Several months ago I made a deal with a friend who does audio book narration to record my YA Series, The Perth Paranormal Mysteries. She’s originally from the midwest, and is an amazing voice actress, so I thought she’d be perfect for this series, told from the perspective of my Colorado based, recently deceased, teenage protagonist.
And so we began work on the audio version of A Shade of Winter, Book 1 in the series. First, I had to set up an author, or rights-holder account on ACX, and claim my books. Then I set up the book meta data, my payment info, and created the cover image. Megan did all of the hard work, but listening to each chapter to take notes on things to change, things to edit, and then listening a second time to make sure everything was perfect before we hit the ‘go’ button, well, it took a lot of hours. Don’t schedule an audio book launch if you have anything else going on at that time.
But the final product? When I tell you she knocked it out of the park, it’s not an exaggeration. We both nitpicked, I had her change some minor errors from the print version, but she delivered a performance that made me kick my feet in glee.
The audio went live on December 17th and since then, (it’s January 4th as I write this) we’ve sold 11 units and given away several free codes. Coming from self-publishing, 11 sales of anything is a banner month, so I’m very excited to see how this year progresses. (Which reminds me, I need to add the audio book link to the author page on this website.)
Megan is currently reading Book 2, A Ghost of Spring, and hopefully she’ll be finishing Book 3 at about the same time Henlo publishes Book 4. Have I finished writing that one yet? No. But, I’m determined to have a readable draft, where all things have been researched, decided on, and all of my notes-to-self have been removed, by the end of January.
This was a cool new experience for me, and I hope this widens the audience for the adventures of my ghost girl, her twin, and her best friend Bagel. And we can’t forget Lee Bradley, Investigative Reporter and ghost mentor extraordinaire, who, it’s rumored, may have his own novella releasing soon.
Stay tuned!
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