I hope you all are doing okay, and are safe and healthy! Today, I’m sharing a super quick update on the audiobooks and pondering a larger question I hope you can help me answer.
The big news is this: I have selected an audiobook narrator!!! I am soooo excited. As soon as I heard her sample audition from Alex & Rebecca’s story, I knew she was it. She’s even started recording the full audiobook, which I hope to release in January. More details about her (and the audio release) in the future, but for now, I want to pose a question to you:
Would you support me in a crowdfunding campaign for the rest of the audiobooks?
For those who don’t know, crowdfunding is when you set up a campaign – such as through Kickstarter or Indiegogo – for what you’d like to produce. In my case, it would be to support production of the audiobooks for all my books to date. I’d offer different tiers of rewards based on the amount of support given.
Here’s the thing – producing audiobooks is incredibly expensive at a few thousand dollars per each. After I release the first audiobook, I’d originally planned to wait until I earned enough money back from it before I started producing the next. This means that it will be 2022-2023 before I’m all (hopefully) caught up on audiobooks. If I have the funds ahead of time, however, I can maybe secure more of my narrator’s time so she may be able to finish more quickly, and I can also concurrently get a second narrator for my Seaside Valleria series (they will likely just have American accents for that one, whereas the Royals will have British accents). I might also be able to get narrators for the Italian Shipping Millionaires series (which I wasn’t planning to do audiobooks for at all but I might if the funding were there).
I know other authors have dabbled in crowdfunding and that you may have even supported them. While I haven’t made a decision about this either way, I’d love to know your thoughts. Please let me know in the comments below – would you be interested in supporting me in a campaign for my audiobooks? If so, how much would you be willing to support? What kinds of rewards (besides a free copy of the audiobook) would you be interested in?
~xoxo Marianne
Shalom,
I’m so excited about listening to your stories on audio. Yes, I would help out. I live on a very low fixed income so the most I could do is about $25. I wish it was more but for me that is a lot.
Thanks for the feedback, Peni!
I love, love LOVE your books and it could be fun to have them as audiobooks! I have read all your current books but would consider “listening” to them as well!
Other ideas for “tiers” – what about early access to new material? And copies of books, signatures, things like that!!! Everyone I’ve recommended your books to loves them too!!!!
Wow, thanks so much for recommending my books, Tiffany, and thanks for your feedback about the tiers!