Getting an audiobook into stores
The recording is finished and checked. Now it has to reach listeners, and the audiobook market is arranged differently from the ebook one: fewer storefronts, a small number of large ecosystems, and library systems that matter far more than authors expect.
Specific terms — shares, exclusivity periods, payment schedules, what each platform accepts — change constantly and differ by country. Read them from the platform itself, on the day you decide. What follows is the shape of the choice, which is stable.
The three shapes
Direct to a retailer. You open an account with a store and upload to it yourself. One set of specifications, one dashboard, the closest access to that platform's reporting and promotional tools, and no middle party taking a cut. Multiply by every store you want, and it becomes real administration.
Through an aggregator. You deliver one set of files and one set of metadata, and the aggregator pushes the audiobook to many storefronts, including ones that will not deal with individual authors at all. It takes a share, or a fee, for doing it. This is how most self-published audio reaches breadth, and it is usually the only practical route to library platforms.
Exclusive to one ecosystem. You commit the audio edition to a single platform for a period, and in exchange get a better share and that platform's promotional machinery. The commitment is the product; everything else follows from it.
The three are not as separate as they sound. Plenty of authors go direct with one large platform and use an aggregator for everything else — where no exclusive commitment forbids it.
The exclusivity trade, and what is different for audio
The trade itself is the same one you already met with the ebook, and it is set out in Going wide, or staying exclusive: one strong channel with better terms against several weaker channels nobody else controls, revisited at the end of each term rather than decided forever. The questions that decide it — where your readers are, whether you write a series, how much administration you will honestly do — apply here unchanged. Read that guide first, then come back for what audio adds.
Libraries matter more here than they do for ebooks. This is the difference worth planning around. Audiobooks are expensive to buy one at a time, so a large population of habitual listeners borrows almost everything through a public library app instead. For some categories the library channel is not a supplement to sales — it is where the audience is.
Library platforms are reached through particular channels. Public library apps buy through specific wholesale and distribution partners, and self-published audio generally reaches them through an aggregator holding those relationships. If a channel is closed to you, that route closes with it. Getting your ebook into libraries explains how that market is structured and why a borrower can be worth more than a buyer; audio runs on the same rails.
Together those change the arithmetic: an exclusive audio arrangement can cut off a channel carrying more of the total listening than the equivalent ebook channel does. That does not make exclusivity wrong. It makes what you give up bigger than it looks if you reason by analogy from the ebook decision.
Audio rights are separate rights. An exclusive audiobook does not constrain your print or ebook distribution, and an exclusive ebook does not automatically constrain your audio. They are different editions with different agreements, so check what each one actually covers rather than assuming one decision governs the book. Rights, book fairs, and whether they are for you is the clearest account of what those separable licenses are, and audio is one of them.
What every distributor will want
The list is the same shape everywhere, even though the exact numbers differ.
Audio files to their specification. Almost always one file per chapter, in a stated format, sample rate and loudness range, with a defined amount of silence at the head and tail. Specifications differ between platforms and are updated, so export to the spec of the platform you are delivering to rather than the one you remember — Editing, mastering and hitting the spec covers what the automated check measures and why files come back.
A square cover image. Audio storefronts show a square, not the 1:1.6 portrait your ebook uses, and there is a minimum pixel size. Cropping a portrait cover to a square usually destroys the composition — see Audiobook cover art is a square, and that changes everything.
Metadata. Title, subtitle, series and number, author, narrator, publisher, description, categories, language, and a running time. Narrator credit is required and is its own field. Keep one master copy of all of it and copy from that, or your three editions will drift apart.
An identifier. Either an ISBN belonging to the audio edition — an audiobook is a separate edition and takes its own ISBN — or an identifier the platform assigns. Which applies depends on the route and the country. See Do you need your own ISBN?, and, if the answer is yes, Buying your own ISBNs for why a third edition is the point at which a block starts paying for itself.
A rights confirmation. You will be asked to state that you hold the right to distribute this recording. Do not click through it casually.
The rights point that catches people
If you hired a narrator on a royalty-share arrangement rather than paying up front — the choice weighed in Finding and auditioning a narrator — your distribution options may already be decided. Those arrangements are commonly tied to a particular platform or a particular exclusivity, and they run for a fixed term.
Read that agreement before you choose a route, not after. Check which platforms the recording may appear on, how long the arrangement lasts, whether you can end it early, and what happens to the recording when it does. Authors meet this in the wrong order routinely, and it costs them the whole distribution plan.
Choosing the sample
Most platforms play a sample, and the selection is usually yours. Pick a passage that shows the narrator, not the plot: continuous prose with some dialogue, a voice or two, a change of register. Avoid the first page if it is scene-setting, and avoid anything that needs context. The sample is an audition for the reading, because that is what a listener is deciding about — it does the job the cover does for a print book, and Marketing an audiobook goes further into choosing one and checking what each store actually plays.
In the tools. We do not make or distribute audio. What we do is keep the title, subtitle, series and author in one project across the print wrap and the 1600 × 2560 ebook cover, so the metadata and the look you hand an audio distributor match the editions already on sale. Start your book → · about the tools
Make your book
The tools are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Next: How an audiobook earns its money back · More: Proof-listening before you publish · Going wide, or staying exclusive · Distributors, aggregators and who actually sells your book · Getting into libraries and bookstores · Should you make an audiobook?