly what the numbers are and the final number. They want a maximum negative 60 db noise floor. Thankfully, there's some pretty simple ways to get all of these sounds in the right format. And once you get this little system down of processing sounds, then you can have confidence that everything you record is within their. This is why I recommend do a short test to book to give these a try. You can even just record with your set up. Now do a little test book and see what they give you back. I encourage. If you're going to do a test book or try this out, try all the different volume. Try shouting in your mike, scream in your mike and see how loud it goes. Now I've got a nice set up here where if I get loud, it actually the compressor runs a little bit different, and if I get quiet, you'll see it. Actually, I'm talking a lot quieter now. It picks up and increases the volume a bit when I talk quieter, so I've got a set up now that automatically applies some noise processing on it. However, before I just had a USB Mike and I had to run all of my audio through Adobe Audition to get it in the right format. So I'll give you the options toe. Have it come out right in the beginning, using your equipment and demonstrate exactly how to edit whatever you already are working with into an acceptable format.
14. Easier to start with high quality audio than to try and fix up medicore recordings: once you've seen the A C X audio submission requirements, if you're like me, you might start to think straight to the digital audio workstation. Okay, I'll just record using the equipment I have, and I'll edit it into the right format. What I didn't stop to think of was my audio recording equipment itself. It's much easier to record with good equipment that puts it very close to, if not in the exact format from the beginning. Then it is to try and use whatever equipment you already might have and then try and edit it into the audio submission requirements. The audio set up, I usedto have didn't have any compression in it. It didn't have any volume regulation in it. Other than simply turning a gay knob up and down on the microphone. That meant that my audio often widely differed between each individual recording. If I was talking really quiet one day and I was kind of whispering than my audio volume would be significantly different if I was really excited and shouting and telling you exactly how things were, then my audio volume could be really on the loud end. I'm grateful today that I've went and worked to make what I hope is an amazing quality audio recording set up that consistently puts out my audio files and nearly the exact same format, with almost the same volume on every single recording. And then it's just a matter of adjusting the volume slightly. Four. Audible If I was on Lee recording for audiobooks, if I wasn't also recording for video courses and live streams, I might just put my audio so that I wouldn't have to do anything for auto by literally could record and stop in the audio be in the right format with the set up I have today. I'm able to do that with the set up I have today. I'll should explain exactly what I use. I have a microphone called the Electoral Voice Ari 20 Cardio oId microphone. This is what I use them and recording on. Right now I have a that runs into a sound processing and pre AMP. This allows me to have ah, post recording quality production on my incoming sound to my computer. What happens is I use this electro voice. Sorry, 20 microphone. I plug it into the sound processing in pre EMP than in real time. It goes through and applies all the effects. It has a de Esser. It has high and low frequency enhancer. It has a compressor expander. It has a noise gate. It therefore is working to reduce the noise in my recordings as I'm making them. This allows me to put out a very good audio signal from start to finish. This is much easier, then, trying to go do it after every single recording. In fact, the time saved is fantastic. It might take you 10 2030 minutes, depending on how long you've been doing it. To put these kind of effects on after the fact and even if you get some pre existing effects set up, for example, if you get a preset, you can just try and apply it quickly. Getting this kind of audio straight into the computer is much more effective for work. So I use this microphone. I plug it into the pre AMP. I've played around with all the knobs on, and I've got it into a place I'm happy with, and this allows me to output consistent volume. Rather, I'm whispering quietly or shouting at the top of my lungs. It adjust the volume. It adjusts all these things on the way in. Then I plugged that into my USB audio interface, which provides me the ability to plug another microphone in if I want to adjust the volume again and then that goes into my computer, and this allows me to have high quality audio coming straight into my computer. This is way more effective than simply trying to process it every single time. In fact, I used to just try and record everything in them. Process it. But what if I want to do something without adding it? What if I want to do a live video? This set up I have is extremely flexible. I can do anything with this one audio set up. Getting the right audio equipment has been one of the biggest frustrations for me, and it's something I didn't even think to do. When I started producing audiobooks, I simply went in and tried to fix the volume up afterwards, with just using a standard USB microphone with nothing else, I found that my volume differed widely all the time, which made editing it and getting it in the right formats for Audible really annoying. I literally went through the same process on my first and second audio book, but I had been different in the volume and that messed it up. The first book got through improved. The second book did not. Even though I used the exact same set up, I simply talked louder in the second book, and that got rejected. It's much easier to have your audio equipment in the right shape from the beginning to record in a consistent audio format than it is to go through and try and fix it all up.
