From Voice To Victory: How To Create And Sell Audiobooks That Build Authority

Most authors miss the real opportunity of publishing – your voice. Audiobooks outsell eBooks 3 to 1, and when paired with the right marketing, they don’t just tell your story… they build your authority.

In this episode of Promote, Profit, Publish!, Juliet Clark sits down with Twin Flames Studios founder Tina Dietz, who has produced more than 500 audiobooks, and Zoundy co-founder Jared Kuritz, whose breakthrough platform helps authors promote, market, and sell those audiobooks with ease.

Together, they reveal how you can:

• Create an audiobook that connects and converts
• Launch with powerful marketing that grows your audience
• Turn your book into a platform for lasting profit and credibility

If you’re ready to stop leaving money (and readers) on the table, this conversation will show you how to unlock the audiobook advantage.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

From Voice To Victory: How To Create And Sell Audiobooks That Build Authority

In this episode, you’re going to find out about a new book marketing platform for audiobooks and print books, if you’d like to do that as well. Before we get started, I want to remind you. We have our GoHighLevel monthly training. It is surveys, forms and quizzes. You can sign up for that at GHLMonthly.com. That is on October 16th.

For this episode’s guests, we have two of them. The first one is Jared Kuritz. He is a publishing and marketing innovator with more than two decades of experience working with traditional hybrid, Indie publishers and authors all over the world. Jared is the President and CEO of Strategies Public Relations and the CSO and CMO of Zoundy, which is a cutting-edge audiobook marketing platform and what we’re going to be talking about. You can learn more about this at StrategiesPR.com and Zoundy.com.

Our second guest is a returning guest that we’ve had many times before. It’s Tina Dietz. Tina is an Award-Winning Vocal Leadership Expert and Pioneer in Voice-Powered Publishing. She is recognized by Forbes Inc, ABC, NBC, CBS and the Chicago Tribune. She is the Founder and CEO of Twin Flames Studios, a leading audio publishing company known for its craftsmanship, quality and client-first experience.

Through her leadership at Twin Flame Studios, Tina has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs, content creators and industry experts bring their voices to life. Her team produces world-class audiobooks and craft books from podcast content transforming spoken insight into assets that build trust, expand reach and open new doors for visibility and revenue. Stay tuned for our interview with Jared and Tina.

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The Huge Impact Of Audiobooks

Jared and Tina, welcome. It’s great to have you guys.

It’s great to be here. Thanks.

I’m excited to hear about this new platform because I don’t think authors use their audiobooks to build their audience as much as they can to generate sales and expand reach. This is exciting that there’s something new out there. Let’s start with creation. Too often, authors treat an audiobook as an afterthought. What’s the risk of that? I know my authors do that a lot. We get the book out and then it’s suddenly, “What about that audiobook?”

It’s a big problem. Five hundred audiobooks later and ten years working in the audiobook industry, we still see not just authors but publishers and the whole publishing industry. Despite the fact that audiobooks out sell eBooks 3 to 1 and despite the fact that audiobooks have been the fastest growing format in the publishing industry for fourteen years running. It’s still treating this like the unwanted stepchild of the publishing industry.

The weird thing is, audio has such high demand and your voice is such a thumbprint of your brand, particularly in non-fiction. Stepping over the opportunity of doing an audiobook, not only hurts your sales, your marketing, or your ability to get your unique voice and message out into the world. Quite honestly, it also hurts the quality of your book because if you design a book with audio in mind, it becomes more conversational, polished, and more you. I’m sure Jared has additional thoughts to add on that.

I agree with everything you just said and I would piggyback off that to say part of the problem is people feeling that it’s a little inaccessible. If we’re looking at fifteen years ago, an audiobook that would cost $15,000 to $20,000 to produce is now going to cost $3,000 to $5,000 to produce. The accessibility of it is so much easier now and people don’t necessarily realize that. It’s more of an education gap than anything else.
I also think that upfront, whether you are self-publishing your work, working with a hybrid press or even working with a traditional publisher. Understanding what you want to accomplish at the front end and factoring the audiobook in at the front end so it doesn’t feel like another financial kick in the stomach at the end like, “Another thing I need to stack on is important.” If you were to ask me whether or not someone was coming out with a book, if they should come out with a print or audiobook first. I would be hard pressed to say print these days because how you can leverage it, what you can do with it and everything else is so much greater with audio.

