Publishing an Audiobook

[ Excerpts taken from The Publisher School Lesson 202 by Sheri Hauser ]

Unique Authors

Authors are a unique breed. They are a hybrid mixture of brainack and artsy. Take my word for it; few are both. In publishing over 700 books, I have recognized a few observations of authors who sat across from me. I guess when you are in business for over 20 years, experience begins to talk.
They are passionate about their subject. The passion bleeds into their lives, sucking much of their time, money and energy. 

Don’t count on the ‘supporters’ ie. Husbands, wives & daughters to be supportive. Oftentimes they are jealous of the attention paid to the author’s passion. 

The publisher is in a unique position to feed the enthusiasm the author has for his/her subject. Oftentimes their family and friends are tired of hearing about the ‘book’. 

Some are concerned you are offering false hope to the author. This is a valid concern. If the author comes out with a poorly written book, how can you promise it will sell? What if the author brings a niche subject? How many need what he/she is offering? Some authors ‘splatter paint.' They bring several partially done books on various subjects. 

Some authors are spending somebody else’s money. Perhaps they are being ‘gifted’ the option of publishing their life’s dream. 

Some authors are poor--and have scraped together a small pile of cash to publish their book. Is their house being heated? I actually had one who contacted me, and then I didn’t hear from her for a bit. After a few months she tracked me down and said that she was ready to proceed on her book; she had been homeless for a while! Needless to say, I never found time in my schedule for her--because her passion is chewing up her livelihood. 

Have you written a book? Are you passionate about it? Why?

Passion

Passion is energy directed toward a specific subject/thing. I think of the passion an author shows toward his/her work like a racehorse; he has a great deal of energy, and it simply needs to be directed. 

Sometimes the other person in the room (wife, daughter, or editor) may cause resistance when he/she sees you joining in the passion of the author because he/she suspects ulterior motives. It is similar to a karate school telling parents their child will become a star--if they only pay for a lot of classes in advance. 

The karate school feeds the dreams of passion (to become famous) with the motivation of padding their pockets. 

Their Goals

People can only work within the knowledge structure they have. Authors come to the publisher with their ideas of what the book should look like, and it is up to us to do something about it. 

Remember, the author's goals are made of several things:

Their book is their ‘baby’. It is like a created thing. 

Many put themselves into the book. Perhaps they release personal information. When they put it out there, it is like releasing a part of themselves. 

It may be a ‘bucket-list’ item. Perhaps the book has been in a drawer for a long time and it’s git-er-done time. 

It could be the writer wants to impress someone or a group by publishing a book. 

Some are educational books. (Like this one).

It seems like some authors stopped their educational process of knowledge of publishing several years ago. They know how it ‘was’ but not how it is. This becomes a touchy situation because you don’t know where they obtained their information, and they may still be in a relationship with whoever fed them the misinformation. For instance, if their book club president insists they need a marketing agent to get a publisher, you don’t want to discredit their president but need to help the author understand this is not true. 

Many times, authors come into the office clinging to a book, which is their ‘ideal’ book they want their book to end up looking like. Often these books are string-bound, hard-bound with a jacket, full-color pages, and odd-sized printed in 1967. Remember, I mentioned that many authors are older, so what this means is they have been clinging to the dream since then!

Sometimes authors are insistent on specific fonts. Recently an author gave me a novel manuscript where each time the character spoke, it was in a specific font. It was like she gave them personalities by using the fonts. The fonts became their face. A bold font was given to a bold character. A more delicate font to his sister. 

There is a direct correlation to how long someone has been working on a book and specific issues with publishing. 

If the book is a novel, then sometimes it will be choppy in the middle. Sometimes authors change a character’s name and forget to change it all throughout the story. His/her name will be one thing in the front and a different one in the latter end of the manuscript. 

If the manuscript was given to several ‘beta readers’ and the author made changes after each one, then the manuscript will be choppy because each person adds his/her two cents. I have seen entire chapters cut out (which were critical to the story) when a beta reader deemed them too violent—so the author chopped them out. Just be aware of this potential issue. 

As a general rule, the longer the author has had the unpublished manuscript-the more resistant he/she is to editing it. They are tired of looking at it in the unfinished state and assume it is ‘done’ so they don’t want to continue to work on it. 

Manuscripts (books) that are compiled quickly (less than 6 months) tend to have more grammatical errors. They flow better, but sometimes the author is lenient with their grammar.