15. Which equipment is the best to buy for high quality audio?: Are you ready to see the audio equipment? I used to record audio books with producing audiobooks. Since it's all in audio, it's very important to have good audio quality, which is why I'll show you exactly what I use. And you know, it sounds good, because I'm using it and you can hear it. I used for the microphone, the electoral voice, Ari 20 cardio. I'd microphone. And the best part about this entire set up is it minimizes the work I need to do for filming online courses and getting the professional quality audio out in my live streams. This audio set up is what professionals consistently used. And once you've got this, you're in the position to make some very high quality audio. Now you need a position. The microphone, just like this is you can see I've got a stand that keeps it in the perfect position. So this out of shot and I kind of talked down a kind of right next to it like this when I'm filming, and that way it does a good job capturing my audio and it sounds brilliant. I've spent years getting this audio set up, which is why I'm so excited to show it to you. Use the electoral voice already. 20 Cardio oId microphone. I also highly recommend a pop filter. As you can see right here, the pop filter helps stop some of the puff puff sounds for and some of the air coming out of my mouth from getting into the microphone and creating any sort of distortion and for having audio books, it's very important to make sure you've got the best quality audio with minimum distortions . Next, you also with this microphone. This does not just plug into the computer. You need a microphone pre amp processor first, then you need in USB audio interface. Thus, this set up does require several different parts. However, it's worth it. They Here's the pre AMP. Process, or now it's awesome about the Preempt processor is the Pre AMP. Processor allows me to do things like apply gain compression, D s ing frequency enhancements and noise gates all on my audio before it even gets into the computer. This greatly reduces my production time and allows me to film in real time without even needing to separately, edit and render videos for courses and for audiobooks That means I have a very short and easy routine that I've gone through to show you how I actually take the audio and get it into just perfect volume and format for Audible. This saves a ton of time versus trying to edit in post production, and I highly recommend get this set up like that. Once you've got the pre AMP. Then you need the focus, right Scarlett to I to to actually get the pre amp into the computer. Thus, it's like this. You got the step one. You've got the microphone covered with a pop filter. Then that goes into the DB X preempt processor. Then that goes into the focus, right, Scarlett, and that goes into the computer itself. And that's how you get the beautiful sounding audio I've got here. I've recorded all of my audiobooks with this exact set up, which is why I'm recommending it to you
16. Adobe Audition with the Adobe Creative Cloud for audio: what have I used to get the majority of my audio files approved On Audible, I used the adobe creative cloud. Today it's $49 a month, and it includes all the adobe programs, for example, and includes photo shop Illustrator. It includes Dreamweaver after effects animate audition and what I use. I use Adobe Audition to allow me to see the actual values off the sounds I create. Now you can also use audacity. Audacity is a free program. You can download that it will allow you to do the same kind of editing. Our destiny has some annoying features. Like to render an MP three file. You have to go download a separate and coder to put that in there. I like that adobe audition. As everything included. I need to record my audio, mix it and modify it, and that with my one subscription, which I then get to write off as a business expense. I also have access to photo shop, which I used to make T shirts. I have access to Adobe after effects, which I used to make my videos with music visuals on them. I also have access to other programs I want to download, use them, teach them, for example, Illustrator in design, etcetera. I'm grateful that Adobe Audition is allowed me to make my books on Audible, and that's why I keep using it. I also get all the updates this way, and I can have it on two different computers. So I I use Adobe Audition to allow me to edit my audio, and I used Adobe Addition originally to record my audiobooks. Now I actually just record them in wire cast, so I do videos as well. I record them in wire cast, and then I can directly take the audio out of them in Adobe Audition and just produce the audio files strictly for audible.
17. Adobe Audition tutorial for correcting loudness: Would you like to see how I process my audio using Adobe Audition to get it in just the right format for a C X. I hope this process will be really helpful for you because this was extremely challenging for me. I've made a process here that I hope will work for you no matter what your audio looks like . Going into it, I found another author who helped me to get started on the process. But the problem was my audio input was different than his, and therefore the exact settings he used to do not work for me. This process, I show, will take any audio you put into it and should aim it very close, if not exactly within the boundaries of where audible requires it to be. Here's the process I'm using and I will go through and do this with you live first. I did the adaptive noise reduction already because it takes about five minutes to do that, I'll show you where it's at in the menu. The adaptive North reduction allows all those lower and sounds the background noise that comes up when I'm talking in the background and when I'm quiet it's all you hear. This adaptive noise reduction allows those little spaces to actually be silent and helps produce things like computer hum in the background. Now I don't recommend having some loud ongoing noise like a air conditioner, some consistent disturbance like that, because even the adaptive noise reduction, then we'll likely to cross over and remove some of your voice. This works better with a better recording studio set up. If you possible, it's much easier to record in the quietest place possible. And then when you use the adaptive noise reduction, it'll be nearly total silence when there's no words being spoken or when there's no audio at all. And then when I'm talking, it's not likely to disturb my voice. If the I did things like this before, with a loud computer on in the background and when I did any kind of noise reduction, it would disturb my voice as well. So I did the inactive noise reduction first now to get the volume, and these have been so challenging for me. So I hope this is much easier for you to get this done. What I have is a simple two step process to get the volume perfectly in line. Even when I put in audio, that's out of the volume range. Even when I put in audio that clips, this two step process handles that. So what I do first, I already have the clip selected. I go over here into the loudness tab. Now, if you don't see the loudness tab, click over here. It will be in here. You can edit workspaces also on drag it up here as I've dragged the loudness tab up right next to default. So I've got my loudness tab over here. I dragged my file in here, and what it needs to do first is analyze it for loudness, and this will help me see if I actually do need to make changes to it. Given the previous audiophiles, I'm pretty sure I will need to on this one. Once you consistently