Now that said, by the time you get done with the editing, the design and everything else, it’s worth having the print book out there as well but it’s an educational thing at this point. Anybody you’re working with or even if you’re working on your own to bring your book to market, you need to do your research and just factor it in as an expected cost at this point.

I would agree with number one because I can’t remember the last time I read an actual book other than the ones that come in my door all the time to publish but I’m a huge audio listener. That’s all I do when I go running, in the car, or just sitting at my desk working. The market is huge. I don’t know about you guys, but I see everybody at the gym with earbuds in. They’re probably doing the same while they’re working out, but that does bring back the problem of, as you mentioned, research.

Why You Need A Team In Creating Audiobooks

When authors plan their books, they don’t plan the entire budget a lot. That’s where they get caught up with the audiobooks. It’s like, “I didn’t budget for this.” That is a huge mistake. When you’re looking at the mistakes people make with audiobooks and believe me, nobody makes them. We send them to Tina and that’s who we send them to but when they go to other companies. What’s the biggest mistake you’ve seen authors do with their audiobooks?

Trying to do it on their own. By far, that is the one 100% biggest issue. That’s if they’re trying to narrate it on their own or if they’re going to work with a professional narrator. If you’re from any other walk of life but specifically audiobook narration. Not even voiceover in general. All voiceover gets plugged into this same pile, but being an audiobook narrator is an incredibly different profession than being someone who does voices for say cartoons or someone who does voices for commercials. It’s a different animal.

Having done some of both myself, the stamina needed to be an audiobook narrator is incredible. The ability for these narrators to keep track of different voices and be consistent throughout 50,000 to 150,000 words of text is incredible. Whether you are working with a professional narrator or you are wanting to narrate it on your own.

You shouldn’t be doing it alone. You either need training, a mentor, a coach, a course or you need to work with a company like mine to make sure that when you get to the end, you have audio that you can submit. Unlike podcasting, which you can get away with a much lower quality of audio. You can’t distribute onto audiobook platforms unless you have very specific standards already met in your audio. Some of which you can’t fix at the end.

I’ve tried to do some reading on my own and it’s the breath work. Unless you’re a professional voice actor, you don’t have the breath work. A couple years ago, I gave you someone who had done himself and you guys couldn’t clean the huffing out of it because you realize that breath work that happens. Jared, what do you think those mistakes are?

Everything Tina said, and what I would say to any author, it’s like, “I have my expensive recording equipment. I have a sound proof room. I can figure out the editing.” You’re going to waste money because ultimately, you’re going to have to hire someone to clean it up and get it done correctly or you’re going to have to redo it. Most people don’t like to do their own dental work. You also don’t want to do your own audiobook recording work. You need a team.

It’s no different than someone that tries to do their own editing of their manuscript. You can’t. You’re too close to it. You need a team. It can be as simple as having someone where you work remotely where you have a direct or sound editor there with you in the process, or it can be where you go in the studio and do it. Ultimately, the recording that you spend 8 to 12 to 14 hours on your own, at least two thirds that time is going to have to be done professionally, so work with the right team.

I wanted to add on to it because one of the things that we do is not just for authors who come to us independently, but we are the audio division for some larger hybrid publishers. They have the option of letting their authors go wherever they want. We clean up or we’ll analyze those audio files when they come in. In ten years, we have never been submitted a set of audio files from any studio or any other company or from someone trying to do it on their own that didn’t need to be fixed. Never in ten years have we found that anyone had those audio files done correctly. Even at professional studios who claim that they were new they were doing.

It’s like in the industry when people bring their own covers. We have the same problem. “I’m a graphic designer. I can do it.”

That’s my favorite line.

