Four of our books are finally up as audiobooks! Do you hear me?
I know what you're thinking: "But Mark, you can't afford to engineer an audiobook!"
What's that? You're actually thinking, "I wonder if white socks have to be dyed, or if colored socks have to be bleached?" Fine. But just the same, they're up on that audiobook powerhouse, Audible.com.
https://www.audible.com/search?searchAuthor=Mark+R.+Hunter
The books, not the socks. I guess the socks would be in the category of Sole Music.
Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing, in one of those cases of "We should have seen it coming", is offering authors a chance to use Virtual Voice to make their works into audiobooks. I was contacted to beta the service, as was, I suspect, every other writer on Amazon. But audiobooks have become a big thing, and I can't afford a service, or the equipment and time to do it myself.
The first one I tried was Storm Chaser. I found the process easy, and the voice acceptable. It is a virtual voice; the term "virtual" has become a dirty word among artists, but this one isn't stealing from someone to make something. Anyone interested in trying it should read a sample first, to see if they're okay with the voice.
https://www.amazon.com/Audible-Storm-Chaser/dp/B0CYB9RHFS
Pay no attention to the voice behind that book!
The second I converted was The No-Campfire Girls. Since the book is almost entirely from the POV of a teenage girl, I chose a female narrator for that one. The price I used for all four books is $3.99, which is low for an audiobook but within reason. Amazon's "free" service gets a cut of that, of course.
https://www.amazon.com/Audible-the-No-Campfire-Girls/dp/B0CY9TVJKC
Seriously, there's no one there. You're imaging those legs.
The other two are my straight humor books, Slightly Off the Mark and More Slightly Off the Mark. (This is as opposed to books like Hoosier Hysterical, which are a mix of humor and other things. But they're still funny. Trust me.)
https://www.amazon.com/Slightly-off-Mark-Unpublished-collected/dp/B0CYP4SR1J
https://www.amazon.com/More-Slightly-off-Mark-reconditioned/dp/B0CY7WWQPK
I'd love for these books to get popular enough to generate a series--I have lots of columns to go.
It was only, oh, this week that I found out Audible is now an Amazon owned service, so ... yay!
Of our other books, some I can't get converted to audio right now due to technical problems, which we're working on. Some I just don't think would work as audiobooks. Images of America: Albion and Noble County is a photo-heavy book, and I'm not sure I could do this without permission of its traditional publisher, anyway. Smoky Days and Sleepless Nights is a toss-up, but being a local history book on a niche subject, I'm not sure there's any point in trying.
Listen to a sample and let me know what you think. If it works, it's a great chance to expand our audience. If it doesn't ... well, all it took was a little time out of my life when I would have been watching "Resident Alien".
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter
Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter
Substack: https://substack.com/@markrhunter
Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/ozma914
Remember: If you're going to hear voices, it's better to know where they're coming from.