recorded the same format. This makes the process pretty predictable. So what the numbers say here? It says the total root mean square RMS is negative 18 db that does fall within the audible guidelines for loudness. However, the peak is actually clipping. It's positive, and if it's positive, that means it's clipping and we don't want any of that now. My root mean square is low enough here. I can probably just run my peak amplitude of minus 3.5. The problem is, if I run that without setting the root mean square a little bit lower, it will essentially bump it up by that much, and I risk it knocking it out of the range. So what I'll do on here is run my total arm s first with limiting, I will bring up the total RMS to from Negative 18 to negative 17 1st And then I will essentially knock it all down by using a hard limiter that will force the peak all the way down to negative three from zero, and that will make it fit within audibles guidelines. Audible wants the peaks to be negative three most, and this is exactly how I get it done. So I go through and set the total RMS negative 17. You'll see. It's now negative 17 and I'm still having issues with the peak, the true pig being too loud. So what I do is go through the next step. I select peak amplitude of negative 3.5 I run that and what this will do, it'll push. The RMS will end up being a higher value in number. But the true peak will now fall within the A C X guidelines and the RMS will fall within the A C X guidelines as well. If you skip the RMS step, sometimes lowering the peak amplitude will knock the total RMS out of the range. So this process handles that you see now the total RMS is exactly in the middle of negative 20 db The peak is that negative 3.5, which is also exactly around where Audible wants it. That means I've got the file in the correct format. Now the final step is to go and save this in whatever format it started in. I wanted in the correct format for Audible now. So the first thing I do is switch this toe MP three audio audible on. Lee wants MP three audio. Then when I do, I go over here and hit change. Now I need the sample type. It were recorded in 4800 what I wanted or 48,000 Technically 48 what I wanted in his 44.1 or 44,000 hertz. I also wanted in mono because it's simpler. Four audible to just put everything in mono. When it says in capital letters that we highly recommend putting all them files and mono, then the logical thing to do seems to be to follow their instructions. It also says in the guidelines that 16 bit depth is preferred now, once you put all this in once you can go through as I've done, I have an a c x preset, and that is simply set with all of these to begin with 44.1 kilohertz. Mono channel 16 bit depth. I hit. Okay, I choose where I want my file to be saved at. And I put this on my Mac over with the others and I call it processed because I still haven't stuck this section head Iran. But I've got the section headers processed and I have the chapters processed. All I need to do is a simple editing process. Then to put the section header on to the front And since they've both been processed, all the volume work just fine. So now I go in here I hit save, and this will convert the sample type over into what? I need it. I took a file that did not meet the audible audio requirements. It was too loud, and I've now converted it into something that's exactly at the right volume. The RMS value is right where Audible wants it. The true peak is right where Audible says the maximum is, and I've actually it's a little bit. It's a little bit less than the maximum, so it's not right at their inaudible, has some tolerance. If you put it in, it's a negative 2.5. They've let those through on mine, but they guide you to negative three or a little bit lower. So no, I've got the complete file ready and this is I Process that Took me so long was so difficult for me to do. I'm grateful I got adobe addition. I finally learned how to use it to get this volume exactly where Audible wants it with any kind of input file. If you're RMS is crazy and you put it in this way, you can then get your volume out correctly. Now if your audio so bad that you've got a ton of background noise Adjusting these volume making these volume changes may distort your audio even more. That's why I used the adaptive noise removal first to get rid of a lot of the background sound. Then when I pump up the volume and move it around a little bit, I'm not as likely to distort my audio. I'm very happy with how my audio sounds after this. And I hope that gives the listeners on audible the best experience. Which leads to me getting the best reviews which leads to me making the most sales, which then leads to me having Justus happy of a life a zai have today. So thank you very much for watching this. I hope this to toil showing you exactly how to use Adobe Audition to get audio files. And exactly the right format for Audible is so helpful
18. Basic editing functions such as adding silence and combing audio files: How do I edit my audio for simple things like putting a new section title in front of the original recording? When I originally recorded my speaker meeting 2017 I didn't do consistent section title narration. I didn't read aloud the chapter title, which Audible requires this a basic editing function. I can then dio as I'll go through an adobe addition. So the first thing I need I need that files I want to edit. So I want thes section titles file. This has a file. Why read aloud all of the different section titles and then I have a process version of the second chapter. So what I want to do essentially, is just to put on my section title in front of Maya chapter. So what I do for this, I use the editor, and I first just need to open the section title here, and I've got the section titles in order. So I have them Chapter one. So I've got these this way. So all I need to do is take this part. I grabbed Chapter two right here, and I can then just command see, I can copy this, and then I can go over on my chapter to that. I want to put this on and right in the front. I can go effects. Or I could go into, edit and insert. I can insert silence right here. And then what I'll do is put, like, five seconds of silence in here at the very beginning. And then once I've got my silence inserted then that makes it easy for me. I've got my silence in here. Now I click. OK, and now I've got five seconds of silence starting this out. So I've got space to work within to be beginning now. What I can do is just paste in my section title. I've got my section title pasted in now in the middle of this silence. So then all I need to do and the section title amount of time it pace in their works. Just perfect. So I've got the section title pasted into this silence And now I can just go listen back to it and I can capture the system audio so that you can hear it too. Chapter two, Sex. What if we were all honest about it? I've got that introductory part now. I can essentially see how that adds in with the entire track. And if I want to insert a little bit more silence, let's said like a little bit of a longer pause between When I announced the section title, I can then just put something like, say, one second in there. It'll put a second of silence, and if that's too much, I can then just go through and delete a little bit. Now it's got 1/2 2nd of silence. Now I'll play it back again from the very beginning. Chapter two, Sex. What if we were all honest about it? Welcome the speaker meeting 2017 These sex section. I'm leading getting this right out there because I feel like sex is at the core off most of the chicken Now is your