Maintaining A Consistent Quality Of Voice

“I can do this,” and then it’s like repeating. I’m uploading all these versions because they didn’t do it to the specs and its industry specific. Tina, I want to talk to you a little bit more about other things. When you guys give people a producer and it can be as simple as one day, I’m nasally and the next day, I’m not. My voice has to be consistent throughout the book. Isn’t that one of the standards that they have? That quality has to be there and you can’t take my nasally little voice out of there.

We run things all the time where someone will try to push through a cold or honestly, they’re having a crappy day and can’t bring the energy to their voice that they did the day before or they try to record in the morning when the rest of the book was recorded in the evening. Our voice is changed throughout the day. We’re known for being the world’s first fully remote recording and remote produced audiobook company.

All of my producers have ears like bats. We’re hearing the mouth click, the dry mouth, the gurgling of your stomach and the rustling of your clothes. We work with our authors on all of these little things that you might not realize that you might not even be able to hear if you’re not used to listening for it to create this pristine audio experience. You don’t have to worry. You can relax, perform and be inside of the work like a conversation. That is what sells audiobooks. It’s the quality of the narration.

Benefits Of Hiring A Professional Narrator

I know we’re talking about self-narrated audiobooks or narrating your own book. This also applies to people that want to bring their book and have it narrated by a “professional narrator.” With the absurd rise of audiobooks, parallel to that is the crazy rise of professional narrators which vary greatly. These same rules apply when you are looking to have a third party narrate your book for you. You still need them to have a professional studio. They need to know how to edit the files and everything else.

In ten years, I know of one unicorn that can do it all himself. That’s it and he is an absolute savant when it comes to that. For the most part, when you’re shopping for a narrator, the narrator still has their own team. The narrator has an editor and sometimes a director that listens in and then ultimately the files get cleaned up and they get mastered.

It’s okay to work with a mom-and-pop narrator company, but you need to ask them what their team is and what their process is to make sure that you’re going to get the product that you want. A little tip is, don’t let them send you just samples of their finished work from someone else’s book. Have them read a portion of your book as a sample so you know what they sound like reading your book.

Three Magic Questions In Establishing A Business Model

That’s excellent advice. Also, the voice appropriate nurse if you’re going to read your own book. I’ve mentioned Tina before. A very well-known author read one of the characters in her book and she had a list. I loved her work but I couldn’t get through the list and why anybody let her do that as part of her book as well. Let’s flip this a little bit. What’s the one strategy that works to make an audiobook connect and sell? I’m going to go with Jared this time because I keep favoring Tina.

Let me start off by saying there isn’t one strategy, and this has always been my thing. I’ve spoken on panels for many years, and I’m always stuck on panels with other book publicists and marketers. They’re always saying, “Here’s our gold package or our silver package. Here’s our magic social media bullet or anything else.” They get to me and they say, “What’s your one thing?” I say, “Every book is different. Every audience is different. Every person’s goal with their book is slightly different.” Except, everyone says they want to be a New York Times bestseller and on Oprah. Other than two goals, everything else is different.

What I tell people is the magic bullet for me and it sounds so simple but once it’s applied, it makes all the difference in the world. The second you want to capture any value from your book that you’re bringing to market, and I don’t care what format the book is in. The second you want to capture any value, it goes from hobby to profession. The biggest mistake that I see authors make at any level is they don’t treat it like a business. The one number one magic bullet that I tell everyone is establish a business model and I break it down into three very simple questions. What are you creating, how are you delivering it and what value do you want to capture from it?

You can apply those three questions at the front end to literally what you’re creating like eBook, print book or audiobook. How are you delivering it? You choose your delivery methods and your distribution or fulfillment methods and so forth, and the value you want to capture from it. Sometimes, its credibility and veracity or royalties and sometimes it’s something else. That list should be pretty expansive as you build that out.

Ultimately, when it comes to effective marketing, those same three questions should be applied. I hear people tell me this all the time, “I want my book to be in book clubs.” I say “Why?” They go, “What do you mean?” I’m like, “Let’s apply these three questions to book clubs. What are you creating? You’re creating the opportunity for book clubs to learn about your book and share it with their book club. How are you delivering it to them?”

