Nad – The Art Of Selling Audiobooks by Anuj Tikku | Book Review

Anuj Tikku, a travel blogger from India came out with many books in the last year. Nad – the art of selling audiobooks is one of his latest addition to list.

As the title suggests, the book is focused on audiobooks. When the author approached us with the book, we were curious to know about his experience about creating audiobooks and getting them listed on various audiobook selling sites, Eg: Audible (an Amazon company) and others. We also hoped that the book must have been free from proofreading errors and have a proper arrangement of chapters.

From our team, I got a chance to read the book. Though the book is provided by the author in exchange for a review, the review is uninfluenced and unbiased by all means.

Let us take a look at the cover page of this book:

We all know that one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. But, it is a fact that the cover page creates the first impression of the book (or for that matter, any media). And, a remarkable number of book purchase and/or reading decisions are influenced by its cover page.

As you can see, the cover page shows a photograph of Anuj with a group of theater artists in the costumes of the play they performed, possibly clicked during one of his visits to various places. The book name is “Nad” (नद्) – possibly influenced by the word (नाद – means sound). The cover no way reflects the title or content of the book, but it is attractive.

Usually, we talk about a book in two distinguished segments: in one of them we take a bird’s eye view of the plot of the book and in the other, we share our views and reviews for the book. The nature of this book is quite different so, we are merging both these segments.

Anuj has started two more channels of business in terms of books.

• He started getting his books translated into regional languages.
• He started recording audio versions of his books to be sold as audiobooks on Audible and other platforms.

The book is an account of his personal experiences in these areas, and that is an interesting aspect of this book. There are 19 chapters in this book:

1. Costs involved in producing audio books
2. Translations in regional languages a rich source of revenue
3. Payment of Book Royalties
4. Tips on Packaging your audio books
5. adness of the Monk audio Book starts to sell
6. I launched on audible now what
7. Allahabad Journey
8. Tips for audio book narration
9. Blogging for gold audio book launch
10. Audio book launch Madness of the Monk
11. Starting out with Audio Books
12. Sell Books make money barter and educate
13. Audio Books a bloggers gold mine
14. The effective artist
15. The fire of creative desire
16. Over coming blog Lethargy
17. Controversial Marketing
18. Acx.com and the magic of audio books
19. What pricing to use from your e books

The chapter list tells a lot about the book and what to expect from it. For a newbie who wants to publish his/her first audiobook will find a lot of authentic details about it, based on the personal experiences of the author.

The chapter list at the same time tells that the content could have been arranged a little better. They seem to be arranged as the blog posts posted. So ideally it should be in reverse order.

If you are an aspiring author or want to develop a career as an audio recording artist, this book is definitely a fantastic starting point. Yes, you read it right. The rise of the audiobooks market opened a lot of opportunities. If you own a potentially good sound, with some practice and training you can work as an audio artist where you can lend your voice in a book recording. The earning would be based on the hours you’ve spent during recording. Yes, you can charge per hour.

Well, that is a side topic. But, if you are author, that too, self-published; you need to arrange resources for your audiobooks. For popular authors, the publishing house manage all these things and they need not worry about any such things. They simply made themselves available for promotion and other related stuff. Things are not easy for self-published authors.

In that case, the following lines from the book are quite important for you:

Well, it’s simple to record an audiobook you need at least 3 people. The Sound engineer, The producer, and the Narrator. An average length of the audiobook takes about 10 hours. I a rate of Rs 1200 to Rs 1500 is ideal as a package to pay the team of three, this can be shared evenly after the book has been delivered

Rate of at least 2 e-book launches every moth, keep it coming, and that is the only way to make some kind of money in this business.

The rate of a producer and a sound engineer is Rs 1000 per hour maybe you can pay the narrator Rs 500 per hour. Remember as the owner of the content you can make money from it a lifelong as long as you live and even beyond. Get translation done from the state and people who speak the regional language and have good command over it. Have a series of checks and corrections and make sure your cover spells out the title in the regional name, which tells the reader specifically that it is in a different language.

The mike is the most important tool of the narrator to make sure you are 6 inches away from the mike when you start recording. Have a bottle of water near you and keep drinking to clear your throat and mouth. Insist that when you pause of a fumble, you retake form where you fumbled. Most sound engineers give a three ticking sound that indicates when you can restart the narration and do a retake. Also, make sure the fumbles are cleared and removed from the recording.

Like many other books by Anuj, I’ve found the following two issues in this book also.

• Chapters not arranged properly
• Improper punctuations and proofreading errors

I also found one image is vertically flipped in the book. Such details matter. And, the author needs to be careful for them. He, of course, acknowledges this feedback and mentioned in the book:

I have also instructed my team to recheck all my books for any errors and mistakes as a lot of grammatical errors have taken place in the self-published books lately. I genuinely need inspiration and some great insight otherwise my bog journey is doomed, guys pray for me.

Well, just only prayers for the author will not serve the purpose. He should, rather than publishing a lot of books so fast, might have paid attention to the quality of the books published. But, recognizing and acknowledging the mistakes is the first step to rectify them. We sincerely hope that the author will follow the path.

In addition to the above-mentioned attributes, I want to refer to the following segments from the book. It is very important for the authors to know where else (apart from audible.com) they can sell their audiobooks. And, even more importantly, how they make payments and how you can collect them.

Most important is the payment part of this exercise. Since acx.com does not pay to an Indian account directly and is not available for resident Indians. I amusing a friend ac in the UK, so the payment will be made directly to him, as I am not a US taxpayer they will not withhold all my tax
and make payment above$50 into my friend’s UK bank account, who will remit it to my account. Once your tax details and address have been given scarified you are ready to go and get your royalty on time and as dictated by the agreement.

Here is an interesting line from the book, which must be used as an inspiration:

The effective artist knows the art of stealing from other artists, you can call it inspiration, spark or just plain theft of an idea or a thought.

As you can see in the chapters list, there are a couple of bonus chapters in the book about Ebooks and other stuff.

If you want to take a single line from the book, I would settle for the following:

Creatively can only take place in a restful place when you are relaxed.

The book could have been a good resource if it would overcome the letdowns and the book should be sold at a reasonable price.

Summary:

A little pricey book which could be a starting point for a novice author to enter audiobooks market (especially a self published one), with some letdowns.

Around 6.5 out of 10.

Quick Purchase Links:

• Buy Book From Amazon India – Kindle EBook
• Buy Book From Amazon US – Kindle EBook

Over To You:

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