Audiobook production means turning your manuscript into professionally narrated, edited, and mastered audio, ready for platforms like Audible, Spotify, and Apple Books, and it involves real decisions, human or AI narration, single narrator or full cast, exclusive or wide distribution, that affect both cost and what rights you keep. It's genuinely one of the more involved formats to produce, but audiobook sales have been growing steadily, and for many genres it's become too significant a market to skip.
This guide covers the whole production process. Each section links to a full article when you want more detail.
The audiobook industry prices and measures production in finished hours (FH): one hour of final, polished, ready-to-publish audio. The standard conversion is roughly 9,300 words of manuscript per finished hour, so an 80,000-word novel produces about 8.6 finished hours. This unit shows up throughout audiobook production, in narrator rates, in editing estimates, and in timeline planning, so it's worth understanding early. See How Much Does Audiobook Production Cost? for how this translates into real numbers.
This is one of the biggest decisions in audiobook production right now, and it's genuinely contentious, not unlike the debate around AI-generated book covers. Human narration remains the standard for books that depend on performance, distinct character voices, or emotional nuance, particularly children's books and dramatic fiction. AI narration has become dramatically more capable and affordable, and for some genres, listeners in blind tests often can't reliably tell the difference. See Human vs. AI Audiobook Narration for a full, balanced breakdown.
Entrada Publishing finds, vets, and auditions narrators on your behalf, and coordinates the full production process. Because we bring narrators on as work-for-hire, you retain full rights to the finished audio, without negotiating royalty splits or usage terms yourself. Email us with your manuscript's length, genre, and any specific voice or casting preferences, and we'll walk you through the process and pricing.
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Entrada Publishing sources, vets, and coordinates narrators for you, as work-for-hire, so you keep full rights to the finished production.
Almost always per finished hour (PFH) of final audio, with one finished hour equal to roughly 9,300 words of manuscript. See How Much Does Audiobook Production Cost?
It depends on your genre and goals. Human narration remains stronger for performance-heavy or character-driven books; AI narration has narrowed the gap significantly for many other genres. See Human vs. AI Audiobook Narration
Commonly several months from start to finish with a human narrator, factoring in casting, recording, editing, and mastering. See How Long Does Audiobook Production Take?
Not if you work with Entrada. We find, vet, and audition narrators on your behalf and coordinate the production as work-for-hire, so you retain full rights to the finished audio.