The April question from the Insecure Writer's Support Group aims to address audio books and the challenges in getting them made.

Today is my monthly Insecure Writer's Support Group post. The purpose of the IWSG is to share and encourage other writers. It's a blogfest designed by the founder, Alex Cavanaugh (who has a new book out by the way), to create a safe space where writers could express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. You can sign up for this blogfest at the following LINK.

This blogfest rolls around on the first Wednesday of a new month. The group is foremost about connection, and if you can't think of anything to write about, you can answer the monthly question. That's what I'm going to do this month. Here are a few more details for you that I stole from the IWSG sign-up page:

Their Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.

And here is the April 6 question - Have any of your books been made into audio books? If so, what is the main challenge in producing an audiobook?

The awesome co-hosts for the April 6 posting of the IWSG are Joylene Nowell Butler, Jemima Pett, Patricia Josephine, Louise - Fundy Blue, and Kim Lajevardi!

So, the quick answer to the above is "no." And additionally, I don't intend to have any of my stories made into audio books. However, even having no experience in audio books and their composition, I'd like to weigh-in on what I know about audio books primarily from reading and studying the works of successful authors. To put it mildly, I think the main challenge is money. And most authors get around this when they self-publish by running a kickstarter.

Two recent kickstarters that I combed through comments and watched youtube videos for were done by author Michael J. Sullivan and local Utah author Brandon Sanderson. The first, Michael J. Sullivan, is a family-run affair that seems to have the business side of things down pat. Most of the heavy lifting of the business had previously been done by Michael's wife, who was very frank in her updates before she came down with an illness that made her step away. In her place, Michael's son seems to have taken over things. Mr. Sullivan's Kickstarter's always generated a few hundred thousand when they ran. In the updates, they were very frank about how much the studio cost to reserve time, to hire the voice actors, and to get everything in place so that excellent recordings could be made. It sounded like an honest to goodness "professional" effort and probably cost in the neighborhood of $50,000. Having made $350,000 though, this still left quite a bit to throw at illustrating the books and then having them printed. I figure that the author probably pocketed about $125,000 or so out of a $350,000 Kickstarter. And seeing he runs about three of these a year (he's very prolific), it puts him squarely in the six figure category of self-made writers. In other words, Sullivan is doing something very few of us could do. That being said, the next author is in a category of only one.

Brandon Sanderson is a phenomenon that (I believe) cannot be understood. People will try, but no one will ever "get" what it is about him that makes his army of followers so fervent and so generous. His Kickstarter literally said nothing except that it was going to be about four secret books. There was no art, there was no title, there were no synopsis, and there were no stretch goals. None of that mattered. It was just a blind faith thing in that he promised "four secret novels" a bunch of stickers, some t-shirts, and other stuff that I'd label "worthless junk." But I'm like Jon Snow in that "I know nothing."

Sanderson's Kickstarter raised $41 million. That's $41,000,000 with six zeroes. The average person contributed $225.00, so it only took four people to hit every $1,000 of that milestone number. It's absolutely ridiculous and ...well...it is what it is. My jaw drops at how "out of whack" this whole Kickstarter is. It's not even an outlier...it's so far out of the realm of the actual reality of publishing that it has no comparison. He has enough money that he could hire Tom Holland, Chris Evans, and Scarlett Johansson to do three different audio versions of his books if he wanted to, and still be a multi-millionaire. He's got enough money to make his own recording studio if this was his desire. Anyway...the point of this whole thing is...he's not going to have any problem getting his audio book done. Money is the lubricant of life, and Sanderson has got a lot of lube at this point to make his dreams come true.

So there you have it. I think the biggest challenge to doing an audio book is money. Once you get that solved, everything falls into place. You gotta have money to make money has never been more true than in 2022. Anyway, I hope my above explanation was worth a visit. Best of luck to you all that are pursuing audio books. I do have some advice for those who don't have deep pockets: try exploiting someone with talent in computers, audio recording, voice work, or whatnot. You don't have to call it "exploitation." Just rebrand it as "volunteer," or "unpaid internship" or maybe try a "religious calling" type of thing. There's lots of ways to exploit that are built into capitalism that don't require negative language. Don't believe me? Check out the subreddit labeled r/Choosingbeggars. You'll see the extent that people go to exploit others so that they preserve their assets for vacations and the other luxuries of life.