here. I've got essentially a double. Welcome in here. I've got two different welcomes. Welcome The speaker meeting 2017. These sex section. What I can do now if I say OK? Well, as I originally recorded this, I kind of put two different welcomes in, so I can try cutting that out and see how it sounds this way. What if we were all honest about it. I'm leading getting this right out there because I feel like sex is at the core off most of the challenges most of the growing pains I've experienced in my life, for example, and then there. If I don't, if I don't like how that sounds, all I have to do, I can go up here. I can undo, delete audio. And now I've got the entire welcome back in there. This is the basics of editing audio, and it's really easy to do with these different audio editing functions in Adobe Addition. So I very quickly just made the edits to the audio that easy. I put a new section header in at the beginning. I got it spaced out just right, and I can go through the entire wave file essentially with the same kind of process Here. I can take out various parts if I want to. I can say Look at the end and see Well Audible likes a certain amount of silence at the end and room tone at the end. So what I can do if I want to? I can go on insert silence at the end. I can insert, let's say one second of silence and I actually can insert it over top of other media. I can go insert it right over top of an existing part of the file so I can just select that and put the silence in. And now I've got it ends with a solid second of silence. But if I don't want that much silence in, I can just cut out a little bit and then I can look. It ends at 58 37 7 or 58 31 7 and then I can see it. The very end of the files that about a second leader. So I've got enough end that audible likes to have a nice second or so of silence on the end of it. So I've got a nice second or so of silence on the end of the file for Audible. That way, they're happy. They essentially that the end of the chap er is just quietly finished. And if I am not sure like, well, what if they want a little bit more than I can just go add in a little bit more silence? I can say if I don't have anything selected. It will just put the silence in afterwards. And I've got an extra second there. I can really leave a good more than a second end. Now my chapter ends on a nice silent note. I now have the section header in and I've got that smoothly integrated. Now I've got the whole chapter ready once I'm happy with it. And this audio was already processed previously. So I'm not going to show how I processed all this yet. I'll go into that in a little bit. So when I want to save this since it already was in the right format, it is in the right format to start with. I can just go save it. And then I've got my a c X sample exactly how I want it. 44.1 kilohertz mono 16 bit. So I've got it saved, and then I call this I can call it a second chapter to sex, and then I can just call it chapter to sex because now it's not processed or anything like that. This is ready to go. This is finished so I can save this and it will put it out fairly quickly. I appreciate you learning how to do this with me. This is just the very basics of simple editing of audio. You can do this pretty much same process than almost any program you want to use. I'm very happy with how our destiny works. So I'm grateful to have this to share with you today. I'm grateful that in doing this year, I've now got another chapter that is ready and finished for audible.
19. Digital Audio Workstation alternatives to Adobe Audition: What are some alternatives to using Adobe Audition? I will explain that now on audibles. Official description of digital audio workstations that blawg, not a c x dot com audible explains. Basically, that Adobe audition in terms of technical functionality is the best. The downsides they list include the fact that you pretty much have to keep paying indefinitely. The downsides are that you make monthly payments and that your monthly payments eventually eclipse the one time fee would pay for other software. Now on audibles the bad. They don't list any technical downsides to using audition. And that is a huge reason why I use audition now. Yes, if I use audition for years, the price I'm looking to pay for using it for years is going to be much more expensive than most other options. However, I have the very best combination of technical capabilities and adobe addition. I actually pay $49 a month paid annually, which or it might even be more. But then I get all of the adobe creative suite. The cheapest, I think, is about $20 a month to just use audition. But I figure why just used audition when I grabbed photo shop after effects and the whole rest for the one license. I realized, though, that you might not want to sign up for a $20 a month fee right away. Stall present you some other options with everything I said before in mind that using something like Audition that does the job really well might be a huge timesaver. I mean, if you want to be a best selling author, are you really going to let 1999 a month get in the way of being a best selling author? I'll give you some other options if you're willing to do that on Author, who it does seem to be a best selling author. He posted on his blogged that he uses garage band. I tried to use GarageBand personally, and while my 1st 1 hour long throw away Audiobook got approved, my next one got rejected and the controls for me on GarageBand just didn't make very good sense. And Garage Man is also Mac Onley. And as I just said about the controls, GarageBand doesn't include anything you want to do to master your recordings. If your recordings don't come out perfectly with inaudible standards. GarageBand is not going to help you get it mastered for audible, and you can't get around it by just downloading plug ins. Because it's a Macintosh built in app, they greatly limit what you can do with it. However, the very first throwaway audiobook I did using GarageBand using another author settings directly off his blawg. My book did get approved with the money I rig HT Mike. I didn't talk that loud in it, and I just got lucky that they approved it or unlucky. You might say it would have been better to figure that out earlier. Another free option is called audacity. This an open source program available for Mac and Windows That's very popular for editing audio. Same problems with GarageBand plus additional ones. Audacity. I've used audacity a lot. That's what I originally used to try and add it. Master my audio. It doesn't come with the ability to directly export MP three. You have to download another encoder like lame to convert to MP three, and it also doesn't give you the ability to measure arm s values or peaks. Now you can just happen to get the volume in the exact right place. By luck, you could even do something like Try audition, make a system down and test it and then get an exact set up in Adobe that you could then translate toe audacity and then just do it for free. After that, with our destiny, without being able to see the RMS values are peaks. You also can't directly master your audio, although there are plug ins you can download, and you can get things pretty good still, without measuring the RMS values of the peaks. It can be a little difficult, unless you're very good with sound to get it in the right format for audible. Another price that another program recommended by Audible. They suggest Reaper because it has a low price and as a free risk, no evaluation period where you can no risk. You can just try elit during the evaluation period. It has a comprehensive programme