Is YouTube viable for audiobook distribution?
Yeah.
As long as you don’t have an exclusive agreement with ACX you can upload your audiobook.
You need to have a cover image and I added some notes on my videos. So I have who it was written by, me, who narrated it. I put in calls for reviews. In the Interview with a #Vanlifer video, I added ‘did you know” details, like popup videos from the 90s on WH1.
One thing I will say is that the views were low on these videos. And the people who subscribe to my channel come here for easy answers to questions related to writing and publishing and the audiobooks I uploaded are my fiction books. Not everyone who subscribes to this channel or who YouTube recommends my videos to like this style of fiction. I would have probably done better to add my nonfiction books, but I do go back and update those from time to time so I’d have to keep reuploading the files. And uh, I’m focused on promoting my fiction after years of neglecting it in favor of my nonfiction. So keep that in mind. If your channel is currently all about one topic and then you upload your audiobooks that aren’t a oneforone fit, your results may look like mine.

How much money can you make?
Guys! Guys! I know, don’t get jealous over my three dollars from YouTube. Again, if my channel was only about vampires or thrillers, or just all fiction like a solo audiobook channel, I might have seen more. But just so you know, I have 16,000 subscribers.
But I do think this can help with discoverability. If someone really likes it they can buy the ebook or print books. Maybe they’ll check out my other books.
I could have uploaded the first chapter and then said, to hear the rest go buy it. Maybe I’ll do that with my other books to see how that goes.

Should you do one long audiobook or break it up.
The psychological thriller novella, Escaping Avila Chase, was divided into five sections. It was also narrated by a professional and not me, so this probably accounts for some of the skews. But I got a total of 151 views on all the videos for Escaping Avila Chase compared to the 90 for my version of IWAVL. I also made more because of that. But these are tiny numbers so take from this what you will.

Do people even want A.I. audiobooks?
There has been so much discussion and debate and angry shouty caps over AI. Audiobook narration. Because it could put narrators out of work. I had both versions up and this was an actual applestoapple comparison. And 66 people listened to the AI version compared to 90 who listened to my version. Compared to 151 who listened to the professional narrator.

Thoughts? What did I miss? Or did you miss this entire experiment and now you need to go listen to each of thse audiobooks and give your thoughts? I’m happy to revisit this at one year to see how the results have changed.
Also what other book experiements do you want me to do? Let me know if the comments below!


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