I love audiobooks.

I know there are some people out there who have taken a somewhat elitist attitude toward this medium. They are quick to say, “You listen to your books? That’s not really reading.” That’s true. It’s not reading. It’s listening. But the story comes through all the same. In many ways, it comes through louder, and clearer, and better. This, coming from an author — someone sworn to protect the written word.

Too many of my friends and my family haven’t gotten around to reading my first novel because they’re waiting for the audiobook. Which, of course, means I need to make the audiobook.

Turns out, audiobooks are an investment. If you’ve got a great voice, and you’re a dramatic reader, by all means record your own audiobook. You’ll save a good chunk of money. If you’re like me, though, you possess neither of these, so you’ll need to look elsewhere. This means you have to contract a voice artist to read your novel. And guess what? Not so cheap.

A good voice artist will set you back between $200 and $400 per finished hour. Per finished hour means, simply, that regardless of how much time the voice artist spends recording and editing your work, you only pay for the finished hours of recording. Thank all the gods, too. Otherwise, you would have to spend an exorbitant amount for editing work, too.

Dead Weight is 95,000 words, which equates to about 11 hours as an audiobook. The rate for my recording is $280 per finished hour, so the math is simple.

$280 x 11 hours = $3,080.  Yup, three grand. That’s a lot of dough for the average person to throw down. There are options. They aren’t, however, any better.

The leader in audiobooks is Audible, which is an Amazon joint. Honestly, If you don’t put your audiobook on Audible, you may as well not put it anywhere.

All of this to say, at $3,000 for Dead Weight, I figure this is going to be throwing money to the wind. But, you know, it’s pretty cool to hear your book read by a professional.

Here — listen to a sample for yourself.