Welcome Podiobooks.com Authors!

What Podiobooks.com did for indie authors can't be overstated. In a time when indie authors only faced the harsh realities of rejection letters from big publishers and predatory vanity press publishers, Podiobooks.com's novel approach of combining podcasting and home-studio recording to produce audiobooks was nothing short of revolutionary. Many successful, full-time authors such as Scott Sigler and Nathan Lowell credit their early involvement in Podiobooks.com as pivotal to their careers, proving the point that as distinct serialized podcasts, these boost the success of paid versions, even when available on the same outlets.

Now, with Podiobooks.com fully integrated with our powerful CrowdPricing Everywhere, we're poised to take full advantage of this powerful promotional tool… and give audiobook creators a clear path to payment!

Mark Jeffrey, who credits his publishing deal with Harper Collins to his initial success with Podiobooks.com, chose to launch Max Quick 3 with Scribl instead of sticking with Harper Collins. He told us, "After Podiobooks.com helped introduce Max Quick to his fans, I'm happy to come back to Scribliotech [parent company of both Podiobooks.com and Scribl.com], this time through Scribl.com. I think all authors who want to earn a living selling their books on the Internet should consider Scribl's Crowd-Pricing system. Finally, someone has solved the pricing problem for e-books in a way that makes money for authors."

Scribl provides the most complete audiobook and ebook distribution model available to self-publishing authors, spanning over a thousand outlets, including Amazon, Apple, Audible, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, iTunes, and Kobo to name just a few.

How it works

Put simply, you create an audiobook to our standards, upload the files to our servers, and we'll take care of everything else. You'll also need to upload your EPUB ebook file (or submit a Word DOCX file and ask us to convert it for you). In no more than a few days (hours, if we work fast enough!), in addition to the paid audiobook versions on all of the audiobook outlets, a free, serialized version will appear on all the free outlets Podiobooks.com has supported, like iTunes and Stitcher, plus others, like Google.

That simplicity bears repeating:

1. You record and produce your audiobook, one chapter at a time.
2. You upload the files to our servers.
3. We do everything just as if you had posted to Podiobooks.com
4. We also list the audiobook and ebook for sale on every marketplace and pay you at the highest rate possible for all of those sales.

File differences from Podiobooks.com

If you're not already familiar with the Podiobooks.com posting requirements, you can skip to How much you get paid.

In most cases, Scribl will handle all the file differences automatically in the background, but here are a few changes that long-time Podiobooks.com authors should keep in mind when preparing your files for upload.

Higher bitrate

Upload all files to Scribl at 192kpbs. We'll reduce them to 128kbps for the podcast editions.

No silence at beginning or end

There should be no silence at the beginning or end of each file. Different audiobook outlets have different opening and closing requirements, so Scribl needs to control the exact amount of buffer silence.

No "Not for Commercial Use" Creative Commons content

Through CrowdPricing Everywhere, we will offer your book for sale on Audible, Audiobooks.com, iTunes, and many other sites. Therefore, all content, including any music, must be saleable. Creative Commons content is fine, as long as you use content that permits commercial use.

Intro and outro

Podiobooks.com titles are "serialized" and consumed like a podcast with the same intro and outro added to each chapter. For audiobooks, there is only one intro at the start of the book and one outro at the end. To keep this simple, you'll just upload a single intro and outro and we'll apply it to each part for the podcast editions, but only to the beginning and end of the book for audiobook distribution. But this means you must keep the intro and outro separate from any of the main audio content files you upload. Don't worry, we'll prompt you for them.

One chapter per file

For a consistent podcast experience, Podiobooks.com had requested prioritizing a consistent length for each MP3 file. For Scribl, because some audiobook outlets, like Audible, require there be no more than a single chapter per MP3 file, you must be sure not to bundle multiple chapters in a single file. When appropriate , we'll merge multiple short files together to keep the lengths consistent.

We also need the ebook files

For a variety of related reasons, including maximizing revenue to authors, consistency for customers, and fairly tracking download rates for CrowdPricing, we require that every audiobook be accompanied by the ebook in EPUB format.

How much you get paid

For all the sales directly on Scribl, you will get 85% of the sale.

If you opt in to CrowdPricing Everywhere for distribution, which you'll need to for podcast distribution, we're also distributing your book to all of the other major audiobook marketplaces. And when sales are made on those platforms, you'll get 90% of the revenue we receive.

We do much more than just publish and distribute audiobooks. Our ebook royalty -- which we distribute to over a thousand marketplaces (including Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, and Kobo) -- matches or exceeds that of all direct-to-marketplace relationships. You'll make 70% royalty with us regardless of the price point, even in cases where those markets would normally pay you less than 70%. Yes, that means you can earn a higher share of each sale on Amazon through Scribl than by going direct to Amazon.

How you get started

Start by reading our Audiobook Recording Guide and Audiobook File Requirements. We borrowed a lot of language from Podiobooks.com, as they've been helping indie authors create their own audiobooks for over a decade now. Once you're comfortable with the process (and we promise, it's actually quite easy), create your account on Scribl and let's get started!

If you have questions…

If you need help with any of this or have any questions, just let us know. We're here to help.