with many options that can be overwhelming for beginners, and it has a lack of a dedicated audio window, which sounds crazy. You can't just put the clipping and edit it. And then there's some apparently design issues which make it difficult to use. However, given the low price point. If you just hate Adobe for some reason than you might be interested in trying, this is one of a C X's top recommendations is to use Reaper. You might be interested in giving this a try instead of using Adobe or something else. This seems tohave the ability to do most of what you need. And if it doesn't have a dedicated audio editing window, you can easily do that in audacity or something, and then bring it in and get toe work. It says This is a comprehensive programme with many options. However, I feel Adobe Addition has the same issue. It is kind of overwhelming. It took me a while months to figure out exactly how to get the RMS down, and two would figure out how to fully understand the sound and loudness of my audio and to see exactly where that was in a way that I could easily repeat between recordings. So Reaper seems like it's a good option. Along with Adobe Audition, you also could use Sound Forge Pro, which is by Sony. The problem is, the Mac version doesn't include some of the most useful features of the PC version, and it says that uses a large amount of system. Resource is, if that's a critique of this. I can't imagine, because Adobe Audition takes a while, even on my Mac pro to go through some of the editing, I can't imagine how much that sound Forge must take. Also, it's $400. You're literally looking at something like two years of Adobe Audition to invest in Sound Forge by Sony. Another option is Wave Lab. The problems according to Audible and has, ah, high learning curve. And they say, Hi learning curve and fairly complicated. Adobe Audition doesn't have those critiques, and from my experience it had a significant learning curve. Although it was pretty easy to figure out how to do the basics of audio editing. Learning how to get exactly the loudness in the right spot took a little bit more time. I'd be hesitant to use something that Audible said, both high learning curve and fairly complicated to use and use. A lot of system resource is, and this costs $500. Wow, There's also pro tools, which I considered using before buying into the creative cloud with Adobe Audition Pro Tools Express doesn't come with all the plug in jail need. And I would imagine there's versions that have mawr, but I might be wrong about that. It also is one of the more expensive options which the creative cloud was attractive to me because I could get an entire year of all the Dhobi suite for about the same price or a little less than some of these other options. So I'm grateful that I have these options to show you, as presented by a C X studio gear Siris on their blawg. I've read and read and read and read and looked through these things and tested, and I'm grateful today I use audition. It works really well. I pay the money for it, and then I get the sales. After having the books on Audible. It's great to know your alternatives. And sometimes struggling through something for free might even motivate used like me struggling through GarageBand for free motivated me toe put the money into getting something that was more effective. So thank you very much for experiencing this with me. I hope it was helpful for you
20. Uploading finished audio one chapter at a time to Audible: when you finally finished getting your audio edited, I take great joy in having the ability to then upload my file and knowing that I'm done, I'm ready to go. So I just finished Chapter two. So I go up here to browse, and I go over here to where the file is. I go upload and audible up loads and processes very quickly. So once I've got that uploaded audible, then tell me how long my full production is. Also, once I've updated it and then I just go one step at a time, and I put each individual chapter in. Now all I do. Whenever I have a chapter that's done that I'm This is ready to go. This is finished. I upload it into audible, and then I just work on one chapter two time until it's done. I often want to get things done much faster. I want to be able to. Originally, I was hoping to do this entire production here with you should explaining how to do this and to go through and do the entire book, finishing all the audio off in one day. It's four days later, and it's easy to get impatient. I'm hoping today I can put all of the rest of the audio up there and submit it. I'm grateful today that I have a more patient working pace that I realised things take time . And, for example, this book might take 10 or 20 years to hit the majority of its sales potential. What difference does it make to just try and get it done today or tomorrow? Now earlier is better, but at the same time, it's not worth my piece being disturbed and me getting all crazy and being all stressed out . Missing time with my family to try and get this booked on a day or a few days sooner. I'm grateful with audio books. This is a patient, ongoing process. It's not something that needs to be rushed through, because when you rush through it too much, you're likely to get bad reviews. All of your work is likely to get dragged down by rushing through. At the same time, it's tricky to do some balance of getting new books published and innovating and learning the faster you can get things out and innovate and learn from them. The faster you can improve your quality. So if you never get anything out, if you work so long and so hard to edit everything perfectly and then it turns out you made a product no one cares to it. Listen to, even though it is sounding and hearing in terms of editing perfectly. If you go spend a whole bunch of time years to do that, you may die before you get to even try again. I'm grateful today I have what I feel, the healthy balance of getting things out. They're not putting way too much time into them to make them perfect and then seeing what people respond to and then going back in and saying, OK, I'll, I'll make another version of this now. Once you've got all the audio files uploaded, then all you have to do is hit. I'm done and then it goes over to audible for review. If you've got everything in the right format using what I've shared with you, you should then get your book approved and it should be available for sale right away. Then it's time to start telling friends and family about it
21. An honest and entertaining experience with less editing: What is my philosophy for editing? The questions I ask in making edits are things like this. How can I make the very highest quality audio in the very shortest amount off my actual time? How much is the listener willing to tolerate my imperfections in exchange for me being able to create and share more quickly? For example, would a listener prefer for me to make one addition of one book that is imperfectly edited and then for me to make updated edition, which has new information and more things I've learned that's imperfectly edited the next year? Or to just get one version of a book out of me? That or video course or whatever it is that takes so long? I don't have time to do it again? What I've found is that most people are willing to tolerate some degree of imperfection, and in exchange for that, I get massive amounts of my time freed up. What I've seen in other tutorials, suggesting how to produce audiobooks is the recommendation to edit, and it at it toe literally go through every second of your audio. Listen, go in and cut out each breath when you hear someone that's breathe. When