39 Tips Where to Sell Your Audiobooks

Reading Audio Books for Success you might have found already quite a few tips. Here are more distribution platforms for audiobooks available. ACX and its sales platform Audible are still the leaders in self-published audiobooks. However, there are some instances in which you might want to consider going a different route. While ACX recently opened its doors to British self-published authors, there are still many parts of the world in which ACX is not available.

ACX is (2019) only open to residents of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Ireland who have a mailing address, valid local Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN), and banking details for one of these countries.

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Library Sales

If you are interested in getting your books on non-Amazon platforms - and most important: into libraries - then you may want to consider selecting the non-exclusive contract and better distribute your audiobook (additionally to Audible) on a variety of platforms.

Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket

Here are a few options you might consider if you want to get your audiobook elsewhere. By far the best distributors with the widest outreach are Findaway Voices and Author’s Republic. Both are creators, distributors, and online retailers for audiobooks.

They are working currently with over thirty retailers and library distributors. Your best choice to reach audiobook listeners worldwide! And so much easier to work with them -- than to contact all these retailers separately -- often only to learn that they are not dealing directly with author-publishers. Libraries definitely don’t!

Self-Distribution can be a tricky path. Some retailers have self-service portals that are difficult to use, some require varying formats of audio files, metadata, and images that you may or may not have before they will accept your work. You also would have to deal in foreign currencies, you often would have to pay high banking fees, do the accounting, and controlling yourself. And in the worst-case, run after your money - in a foreign country.

The benefit of working with only one worldwide distributor outweighs the 20% commission from your net revenue. See the example calculation of a $10 audiobook on their website:

https://findawayvoices.com/selling-audiobooks/#distributor-list

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Author’s Republic

Sell your books through retailers, distributors, and library providers. Restrictions can make things tough for authors outside of North America. They accept submissions from rights holders all over the globe. You'll receive 70% of what your audiobook earns across over 30 channels, including major distributors such as Audible, Audiobooks.com, and iTunes.  Forget about managing over a dozen different accounts. We display all your sales on a handy dashboard and cut you one monthly paycheck, too.

https://www.authorsrepublic.com/

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If You Want to Work Directly With Retailers:

Audiobooks.com and Downpour

They are the number two and number three audiobook-only subscription services in the USA. With the rapid growth of the audiobook industry, it might be smart to try to get your self-published audiobooks on these two platforms.

It is likely that you’ll need to negotiate individually with both Audiobooks.com and Downpour if you hope to get your books on those platforms.

https://www.audiobooks.com/

Downpour’s audiobook service has been around since 2012. They are a company that developed one of the best audiobook subscriptions on the market.

https://www.downpour.com/

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CD Baby

This platform is best known for its distribution of indie music. By giving up a small portion of their royalties, indie musicians are able to post their albums to Amazon, iTunes, and other platforms. Since CD Baby doesn’t usually handle audiobooks, it places the books into Amazon’s spoken word category.

By circumventing Audible, the CD Baby method also keeps your books from being accessible through the convenient Audible app. If you plan on only selling your book directly to your fans, and you don’t want to deal with a file-sharing service, CD Baby may be a viable option for you.

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eBookIt

Want to be on ACX/Audible but you are in a country that doesn’t allow for it (worldwide web doesn’t exist for them…). eBookIt is an ebook and audiobook aggregation service that lets you submit your book to get it on ACX no matter what country you reside in.

Audible is expanding as fast as the audiobook industry itself. Since eBookIt takes a fee for every sale, it may be worth waiting until Audible opens up in your country. If you can’t wait, and you want your book on Audible now, then eBookIt is a good way to make it happen.

https://www.ebookit.com/

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AudiobookStore

Good, if you are an existing content partner of AudiobookSTORE.com, or if you have content you would like to see your title added to AudiobookSTORE.com.  This includes audiobook authors and publishers, as well as blog content and the like.  Please email [email protected]. Their representative will reply back to you within 48 hours.

https://audiobookstore.com/business-inquiries.aspx

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Scribd Audiobooks

This is the second of two imprints named by the company.

