I have had the amazing opportunity to produce an audiobook of my debut novel, A Good Kind of Crazy, with a company called I’m Hearing Stories.
The publisher of the print and ebook versions of my book, Solstice Publishing, does not deal with audiobooks, so producing one had not even been on my radar. Therefore, when I was contacted by I’m Hearing Stories last summer, I was intrigued, but my hands were tied from doing anything until the release of print versions A Good Kind of Crazy on Amazon.com. Once that occurred in October, I soon spoke again to owner Kimberly Hobscheid, and decided to go for it. I obtained the audiobook rights from my publisher, and we were off.
The first stage of the process was finding a narrator. Ms. Hobscheid was a little concerned initially that it would perhaps be difficult to find someone willing to voice the book, as at over five hundred pages, there is no denying it is long. With I’m Hearing Stories, narrators do the work based on royalties, so all narrators essentially volunteer their time and hope that it pays off with sales. Thankfully, though, there were six people who auditioned to narrate, and it didn’t take long to make the choice of who was the best option for this particular book: A woman named Jen Carmody.
Ms. Carmody is wonderfully talented! She was able to give so much life to each character through a wide expanse of voices and accents. She was also extremely quick and had recorded all seventeen hours that the five hundred plus pages the book translated into within a month. Then, I needed to listen to the proofs and make any necessary changes. With the holidays and the typical busyness of a large family, coupled with wintertime illnesses, it sadly took almost again as long for me to be able to listen and approve everything.
Anyone who has followed along with me since the beginning of my journey will remember how long “traditional” publishing takes. It took over a year for the publication of A Good Kind of Crazy from when I signed my contract to when the book was released on Amazon.com. For the next book, Western Skies, we are also looking at about a year at this point. This is due in large part to the time it takes to go through several edits, among other necessary preparations, such as obtaining copyrights, cover design, etc.
But, for the audiobook, the work was started around the middle of November, 2018, and the finished product was just released on Audible.com and Amazon.com a week or so ago, the middle of April, 2019. It was definitely a very different experience!
I am so grateful for the opportunity I had with I’m Hearing Stories to produce my debut novel into an audiobook, and for finding a gem of a narrator like Jen Carmody. Believe me when I say that I know I have been very blessed on this journey and I take nothing for granted.
For anyone who may be interested, I have included the Audible link for the book on this post. I also was recently interviewed in preparation for the release of my audiobook, and have included that link, as well. Thank you, as always, for following along with me as I embark on this wild ride!
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Majken Selinder Nilsson Books 
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