It’ll be dependent upon how you’re going to physically give the decision maker in the book club a sample of your book to decide whether they want to engage with it. What value do you want to capture from that? I want the individual book clubs to pick up my book, order them, read them and talk about it. We get into the labor intensity of that like how many sales am I going to generate from that? If I go back to my overall macro business model, does it meet the value I want to capture? Does it generate sales? Does it build credibility and veracity or whatever I’m trying to accomplish?

Those three magic questions are my magic bullet to determine both what I’m doing with a book and what marketing activities I do or don’t want to do because people come with these grandeur ideas. “I want to go out after librarians or trade reviews. I want to do this or I want to do that.” Let’s apply that want to your business model. Do they meet up in the middle? If they don’t, it’s easy to check them off the list.

I can’t tell you how much relief I see with clients I work with that go, “I don’t have to do that.” I’m like, “It doesn’t make any sense for your business model. We don’t have to do that activity.” There’s a sense of relief because they’re able to narrow their focus more and more. I can’t give you one bullet, but I can give you the formula to decide what to do.

Turning Podcasts Into Books

That’s great. You just brought up the two sides, creation and marketing and how they support each other. Tell us a little bit about your pod crafting process for turning podcasts into books.

The pod craft process is something we’ve piloted in 2024. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for quite a long time. We’ve been able to now have both the know-how and the technology to support being able to pull in all the content from a single RSS feed to single podcast feed. Get all of that podcast information in one spot and be able to use the traditional practices that are best practices in ghost writing and developmental editing to pull out the host’s authentic voice, the voices of the guests that they may have had, and the themes.

Also, to be able to use that to craft books that are world class and use the show as effective source material. It’s a beautiful process. We’re finding that these books are incredibly well received. We’ve just had one release without any marketing team and marketing budget at all in the first four days. It hit number one in Amazon hot new releases and number one in one of their major categories.

I want to touch on this. She’s doing something that’s unique because it reverse engineers the process. You have a show that already has a platform and already has an audience. You’re repurposing their content to create another product. You don’t have to go through the trials and tribulations of a lot of the foundational marketing activities. It’s a brilliant way to approach creating a new product for someone who already has great content and an established audience.

Coming to the audiobooks, they’re already an audience that likes listening to audio.

Helping Authors Promote, Market, And Sell

Jared, tell us a little bit about Zoundy, your launch campaigns and audience building features because you’ve created something unique that could help a lot of authors in this respect.

Let me just tell you the origin story first because it will help bring authors along to understand. Going back to the whole trying to find the right way to produce an audiobook. I had a client who wrote a beautiful memoir and we shopped around for professional narrators. We probably received samples from 10 or 15 narrators and we just couldn’t find the right voice who captured the emotion. This woman was in her late 70s and she said, “I want to create this audiobook myself. I know the voice and everything else.” I said, “If you’re going to do it, you need the right team.”

One of my only clients that’s local to me, she’s about 45 minutes North of me. I found a studio that had been highly recommended to me. We met there and I met the owner. I walked into the studio and they had a director, the sound editor and someone there just helping her along and walking her through the process. They had scheduled her for two-hour sessions per day because they knew it was going to be exhausting. When I first heard that, I’m like, “That’s brilliant.” I see Tina nodding. It’s like, that’s what you need for someone who’s never done this before.

The owner said to me, “She’s in good hands. Let’s chat and meet up.” I nodded to her and she gave me a thumbs up. We left and I left her in the studio. He and I went to grab a bite to eat and get to know each other. He asked me what I did and I talked to him about bookmarking and everything else. He asked me about my pain points wherein I said, “I love audio and I know the trajectory of it.” I sounded off on all the great statistics about audio and how it’s going to be here for a long term and how it’s going to take a bite out of the marketplace.

I said, “There’s no great way to be able to effectively use it as a marketing tool.” He said, “What do you mean?” I started rattling off all these things I’d like to be able to do. I didn’t know this at the time, but their studio had produced at the time 8,500 to 8,800 audiobooks for big publishers like John Grisham’s books and all down to the little guys like my author. He said, “Let me show you something.” He has shown me this, I called the ugly stepchild of what Zoundy has become. It allowed a couple of the features that I had mentioned.