you hear that the narrator's breathe, you go in, cut that breath out. Did you justice to stumble or starts to stutter or put pronounce that word wrong? As by now you've probably heard Yeah, you've done like 100 grammatical errors. Look, grammatical errors. I trust my listeners today to handle my imperfection in exchange for honesty and enjoyable , naturally flowing presentation. And in exchange for me not having to spend 2 to 5 times as much more of my time toe edit all these. I think if you don't already have 10 or 20 audiobooks out, this is the ideal approach. Why? Because you don't have enough data more than likely to see exactly what the listeners want out of you. The more audiobooks I put out, the more video classes I make, the more I'm able to see exactly what my listeners do and don't want the more contest over time, what do people like and keep listening to and really enjoy the very most? If I limit myself by trying to get things out there perfectly, then I also slow down. My ability to grow and learn at first is the listener I was used to listening to Onley edited and polished audiobooks. I started with Eckhart Tolle. A. He did this retreat. Siri's there. He has, like 20 or 30 just speeches in retreats, and the 1st 1 of them I bought was some kind of retreat, and at first it was a bit miserable toe. Listen to the unedited version where there were awkward pauses, what you might call an awkward pause and sounds and ah, feedback on the mike and well, hi, we're here today. I wasn't used to having things natural. I was used to these 123 edit, edit, Go talk, speak, format. Everything is exactly in the perfect order. Were never ending this straight to a Metrodome. There are no mistakes, and we will go straight through and do this regimented, almost like being in the military. Something exact discipline. You'll do it this way, and that's the world of highly edited audiobooks. It takes a ton of time and energy to get that edit. And what I noticed. I enjoyed listening to both of Eckhart Tolle, ease of new Earth and the power of now a lot. What I noticed is that he was really funny when he wasn't edited. Ah, lot of the things that he just randomly set off hand were extremely funny, and these kinds of things were edited out of his other books. I've received the very same kind of feedback because I just throw what I do out there. I embrace my laziness. I'm too lazy to go through an edit word by word. Everything I've said, I also trust you toe just deal with the imperfections and to get something that's much more enjoyable and enthusiastic in exchange. The problem is, with editing too much. Most of us cut out all of our humanity. I am made a tutorial three years ago where I was doing to our Facebook ads interface live like screen captured tutorial just as I was doing it. And one part of the tutorial. It's just quiet. I'm going through making and after ad and I'm writing the ad text and I just offhand say, Why don't I put an exclamation point on this to get a M F or excited? I didn't even remember I did that, and I didn't go through and watch it again. I just threw that out there on YouTube and some guy had, like, caps, lock comment. Oh my God, that was funny. I was laughing so hard because it was so unexpected in the middle of some technical tutorial for you to just drop the MF bomb about an exclamation point. What a lot of us do we edit that kind of stuff out. And in fact, I would think if something like that happened in the middle of many of the kinds of audiobooks that many of us are likely to make, that be the exact thing we would at it out now. Sure, someone might have listened to that and said, I'm never watching this jerk's videos again. To me, unedited book is just a XLII likely to come out that same way that someone goes through and says, I'm never listening this crap again. The key is to really give someone a look into my humanity, to be honest and open and to show my imperfections. It shows a great amount of trust for the listener. When I sit there and clean every second of my audio up every stupid thing I say every time I trip over words I've gotten, I think I've gotten hundreds of reviews on my video courses that have been negative. You can't even speak right. Your grammar is terrible, and I've gotten tens of thousands of positive reviews, the positive result of just openly, honestly, sharing. It's gigantic because so many of us are so hesitant to do that. We want to look good more than we want to do good. And I've learned today I want to do good mawr than I want to look good. And that means sometimes I show up and look bad. I look stupid. I look uneducated. I have my video as I'm recording this. The green screen is all crazy. My hair is see through my neck and face. You can see the audio behind it. Sometimes it's not perfect. I hope it's effective, though, and the benefit is that in the same among the time many people would be luckily, Teoh produce one audiobook. I've produced eight and out of the eight audiobooks I've produced. Now I've got great data to see which ones I would be worth my time to invest in doing a new version of it or worth my time to do similar audio books in the same time, many people would have put out maybe five or 10 video courses. I've put out nearly 100 and that gives me a depth that is impossible than to compete with. There's entire companies with employees and huge staffs that are trying to put out video courses and I single handedly, not because I'm great or anything, because the other people that the company's air greatly limited by the structure there in and demanding to put out perfect products. And I'm willing to accept imperfection. I can put out more courses than companies with hundreds of people working on these courses that have huge budgets, that air trying really hard. And the key is to fully unleash my creativity to not stand in my own way. As an individual who doesn't have hundreds of people working for me, I can't afford the luxury essentially or the thinking that I need to put things out that are perfect. It takes too much extra time, too much extra effort. My plan going forward is to put out 100 or so audio books in a year, summarizing and expanding on what I learned in all these other books I'm reading with the hope to allow you to get the same benefits I did out of reading, say, a 14 hour audiobook that you could listen in 30 minutes and get the same things I got out of it, the same benefits without having to invest all the time. I have a chance to do that today because I'm willing to just do absolute minimal edits. Now you might ask. Well, Gerry, how do you go through and talk? It sounds as if many times that you've edited. You don't say a lot of arms and Oz, and you don't have a lot of these normal ticks that people do. Speaking one of the main tricks I use is to be quiet for a minute, to be comfortable with silence. This allows me to not have to fill the silence with, um uh and so I'm comfortable just being quiet for a second, and that tends to make the words I say have a bit more emphasis on them. I'm okay with a little peace and quiet. This eliminates the need for me to essentially dominate the one way conversation here with you by demanding that I constantly have noise going on little pauses for silence. Also helped my brain organize my thoughts accurately because but most of us are, brain comes up with words and thoughts away faster than we can actually spit them out of our mouths. In fact, this mouth is very slow compared to what the brain can dio. It's challenging, essentially to condense the brain down into one word at a time when the brain can dump nearly ah, paragraph. If