Making Your Own Audio Book Excerpts

by John Koehler from his author’s website

The goal with any book is to use as many different types of media as possible to get your book seen, read, viewed, noticed, witnessed, liked, remembered and…. heard. Audio books are not for the feint of heart, and typically a publisher will use a professional voice talent to read and edit and read and cut and splice….. you get the picture…. the entire book together. And that only if the book does well.

The prospect of creating an audio book on your own is daunting. Yet readers like to hear the author read their own work. So why not give them a taste? Don’t read the entire book. Just read a few chapters. Think of it as an audio excerpt. Typically an author will include written excerpts from their book on their websites and social media.

So why not audio? The audio excerpts can live right beside the written. Not everyone will listen to them, but this way they have a choice and who knows, your reading may pique their interest enough in your book and bada bing, bada boom, you have a sale. Or thousands!

The other good reason for doing these is that it helps you get used to reading your work, which can lead to better public readings.

So here’s how I did it on my Audio Chapters page. I use a 27″ iMac:

1) My website is built on Word Press, so if your site is not, the following may be of little value to you. You must know how to ftp files to your site, and basic editing in Word Press.

2) Using my iPhone with the ear bud attached, I fire up the Voice Memos app

3) I try to read to fit the material. Let’s face it, I’m not a voice talent! But I am the author and relaxes the demands on my reading. Just read it the way you feel. Don’t do a bunch of recuts. If you flub it, just pick it up right there and keep reading. You can edit it later or leave it alone. Raw read!

Note: Voice Memos will only email a certain amount of audio, so plan on reading no more than 3-4 pages at a time.

4) Next I email the memo to myself from my iPhone. Every one will be titles memo, so you’ll want to keep track if you are doing several reads.

5. Next I go to my Email program and open the audio file. If I need to edit it I open it in Quicktime Pro. That allows me to splice pieces together. If you don’t need to do any editing (way to go!) go straight to no. 7

6. In Quicktime Pro (Quicktime Player 7) I edit my pieces together and export as Sound to AIFF

7. I take my sound file and open it in a free audio converter. I use Switch. Save the file as .mp3

8. Next I ftp the file up to my website. I create a folder within the wp-content folder. I named it as the name of the book. Something simple like: bipolar.

9. Next I load the plugin mp3 Jplayer on my website. You can find it using New Plugin on your dashboard.

10. I borrowed the short code from the plugin website

11. I pasted the url for my mp3 into the shortcode area and updated the site. It should look like this:

[mp3j track="Chapter 1@www.johnlkoehler.com/wp-content/ben/Ben%20chapt%201-1.mp3" flip="y"]

Click the arrow and you will see the file load and then track as it plays.

There are other players you can use that are better looking, but I like this because it is clean and simple. There you go. I hope this helps.