Hello there, fellow author. Ready to learn exactly how self-published audiobooks are made?

Well, let me pause and introduce myself. I am Kari Lynn M., an independent author who has lots of experience in making and publishing e-books and audiobooks completely on my own. And, here, I’d like to show you some behind-the-scenes clips of me doing just that!

The full video covers my general audiobook creation process, specifically for the last book I made for my “Emma Lenford” young adult fiction series. Watch the video below, then scroll down to hear more about this book and some highlighted tips for you—if you are another author who’d like to dive into making your own audiobooks from scratch.

Vlog: How to Make Audiobooks with Tips

About the Book & Emma Lenford Series

Interested in seeing the finished audiobook from the video? Or, would you like to start the entire “Emma Lenford” series for free? Just click below!

Tips for Authors to Self-Narrate & Self-Publish an Audiobook

Now, here’s just some of my top tips for fellow authors who want to create and sell their own audiobooks. And, heads up—it’s a lot of work, but you can totally do it with time and effort.

Invest in Proper Equipment

In order to make a quality audiobook, you need to have proper recording equipment. The good news is that inexpensive, but good, microphones are all over, so it shouldn’t be hard to find one. Remember that you don’t need the absolute best mic, either—just one in the $80-200 range should be fine for audiobook creation.

You’ll also need quality headphones to use for editing, and I prefer ones with noise-cancelling. You’ll want to eliminate every little “oops” in your audio after recording, and you won’t be able to hear mistakes with dollar-store headphones. I’m not a brand rep or anything, but I like Skull Candy headphones for being affordable ($100-200 range) and high-quality.

And, just an added tip—wireless headphones are not the best for audiobook editing. They can be faulty and trippy and just, overall, bleh in quality, so go for old-school, wired headphones for this.

Setup a DIY Studio

As you can certainly see in my video above… well, it doesn’t take much to setup a good recording studio at home!

I use blankets, pillows, and even mattresses from around the house to make my studio space. I also set it all up in the basement to be far from outside noises, but you can just work with whatever place you’ve got! Just try your best to insulate and pad every wall surface around you to eliminate echo, as that’s the most important thing.

Practice Before Recording

If you’re new to audiobook narrating, it’s a good idea to practice reading your book out loud before you do your first real take. You can also record your practice sessions to just get a glimpse of how you sound so that you can tweak things before officially reading your audio.

Be sure to listen for the following when playing back your practice sessions:

• Is your voice loud enough? Do you sound too far or too close to the microphone?
• Are you pronouncing words correctly and reading sentences smoothly?
• Is there any noticeable background noise?
• Do you read character voices in a distinguishing way? Can you tell you are reading differently in one character’s voice versus another’s?

Edit Your Audio Correctly

Now, editing is my least favorite part of the audiobook creation process. It’s gonna take a while, and it’s gonna take a lot of work on your part. Like I say in the video, I put in about 3x the full runtime of each chapter just editing. So, if I recorded an hour of audio for one chapter, it’s gonna take a minimum of 3 hours just to edit it.

Other authors may use a different editing process if they create their own audiobooks, but I like to take things, literally, sentence-by-sentence when I edit. I often read lines multiple times during recording so that I can then listen and choose the best reading for the book when I’m editing. Sound tedious enough?

Now, I don’t go in-depth into audiobook editing in the vlog, but I’m open to making another video to cover this! Just let me know in a comment below or contact me.

Finalize and Publish

There are a lot of requirements to make your audio pass quality checks, no matter who you choose to publish through. Again, I don’t go super in-depth on this in the vlog, but I can definitely cover it in another video if you guys would be interested!

However, for my audiobooks, I publish through INaduio, which distributes them for me to everywhere from Spotify to Audible, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, and tons of libraries and smaller retailers.

Well, that’s all I have for you today, fellow writers. Let me know if you found this vlog/blog helpful, and if you have additional questions about making your own audiobooks!

–Kari