Common Questions
Audiobook FAQs.
Narrators, cost, exclusivity, recording your own voice and whether synthetic narration is worth considering.
Should I narrate my own book?
For memoir, and for non-fiction where you are the authority, often yes — listeners value hearing the actual person, and imperfection reads as authenticity. For fiction, usually not, unless you have performance experience; sustaining character voices and energy across ten or fifteen hours of recording is genuinely difficult. We will give you an honest opinion after hearing you read a page, and there is no awkwardness in being told a professional would serve the book better.
How much does audiobook production cost?
Audiobooks are priced by finished hour, and a rough guide is that 10,000 words of manuscript becomes about one hour of audio — so an 80,000-word novel runs to roughly eight hours. Cost depends on that running time, the narrator’s experience and whether you want a single voice or full cast. Audiobook production is also included in our Masterpiece plan at £5,999 alongside the rest of a full launch. We quote a fixed total before starting.
Do I have to go exclusive with Audible?
No, and we default to non-exclusive so your audiobook can sell on Apple Books, Spotify, Kobo, Google Play and library platforms as well as Audible. Exclusive arrangements offer a higher royalty rate on that one platform in exchange for locking you out of everywhere else, usually for a fixed term. For most authors the wider reach wins, but we will lay out both options with the actual numbers and let you decide.
How long does an audiobook take to produce?
Four to six weeks for a standard-length book: about a week for casting and auditions, one to two weeks of recording, then editing, proofing and mastering. Full-cast productions and very long books take longer. Retailer review adds a further one to three weeks before the title is live, so plan around eight weeks if you have a launch date in mind.
Do you pay narrators from my royalties?
No. Our narrators are paid a flat fee that you pay once, which means the finished recording is entirely yours and no one has an ongoing claim on your earnings. Royalty-share arrangements exist elsewhere in the industry and can lower your upfront cost, but they take a permanent cut of every sale and complicate ownership. We would rather you own your master outright.
What about AI or synthetic narration?
We produce human-narrated audiobooks. Synthetic narration has improved and is genuinely cheaper, and for some technical or reference titles it is a defensible choice — but it still cannot handle subtext, comic timing or emotional turn, and listeners increasingly notice and mention it in reviews. If budget is the obstacle, we would generally rather help you produce one book properly than three books cheaply.
Can you produce an audiobook for a book published elsewhere?
Yes, provided you still hold the audio rights — which independent authors almost always do, and which is worth checking in any contract if you have worked with a publisher. Backlist titles are excellent audiobook candidates because the book already has reviews and readers, and audio simply opens a new market for it.
What if I am unhappy with the narration?
This is exactly what the two approval points are for. You choose the narrator from auditions on your own text, then sign off the first fifteen minutes before the full recording is booked — so problems with tone, pace or character voices surface when they cost an afternoon rather than a fortnight. If something is genuinely wrong later, corrections and re-records of affected passages are included.
Studio recorded and mastered