not MAWR in a second, dump an entire lecture out immediately. How am I supposed to dumb that down in the one word at a time? It's easier if I have more patience with them. I also have a ton of practice I've been talking for over 30 years. All the practice I have talking helps out. I now pay attention to how I talk in all of my conversations, as if I'm recording videos or audio books. I noticed when I say Ah in a conversation, I'm like, What the hell was that? How did that happen? I get curious. I talk with other people, the same as I talk with you here. Therefore, all of my talking is essentially practice. If you want to be able to put out audio. That sounds fairly good. Straight out of the heart. I don't use the script. I don't prepare what I'm going to say. More than one idea of what I'm going to talk about at the time. I just let it go. Let it go. All of my conversations with people are then practice for these audio books and videos that I dio in every conversation. I'm listening to what I'm saying, as if I put it out in a video. And this also allows other people to talk better with me. Because most of my life I tried to dominate a conversation by saying, um and, uh, but and so with the hope that the other person would not be able to get into a chance to talk that I'm going to just ramble on and on and on. And, um but no, wait, I'm still talking. I'm gonna come up with something to say in a minute. Ill. So here it is. Now I've got, um Well, some who to say, Ah, in a minute, believing space makes better conversations for me as well. This philosophy saved me a gigantic amount of time editing, accepting him for perfection as necessary. Right there allows me to see what I really need to edit. What I really don't. For example, my dogs just go off and lose it Sometimes There were two people at the door, right before this of miles to my dogs. Irfan Arfa's. I call them Earth. Our for our, for our, for our They go off in the background, and sometimes even in my audiobooks, I just let it go. I just leave it in. If it's not too bad. If they don't go on for, like, 15 30 seconds, like they did before this, then I just let it go. Little couple of dog barks. We're just gonna power right through that. I don't hold it against Eckhard totally. When I'm listening to his books, if a dog barks in the background, if an occasional car horn honks here, there, now audible. You don't want to have a bunch of extraneous sounds. But if there's one or a couple here there, sometimes it's faster to let it go now. When my dogs went off for 30 seconds, 15 seconds into my video and Mitel audio recording here, then sure I turned it off and waited. I also try and record in short batches anywhere from 3 to 5 minutes, or as long as maybe 15 or 20 minutes. But I run the risk. The longer I record. It's easier for the dogs to just go off, and I almost wish they go off like right now, because, God, that make the point so good, wouldn't it? I try and record in little shorter audio segments, so something like that does happen if the doorbell rings. If I get a phone call or something, I forget to put my phone on. Do not disturb, then I can just I just have that four minutes or so that I have to do over. And I can usually stomach repeating myself for a few minutes. What I originally deal with my audiobooks. I'd record like an hour at once, and then that was annoying because I had to edit everything back and forth in. Now if I record in smaller chunks, it's really simple. All I have to do is put the audio clips together, cut the very end in the very beginning, and that is very fast. I can easily throw together chapters. I can easily put the audio clips together. And then if there's one with some critical failure, I can just essentially delete that one straight out of what I've recorded and re record again. Or if it was so good that I can't possibly word it that good again, then I can simply cut the very end of it off. However, I try and do everything with no editing required. I try and produce video files. Is the raw format I recording I trying to produce video files that go directly into video courses that don't need some people say they benefit from, but they don't need to be edited to go straight into a video course, and that allows me then to do minimal at its dumbing them down into an audiobook and a kindle and create space book. My editing philosophy, I think, is one of the biggest breakthroughs I've had for creativity to just do it. Even if I do a completely bad, useless, stupid video course one day, or if I put an audiobook out that gets 10 negative reviews on it for every 20 positive ones that gets, Look, I'm not a perfect person. I'm not claiming to be. I'm doing my best to be used Will be of service today. So I'm very grateful for this chance to be useful in to be of service with you. I hope going in depth to my editing philosophy is useful for you today to get mawr out in less time and to provide a genuine, entertaining experience for your listeners, as I hope I've done here with you.
22. Asking for help with the first sales and receiving reviews: thank you very much for finishing. Learning with me How to produce audiobooks. Four. A. C X. I hope this has been really helpful for you to get your audiobooks on audible, because for me, this was quite challenging to get my audiobooks available on audible. I'm very grateful today that I've got so many books on Audible, and I'm excited to get my speaker meeting 2000 and 17 audiobook soon on audibles. Well, I personally think this is a best book I've produced in terms of providing amazing help for you in terms of helping with the problems that have really drove me insane for most of my life than what I find today is. It's very challenging to get sales for a book. It's if you don't focus on something that has been a really painful and challenging problem for you personally. My speaker Meeting 2017 book is a 12 hour so audio biography of my life going into my very most challenging problems in things like sex, alcoholism, gambling, money, food, emotions, things like depression, fear, anxiety. I'll take you through all this in my speaker meeting book, and I hope to give a simple example. Once you've got the book out there of how to make sales of it, would you consider buying my speaker, meaning 2000 and 17 book or it's available on Amazon Prime? You can listen to it and just find it on Amazon Prima's. Well, you don't even have to buy if you're a prime member or if you have Kindle Unlimited, it's available there as well. You can simply read it. You don't even have to buy it. If you've got Kindle Unlimited, I find it today when I'm willing to ask something like that that I'm also willing to be vulnerable, I'm willing to have you say no, no, I don't want to buy your speaker meeting 2017 book. I don't want to go search for it on Amazon Prime and find it, and I'm okay with that. I still love you and will still keep creating for you. Even if you don't buy anything I create. That's fine. What I am willing to do today is consistently ask, though I make the ask, and then the amazing thing is, lots of times you are the people alongside. You are likely to say yes. sure I'll try your book. I listen to another audio books authors entire book, even though I don't usually listen to fiction books. He helped me get my books on Audible. His blawg post helped me get my books on Audible. And even though the process he shared for me didn't work past my first book, I was able. Once I got the first book approved, I was so energized I was willing toe work harder to spend the money on Adobe Audition to get my books in exactly the right format. Now I have