"If you are an independent author or publisher with only a handful of titles, please sign up with one of the following publishing service providers/distributors. Scribd has signed distribution agreements with them and will make books distributed through their platforms available in our membership program."

https://www.scribd.com/publishers

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Awesound

A retailer that lets you sell your audiobook, securely, on your terms. Upload your audiobook and start selling within one hour. Listeners can stream online on any device, or download within a mobile app. Simply direct listeners to your sales page on Awesound. Listeners around the world can pay with almost any debit/credit card, or quickly with Google Pay or Apple Pay.

With every purchase, you'll receive an instant email notification and an immediate transfer of funds to your Stripe balance. View, search or download your accumulated earnings in your payments dashboard. Your payments table shows every payment. Funds are transferred to your bank account on the 1st of each month.

You get access to each listener's information (e.g., name and email) just like you would if you sold any other product directly from your own website. This is very important, as it lets you see which members of your mailing list have already bought your audiobook, and which customers are new fans.

You set your own selling price (which you're free to change at any time). This is the fastest way to get started.

https://awesound.com/sell

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Sellfy

For starters, with Sellfy, you can embed your store and products on social media and on your website so everyone can see and buy your audiobooks! To market your audiobooks, take advantage of our built-in email marketing features that allow you to keep in touch with your customers. Send updates, newsletters, and information when you launch a new product or start a sale.

Sellfy’s other features like unlimited storage, products, and bandwidth as well as optimized downloads and intuitive platform will give you everything you need to see success in your online store. No need to sweat over anything other than creating your audiobook. Create promotional discounts and coupons to hype up your product with Sellfy’s discount feature. They don’t make you wait for your money on Sellfy. When you use PayPal or Stripe, you get instant access to your money whenever you make a sale. Sellfy offers unlimited bandwidth and storage for all of your files.

1. Sign up for a Sellfy account.

2. Upload your audiobooks and write descriptions.

3. Add more information to get paid.

4. Start sharing your audiobooks on your social media accounts and website.

https://sellfy.com/sell/audiobooks/

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Selling From Your Own Website

In a former blog post and in my book marketing guide “Successful Book Selling – the Non-Traditional Way” I explained that authors could sell books from their own website. What are your benefits:

• You will receive higher Revenues.  Directly selling means you earn around 85% of your retail price
• You get paid faster.  You get paid before your customers download your audiobooks. Unlike with online retailers, you don’t have to wait until you receive a statement months after your book was sold. The money for your books is right away in your account.
• You will know your listeners.  Selling your audiobook solely at online retailers, you will never know who orders and listens to your books no matter how many are sold. These are not your customers anymore, but the retailers’ and they won’t let you know any details about your customers.

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How to Set up an Online Audiobook Store

There are dozens of ready-to-go online stores available, called “e-commerce” which can be installed on your existing website or blog – relatively easy and quick. You have to have your own (hosted) website or blog - the paid versions – not a free website.

The e-commerce shops take a small fee every month. Some like Ecwid, for example, are free if you have less than 10 books to offer. E-Junkie provides a shopping cart and buy-now buttons to let you sell book downloads. They offer one-week trials and their fees start with $5/month for less than 10 downloads. They also offer lots of features, such as tax and shipping calculators, discount management, affiliate management, etc.  Almost all e-commerce shops work with PayPal systems for secure and easy payments.

Check these e-commerce platforms out:

https://www.ecwid.com/pricing

https://www.e-junkie.com/

https://www.shopify.ca/sell/ebooks

https://squareup.com/ca/en/ecommerce

https://hummingbirddm.com/

Audiobook Library Distributors

Think twice if you choose ACX to let your audiobook create - and being forced to sign an exclusivity contract for seven years. This eradicates all your chances to sell your audiobook to libraries. The following distributors are helping you to get your audiobook into libraries:

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Findaway Voices

However, if you invested in your audiobook - and stayed clear of any narrator revenue-sharing contracts - you are better off. Choose any of the many library distributors or sign up with Findaway Voices, who distribute audiobooks to the libraries in Europa and North America, maybe one day even worldwide. Motto: “There’s a big world of potential listeners out there. You will reach them all with Findaway Voices.”