He said, “Why don’t we build this thing out?” I was like a kid in a candy shop. I’ll be totally honest with you. I probably drove our designer nuts because I kept telling him, “Can you make it to this? Can you make it to that?” To their credit, they build everything out. I started using this for my clients a good year before we went public with it. In a nutshell, what Zoundy is, it is an audiobook marketing and engagement tool first and foremost.

I’ll give you a couple of examples of how it can be used. Whether you have a print book, an eBook or an audiobook, when you throw it into distribution, people can buy it through Amazon or through Spotify or wherever they get the different formats from. The consumer gets it and you have no idea who they are, where they’re from or anything else. Not like Amazon’s going to show that information with you, but information is power. We also know that information can be leveraged in a lot of different ways.

One of the things our platform does is anyone who buys or downloads the audiobook for free, you get their name, email and how they came to you. You know exactly what promo you set up and where they come in from. With professional speakers, we have professional speakers that go out and do corporate gigs. What they’re able to do with their audiobook through our platform is do bulk order fulfillment. Let’s say they’re getting $10,000 into a speaking fee. They can say, “How about for another $2,000, everybody in your audience gets a free copy of my audiobook?”

You can create a promo specific to that organization and you can give them a copy of the audiobook based on the number of people or whomever. You can customize the audiobooks. They do that. They record the audio for it. They can put it as the first track and make it a customized version for that audience. For sponsorship sales, you can turn around to sponsors who love your book and by the way, these are all things that we’ve done so far. They can turn into a sponsor and say to an NGO, “How about you give this to all of your donors? You can do a welcome message at the front of the audiobook as the director of the NGO and give it out to them as a thank you.” They love that.

You can cross promote. Major publishers can turn around and say, “If you’d like this, you can also listen to this.” You can do a first or second chapter and customize the book that way. For first time authors or authors that don’t have an established audience, like I have an author who is a Sci-Fi writer. She’s got three books in her catalog at the moment. She took her first audiobook and gave it away for free like crazy to build those numbers so then she can contact them and say, “I saw you downloaded this book. I hope you enjoyed it. Here are my next two books in the series.” She can use it as a marketing tool to generate sales.

From a marketing standpoint, I have found it to be extremely effective in interfacing with influencers, bloggers, podcasters and so forth. When I reach out to a podcaster, I can turn around and say, “Here’s the person. I love to have them on. Here’s the area of expertise. This is why your audience will stay engaged. You guys both know the deal like the pitch. I said, “By the way, if you decide to have this person on, I’m happy to give you a promo code so that a hundred or a thousand audience or whatever number, can download the audiobook for free.” Now, we’re building an audience.

Publishers who have a backlist of audiobooks and they’ll take one, give it away like crazy in order to build their own community that they can go back to with similar books, similar titles and so forth. It is limitless in terms of your engagement. When I pitch bloggers now, the same thing. I say, “I love to send you a compliment and a copy of this book for review consideration. If you’re willing to cover a feature in some capacity, I’ll give you a promo code where your audience can download a thousand free copies of the audiobook.”

It is a game changer because what do they want? They want to be able to give something away for free. They want to keep their audience engaged. Their audience loves it. I’m able to leverage visibility from my client and for their book in a way I’d otherwise have to pay for advertising free. That, to me, are all of those things. You can price and discount it however you want. You can run unlimited promos. If I’m reaching out to a thousand different bloggers, I can create a thousand promos for the same audiobook and I’ll know where everyone’s coming from and then I can put more of my effort there, even if I want to do advertising.

This is a huge thing because we spend so much money on advertising. If I want to run ads and I want to run A, B, and C ads on three different platforms and see what’s resonating. Now, I can create customized promos to know where people are coming in from. It’s fantastic. We even have a bundling tool, if you’re a publisher that has 10, 15, or 100. We have one publisher that’s got 300 different audiobook titles on the platform. You can now take 3 or 4 titles and bundle them together and say, “You can get all four of these for a discounted price of X, Y or Z.” It’s a game changer.

It’s freaking cool.

