I’ve been considering recording some of my short stories as audiobooks.

I could go about this in two ways. I could either outsource the recording work to someone who is a professional voice artist, or I could read them myself with the equipment I have to hand.

A number of questions arise as a consequence of this idea:

I’m not an audiobook consumer myself, because I read extremely fast and I find listening to a story at the speed of natural language very frustrating. I’m therefore very biased against audiobooks. I find them boring, even when the story is excellent.

My first question is therefore: Do people who like my kind of writing like audiobooks?

I’ve no doubt there are many convoluted answers to this (“audiobook consumers can be people for whom reading is logistically challenging”, or “there are audiobook listeners in every genre”). While I’m sure all these have their merits, and are true in their own way, that’s not what I’m really asking. Underneath my question is : is it worth my time getting audiobooks prepared? Are there enough listeners to make it worthwhile?

Second, I wonder as to the process. Would I be better off getting a professional voice artist to narrate the book, or should I do it myself? Both answers exist in the world of blogs and YouTube. I’m quite capable of reading my own story clearly into a microphone. While I’m sure a professional could do it better, I could most likely do it well. But I have a very British accent, and that might put of the majority of my readership, which appears to be American and Canadian.

Voice actors are expensive. Just so you know. So the third question becomes: How much are people willing to pay for a short story in audiobook format? Can I realistically sell enough of those to make back (after royalties) the cost of producing the thing?

So many questions… let me know your thoughts in the comments, or through the form here, or by replying to one of my newsletters.