Some of you might have run across the sneaky early e-book release already, but this is the official announcement.
Over the last few years, on this blog and elsewhere, I’ve gotten a lot of questions from authors and podcasters and other people wanting to either get into the audio habit or to up their game. This book answers all of them, and a lot more that you didn’t know you had. It’s written in the same quirky, fun style as Throwing Lead: A Writer’s Guide to Firearms and the People Who Use Them
Available now in ebook and paperback, AWP Books proudly presents my newest nonfiction book Making Tracks: A Writer’s Guide to Audiobooks (And How To Produce Them). Now available at fashionable ebook retailers everywhere, available in the next day or two from most fashionable paperback retailers (find links to order now at the bottom of this post), like these:
Also check out my interview today on The Creative Penn where I talk about the book and delve into some of the story behind it.
If you have ever found yourself tempted to pick up a microphone and join the podosphere, make an audiobook, or learn to be a voice over artist, this is the must-have, easily-digestible book you’ve been waiting for.
Back cover copy follows:
Once expensive to produce and troublesome to consume, audiobooks now represent the second fastest-growing segment of the book industry. No longer stranded on dark shelves in the back of the library, they now come straight to your ears through online bookstores, smartphone apps, and music services. As consumer demand grows like never before, how can you as an author grow your audience?
Delivered in a witty, easy style by multiple-award nominated producer J. Daniel Sawyer, Making Tracks gives you the lowdown on today’s audiobook landscape. From narrative technique to studio design to production management, you’ll learn everything you need to go from zero to full production, including:
How to access the worlds biggest audiobook markets
Industry history and business practices
How to choose your production style
How to leverage your audiobooks to build your stable of true fans
All about audiology
How to pick your equipment
How to build your recording booth
Tried and true go-to-market strategies
Where to find music, sound effects, and voice actors
Professional standards, and how to achieve them
How to make your voice sound like a million bucks
And much, much more…
Those audio rights you used to sell to publishers now have real cash value. Learn how to make the most of them in this entertaining, accessible volume. Don’t miss out on the other publishing revolution!
jdsawyer
After a childhood in academia, J. Daniel Sawyer declared his independence by dropping out of high school and setting off on a series of adventures in the bowels of the film industry, the venture capital culture of silicon valley, surfing safaris, bohemians, burners, historians, theologians, adventurers, climbers, drug dealers, gangbangers, and inventors before his past finally caught up to him.
Trapped in a world bookended by one wall falling in Berlin and other walls going up around suburbia and along national borders throughout the world, he rediscovered his deep love of history and, with it, and obsession with predicting the future as it grew aggressively out of the past.
To date, this obsession has yielded over thirty books and innumerable short stories, the occasional short film, nearly a dozen podcasts stretching over a decade and a half, and a career creating novels and audiobooks exploring the world through the lens of his own peculiar madness, in the depths of his own private forest in a rural exile, where he uses the quiet to write, walk on the beach, and manage a production company that brings innovative stories to the ears of audiences across the world.
For news and free stories, sign up for his occasional newsletter. Or find his contact info, podcasts, and more on his home page at http://www.jdsawyer.net
It’s a question I’ve been going round and round on. There’s a lot of information in the book that would be difficult to communicate without the pictures and diagrams in the book, so if I actually did make an audiobook out of it, I would need to do some significant work adapting it, and making sure a pdf with the illustrationss and photos is available.
If I decide to go for it, I will definitely announce it here 🙂
jdsawyer
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Making Tracks is on my wish list, and I will definitely purchase in the next few days.
I just can’t help but ask:
Is a book about making audiobooks ever going to be available as an actual audiobook itself?
It’s a question I’ve been going round and round on. There’s a lot of information in the book that would be difficult to communicate without the pictures and diagrams in the book, so if I actually did make an audiobook out of it, I would need to do some significant work adapting it, and making sure a pdf with the illustrationss and photos is available.
If I decide to go for it, I will definitely announce it here 🙂