Aggregators help lighten the load by taking care of the distribution of audiobooks to major retailers. Some Aggregators and audiobook distribution companies also offer services such as voice over and audio production. This article will explore a few of the top aggregators and the salient terms to keep in mind.

Let’s get started.

Benefits of Using Aggregators for Audiobook Distribution

Before we look at the top aggregators, let’s look at the benefits of using aggregators.

1. They have the expertise to ensure that audiobook distribution has a wide reach.
2. Sometimes, you can only make your book available to readers by going through aggregators, first. Sales to libraries are a good example.
3. They save you time and effort. You can focus on writing, where you have a competitive edge.
4. They provide you with analytics and reports so you can easily monitor how your books are performing on several retailers’ websites and apps. You don’t have to do that manually.
5. They also help simplify payments for your books, so you can have a one-stop platform, from which you can easily access your sales and related info.

Now, let’s look at the top aggregators and their key terms to make audiobook distribution easier for authors.

Some Top Aggregators

We’ll look at Findaway Voices, Authors republic.com, Scribl.com, and Feiyr.com.

Findaway Voices (FV) is a one-stop solution for creating, distributing, and earning money from audiobooks. They’ll help you find the voice (that’s where the name comes from), record a world-class production, and help you sell your audiobooks to tons of retailers. An average audiobook by FV has 50,000 words and will cost you $1000-$2000. So, the cost of producing an audiobook will be a function of its length. After the production, FV will help distribute your ebook to over 40 retailers and even provide sales support. They take 20%, while you keep 80%.

Authors Republic distributes your audiobooks to over 50 retailers. You keep 70%, while they take 30%. AR is a “pure aggregator.” Unlike FV, above, they do not engage in content creation. You have to plan, record, and package your audiobook yourself, and then send them the finished products. But they have a wider reach than FV. They provide you with a dashboard from which you can monitor the performance of your audiobooks.

Scribl is a platform that was developed by authors. So, they know the pain points. It helps you automate the process of reaching your audience. You get to keep 70 to 85% and you get paid within 48 hours. All the audiobooks on Scribl are packaged with free ebooks, making the offer more appealing to buyers.

It has a proprietary Story Elements System, that automatically subdivides the books on the site into sub-genres, as more and more books are uploaded. This helps authors generate more sales. Since it brings a specificity that helps readers pinpoint exactly the kind of books they want.

Feiyr is a writer’s dream. It’d help you distribute your ebooks to over 185 retailers. You keep 80% of your revenue. You’d only need to pay less than $10 activation fee. There are no registration, annual, or monthly fees to pay.

One of the commonalities we can observe from the aggregators we looked at is that you don’t need to spend much money before you can start using their services. Most operate a royalty system. The implication is that they only make money when you do. So, they’re invested in promoting your ebooks and audiobooks. And it’s recurring income for you and the aggregators.

But do you have to give up your rights when you upload your content to these sites? Not at all. You only give them digital distribution rights, your copyrights remain yours and yours alone.

It’s also vital to note that you can’t simply upload your book and expect it to be distributed from day one. Most aggregators would first conduct a process to see that your book meets the criteria of all the retailers they represent. This approval process would naturally take some time. So, there’s a need to be patient.

Now that we’ve explored some top aggregators, let’s find out what crowd pricing is all about.

What’s Crowd Pricing?

Crowd pricing is user-determined pricing. Instead of the writer or the platform arbitrarily setting a price. The users, the buyers, determine the price. It’s an automated system of dynamic pricing. It’s powered by algorithms that keep track of a book’s demand and hence rising popularity to rank it higher and thus increase its price.

When a book is first uploaded, it’s free for a period, and then later, its price fluctuates depending on buyers (the crowd). In a nutshell, crowd pricing takes readers’ preference into question and ensures that in-demand books earn more money, while those that are not in demand sell less. The critical determinant of the price is the book’s download popularity in the genre or subgenre.

Conclusion

In the preceding paragraphs, we explored how aggregators add value to the publishing process. We learned that you could outsource the audiobook distribution to some of these aggregators.

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