Using Findaway Voices as the main distributor makes it somewhat easier to get into the library market. They work not only with Overdrive, but also with Hoopla, Wheelers, PermaBound, 3Leaf Group, Odilo, MLOL, EBSCO, Baker&Taylor, and Follett in order to distribute to libraries in Europe and North America.

https://findawayvoices.com/selling-audiobooks/#distributor-list

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Author’s Republic

Another great library distributor (and audiobook creator) is Author’s Republic: Sell your audiobook through over 30 major retailers, library providers, such as Overdrive, Hoopla, PermaBound, 3Leaf Group, Odilo, MLOL, EBSCO, and Follett, with new channels added monthly.

https://www.authorsrepublic.com/

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SpokenRealms

A worldwide audiobook distributor to libraries and online retailers that also offers audiobook narrations and free promo codes.  Authors reserve the right to sell both physical and digital copies of your audiobook anywhere in addition to their global U+ Distribution package which includes currently:

24symbols, 3Leaf Group, Apple (iTunes/Apple Books), Amazon, Audible, Audiobooks.com, Audiobooks.net, AudiobooksNZ, Audiobookstore.com, AudioEngine, Baker & Taylor, Barnes & Noble/Nook Audiobooks, Beek, Bibliotheca, Books-A-Million, Chirp, Costco, Deezer, Downpour, EBSCO , eMusic, eStories, Findaway, Follett, Google Play, Hastings, Hibooks, Hoopla, Hummingbird, Instaread, Kobo/Rakuten, LeapFrog, Libro.FM, Mackin, MLOL , Nextory, Odilo, otto Radio, OverDrive, Perma-Bound, Playster, Reado.com, Scribd, Storytel , TuneIn, Walmart, and Wheelers.

https://www.spokenrealms.com/distribution/

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Odilo

Ingram Library Services, a leading provider of comprehensive services to public libraries. It includes access to over 16.5M titles, has teamed up with ODILO, an internationally recognized leader and provider of technology and digital content for US libraries.  This new offering provides access to an additional 1.4M+ multilingual eBooks and audiobooks with 60 Spanish magazines and 35 Spanish newspapers to be added in the upcoming months. This robust catalog of titles in 240 languages including Spanish, Arabic, English, Chinese and more will be easily accessible by library patrons. In a few simple steps your content will be available for libraries and public and private organizations:

https://www.odilo.us/marketplace-providers/

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EBSCO eBooks & Audiobooks

Make your e-book and audiobook content available to thousands of academic, public, and special libraries worldwide. EBSCO allows libraries and institutions to build their own collections from a growing selection of best-selling and award-winning titles across a wide range of subject matter and genres.

https://www.ebsco.com/publishers-partnerships

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OverDrive

They are distributing ebooks and audiobooks to libraries. In the US alone, there are tens of thousands of libraries. It means that distribution with OverDrive could get your books worldwide into more than 40,000 partners/libraries and into the hands of countless potential readers. The main caveat is that OverDrive is very selective of the authors it chooses to include in its platform. Most of the books in OverDrive were placed by traditional publishing companies.

If you have over a dozen audiobooks available, you are more likely to get accepted into OverDrive’s catalog than if you have only one. However, there’s no guarantee that OverDrive will select you. If you have a non-exclusive contract with Audible, then there’s no harm in applying to OverDrive, just make sure that you don’t get your hopes up.

https://company.overdrive.com/publishers/

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Libraries Are Lamenting…

Major ebook publishers are charging unfair prices. Some of those publishers also have even more restrictions: For example, each copy of a Macmillan ebook expires after only 52 circulations or two years, whichever comes first.  Audible - the company that owns the rights to many digital audiobooks - is declining to share audiobooks at all. Maybe your chance to get your audiobook via distributors into the library market?

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This is just a small list of online retailers where authors can offer their audiobooks.  No matter how incredible your audiobook is, it’s tough to sell if people aren’t aware of it. Spreading the word and expanding your potential audience is key. With the right tools and a little bit of effort, you can ensure your work reaches as many people as possible—increasing your fan base and your sales.

If your audiobook is also available in eBook or print, your marketing strategies should generally try to encompass all formats. Sales of one format will drive sales of another, so a well-designed marketing plan will efficiently and effectively help grow sales across all channels.

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