When we published our book as an audio book, we had no idea it would become our top-selling version.

I published a book, Smart Divorce, with one of the lawyers in our firm. We cranked out more than 250 pages of advice for a general audience. Get your copy on Amazon, please.

The book sells with some frequency. It’s not at the top of the charts, but a steady stream of buyers download the e-book, and some buy the hard copy. It’s working for us.

More recently, after the book had been for sale for a while, we decided to produce an audio version.

How to Publish an Audio Book

By our estimates, it would have taken us about seven hours to record the audio. Neither of us is a professional voice actor, and we concluded that listening to either of us for seven hours might drive the average listener to reconcile. We decided we needed to involve a professional.

Amazon had been incredibly helpful to us in publishing the book. CreateSpace, one of its publishing arms, had been handling the distribution of the book, so we contacted the company about figuring out the logistics of an audio edition.

That’s when we discovered ACX. It’s another Amazon company, and it’s in the business of helping publishers produce audio books. It matches publishers with voice talent/producers who do everything necessary to get the book out in audio. It’s also wired into Audible, which is the primary place people go for audio books.

If you’re not an Audible customer, you should be. I listen to audio books all the time while walking. You could start with Smart Divorce, and you’ll get it for free just for signing up.

Within a month of contacting ACX, we had an audio book. ACX helped us list our request for the help of a narrator. The company walked us through the process of negotiating with the producer and made sure the audio adhered to its rigorous requirements for excellent production quality.

ACX offered us a variety of financial options. We could pay less and hand over some portion of the sales proceeds to the producer. Or, alternatively, we could pay for the production ourselves and retain all the revenue from sales (that’s the option we selected). The entire process cost us less than $1,000. It took about six weeks.

Much to our surprise, the audio book is outselling the Kindle version as well as the hard-copy version. Who knew?

The Return on Publishing a Book

At a minimum, a book is a great way to establish credibility. It’s a business card on steroids. Even if no one ever reads (or listens to) a word of your book, it’s a valuable asset for your practice. People make assumptions about authors, and they’re all positive. Our book is in the hands of tens of thousands of referral sources, professionals, clients, and prospective clients. It makes a positive impression, regardless of whether it’s sitting on a lobby coffee table, a professional’s bookshelf, or a co-worker’s desk.

We produced our audio version on a lark. It was just an experiment. We had no idea that it would work. Maybe it’ll work for you too.