As I said, I’m a kid in a candy shop and the reason I’m so enthusiastic about it is because I never imagined it to become what it is. I just thought, “They’re making this for me so I can play around with it.” Now, we’re sharing it with the world.

Not to be sounding like a QVC host here. I’ve been in marketing. I was a business coach for many years before I got into audio. Zoundy is a tool that was built by somebody who is an experienced book marketer specifically and an audiobook company that knew what they were doing. There’s nothing like that that has existed on the market. Quite honestly, I’m so excited about it. I’ve been starting to promote it to my authors and whatnot because it solves a bunch of problems we’ve been wanting to solve. I love that you can own your own contacts, which so many platforms will gatekeep from you. I want to be like, “Jared, tell me more. What are the bonuses?” I immediately want to go into commercial voice. It’s great.

One of the caveats I always tell people too is we are not a replacement for having your book on all the retail platforms. I’m a big proponent of having your audiobook distributed as broadly as possible just like I would say with your print book or your eBook. Have it on Audible or Spotify. Have it everywhere and anywhere available to the libraries and emails. We are a marketing tool and engagement tool, first and foremost.

Now, you can also set your book up for sale on the platform if you wish, but you’re not obligated to do that. For example, I have an author saying all the time, “I’m Amazon exclusive.” I say, “That’s not a problem. You just don’t make it for sale on our platform, but you can still use all of the marketing tools because you’re not selling it.” We are trying to think of every scenario for everybody.

Get In Touch With Tina And Jared

As you were saying that, I was just thinking. I received one of your products as a free gift. My business coach sent me a book when I first started with him. I literally looked and said, “How did you get this? This hasn’t even been released yet.” I’m betting that’s how he got the audiobook, which he shared with me on it. We’ve learned a lot about audiobooks and I didn’t even know they outsell eBooks. When you create them right and you market them, it’s a winning combo. Jared, can you tell me where we find out more about Zoudy? Do you have a code to share with my audience if they’d like to try it?

You can get all the information if you go to Zoundy.com. Every bit of information I shared with you is on there. Anyone who wants to get 25% off can you use the code Juliet25. They’ll get 25% off their subscription.

That sounds great. Tina, where can we find you?

You can always find me at TwinFlamesStudios.com. Everything we have is there like our audiobooks, our new pod craft, podcast book services and our complimentary panels that we host every month of expert panels where you can jump in as an author. They’re all on demand and get different information each month about different aspects of the publishing world and the book world and get real world advice from people out there doing it every day.

That sounds great. Thank you so much for being on the show. I hope this works, this new Zoundy because it sounds amazing. I’m going to sign up.

Thank you so much.

Thanks, Juliet.

Important Links

• Tina Dietz on LinkedIn
• Tina Dietz on Facebook
• Tina Dietz on Instagram
• Jared Kuritz on LinkedIn
• Twin Flames Studios on Facebook
• Twin Flames Studios on LinkedIn
• Twin Flames Studios on YouTube
• Twin Flames Studios on Instagram
• Strategies PR
• Zoundy
• Twin Flames Studios
• Join Zoundy and use discount code Juliet25 to get 25% off
• Go High Level Monthly Training

About Tina Dietz

Tina Dietz is an award-winning vocal leadership expert and pioneer in voice-powered publishing. Recognized by Forbes, Inc., ABC, NBC, CBS, and The Chicago Tribune, she is the founder and CEO of Twin Flames Studios, a leading audio publishing company known for its craftsmanship, quality, and client-first experience.
Through her leadership at Twin Flames Studios, Tina has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs, content creators, and industry experts bring their voices to life. Her team produces world-class audiobooks and crafts books from podcast content, transforming spoken insight into assets that build trust, expand reach, and open new doors for visibility and revenue.

About Jared Kuritz

Jared Kuritz is a publishing and marketing innovator with more than two decades of experience working with traditional, hybrid, and indie publishers and authors all over the world. Jared is the president and CEO of STRATEGIES Public Relations and the CSO and CMO of Zoundy, a cutting-edge audiobook marketing platform. Learn more at strategiespr.com and zoundy.com.

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