Break out your pens and pencils, students of sound—ACX University is back in session and we’ve got an all-new slate of fresh, essential programming for your continuing audiobook education.
Whether you’re an author, producer, narrator, or director, this syllabus will have you playing, imagining, experimenting, connecting with your community, and springing into action. This season’s all-star roster of instructors includes:
- Khristine Hvam
- PJ Ochlan
- Jorjeana Marie
- Eboni Flowers
- Tyrrell Harrell (of TYDEF Studios)
- Jocqueline Protho (of The Audio Flow)
- Eric Jason Martin
- Erika Ishii
- Matthew Mercer
And more!
We’re releasing three new episodes to YouTube this week, so keep an eye on our channel for details and get to the head of the class by clicking that ‘Subscribe’ button so you don’t miss a lesson. As always, ACX University is free and open to everyone—so join us, won’t you?
But what about the holdouts, the ones who say they’ve tried but just can’t get into audiobooks? Readers, I happen to be in a perfect position to help you, because—believe it or not—I was one of those holdouts. Gasp!! I know. I’m a devoted literary nerd, a lifelong ravenous consumer of books, and a longtime fan of storytelling radio programs and podcasts, but I was very slow to come around to audiobooks. I tried one or two, but it just wasn’t the same as reading. The irony? The thing that ultimately made me love audiobooks was the realization that listening isn’t the same as reading—it’s listening. It’s an entirely different way to get lost in a story. Once I started thinking of audiobooks as oral storytelling or audio drama (like a radio play) it suddenly made sense to me. Now, I’m an avid listener, but I approach my listening choices very differently from how I approach my reading choices. A great narrator is particularly important to me, because I’m looking for an extra dimension in my audio—I want theater, I want drama, I want voice acting! This is something important to keep in mind when you’re casting your audiobook, as well as when you’re marketing it. Make sure to highlight what your narrator adds to the story that the reader won’t get in the print version, because that could well be the thing that drives a listener to pick up your audiobook.
The last thought I want to leave you with is that listening is a skill, just like reading. We all had to learn to read once, and we know how to hear, sure, but many of us are out of practice actively listening. Acknowledge this fact, and encourage your audiobook holdouts to give it a shot—it takes practice, but ultimately I’ve found that getting lost in good audio storytelling has been worth it. A well-acted, well-produced audiobook is a medium all its own, adding a new dimension to the story that wasn’t there in print. Offer some of the above tips to your on-the-fence fans, share audio samples to pique their interest, and use your 
And I brought my narrator, Will Watt, with me to a big book signing in Philadelphia! He’s British and fun and has narrated my entire Harris Brothers series, so my readers loved getting to meet him!
Q: How do you get your fans from social media/website/newsletter to point of purchase? 
We here at the blog spend a lot of time focusing on digital marketing, and for good reason—online self-promotion is a great way to access a large, diverse audience, and digital marketing efforts are easy to track. But let us not overlook good old-fashioned word-of-mouth for getting the word out about your audiobook. Say you’re appearing on a podcast or at an event—these are marketing opportunities, and to make the most of them, you’ll want to tell interested listeners exactly where they can go to buy your audiobook. But since you can’t hyperlink someone in a conversation (at least not yet), you’ll want to offer a snappy one-liner that’s easy to remember and visit.
Audiobook Creation Exchange Blog (ACX) 