eight books. Hopefully, by the time you see this, I'll have nine books on Audible. I'm willing to ask you today to join me as the listener on Audible. I get a $50 bounty if you are brand new to audible and you've never bought a book before and you sign up for a gold membership and my book is the 1st 1 you get. Audible gives me a $50 bonus, and I'm extremely grateful for that. I realized that if there's a good chance you're going to actually be a listener with me on Audible, that I need to make a direct ask for that and explain why there was a lady working with my wife and I on our health insurance one day and she didn't want us to go home and do it online, and I would have been more motivated to work. Or Third, she would have explained the why she tried to dissuade us, to make us afraid of going on with doing it online. Why did she get a commission for us signing up there? Did she get points? Did she look better at work? If we had signed up with her, if she'd have set something like that, I might have been motivated to make the extra effort and go all the way home and come back to see her because of her honesty, for most of us are conditioned to not be honest about what we need and why we need it, because then we think will be ashamed of it. There's no shame in asking for what you need. I have lots of student loan debt. I need help in order to be here and show up for my business today and my business went so well. At one point I got a big ego, and now I'm grateful in what I do. I'm conditioned to ask for help. Every book that at you and anyone along with you purchases helps me a lot. I'm very grateful for it. Every positive review has a huge impact because some people just come along, have never heard anything before and just can't stand it being different than what's expected and others. I set up these big promises, and I disappoint them every positive review. It takes a lot of positive reviews to balance out one negative review If five people leave a five star review and one person leaves a one star review that drags the average down close to four Onley, one person asked to not like something for every five or so people that do like it. And if you want something that's really high, it takes a lot off consistent love and attention. Patience. It takes being willing to get a bunch of negative reviews on a book toe, learn what I could do better on it and improve. I hope this is helpful for you as you are going forward with publishing books on audible or whatever else you're using. This information for, and one parting thing I hope I can suggest is to take every review is helpful. I used to fight with reviewers. I've had over 10,000 reviews on things I've made online, and I used to fight with reviewers. I used to get mad at them. And today see, every review really is helpful. If I'm getting one star reviews on things, that's a good indication. I might want to change my approach. Either don't make things on that again or make something that is easier for the user to engage with. If I'm getting really good reviews on something, then that's an indication to do more like that. Something's D. I gotta have one star and not take it personally. There was a one star review on this book at first, but thankfully to other people came along and left five stars on it, and now it's balanced out. This had a one star review on it, which makes it about impossible to sell. It added on Lee a one star review on it for months, and then two people came along and essentially fixed it after that because I'm a confident this is a very good book, but I just got unlucky. Essentially, the first person who listened to it hated it, which made it a lot harder for other people to go in and buy it. So I'm very grateful for anything you do to help me online, and I'm available to do my best to help you online. Thank you very much for being here with me today. If you've enjoyed this, would you please leave a review that reflects how you've enjoyed it? If you hated it and said, This is the worst you can't believe, then feel free to share that, and I will. Then they take that is helpful. Okay, I will adjust my approach for future things or something's if there's a negative review on them and helps me to see, for example, someone says, God, this sucks. He didn't edit. It is terrible. I'm OK with that today. If a review points out something that I'm okay with the decision, then there's nothing to hurt. I've accepted that. That's essentially the consequence of my approach. The only things that can hurt in reviews are things that I haven't dealt with in fixed up in myself. If I'm judging in condemning myself over something in a review points that out. Then it can hurt, but of review points out something that I'm okay with. And, hey, it can be kind of entertaining. I can agree with people I can go let look at the reviews and nod my head and say, after Onley after seven hours. The Onley advice is not to do Facebook ads. I can see how how that review is relevant. And if, if I like reviews like this must listen book for potential Facebook advertisers than I have to pay. I have to be okay with was so boring in each chapter was 50% off topic that I see how that's accurate. About half the chapter was off topic, and it just simply sucks. That's a that's just as valid as someone saying that the that this author's down nurse approach in business and life I lie. I love that. That's just a Zaha This'll book will make you want toe hang yourself. This'll book will make you. Has this turned you off from other books in this genre? Yes, Maybe that's good. This isn't a book. It's a diatribe. Motivational, not practical, Highly recommended just listening for the second time. Now you see, everyone has a valid point, and sometimes when you make the point a little to accurately and I've found, if the reviews essentially hurt my feelings, there's an improved. There's an opportunity for me to improve their if I can laugh at the reviews and see how they're valid. If I can see how the reviews are valid, then I can also lovingly accept what they have to say. And therefore I'm able to make something I'm able to continue adjusting my creative work based on what people both like and don't like. So I'm grateful today that I've got a bit of a sense of humor. I don't have a thick skin in the sense that reviews convey very easily hurt my feelings. I don't have a thick skin to defend myself. These air people who've bought my book and maybe returned it. It's not up to me to protect myself from you. It's up to me lovingly receive what you have to say, and if it hurts my feelings, then there's an opportunity for me to improve their and I'm grateful for that. I hope this wrap up here ties everything together in a way that's action, Mullah. Go forward. Ah, year ago, I had no audiobooks. Unalterable and toe have today about 100 reviews on my audiobooks, or maybe 70 or something like that. I'm honored. Even if at least 10 or 20 of them are. This sucks, and I'll never read his books again. I'm grateful today that there's a huge market place on audible, and you know what some of the people I've found sometimes when I absolutely hate something to start, and I worked my way through it. Some of those are the things I'm most passionate about. I honestly hated getting started with publishing audiobooks on Audible. It was really annoying. And now I've got eight of them. I'll have nine soon, and I hope that you have the chance to do whatever you want to do today. Hope this is a useful part off your journey. Today it's Jerry. Stop rambling. Turn it off. Turn it off. It's 50% off topic
Jerry Banfield, I create music videos and teach crypto!
