How Audacity helped me to get my audiobook published on Audible

Audible are very picky when it comes to audio quality, but a free tool helped me to succeed in getting published

Earlier this year, I exhibited at the London Book Fair. I spoke to quite a few publishers about audiobooks and they were surprised that, as a self-published author, I managed to get my audiobooks published on Audible. Here’s how I did it.

Photo by Burst from Pexels

When I submitted my first audiobook to Audible, it was rejected due to poor quality audio. So, I rerecorded the whole book and resubmitted it. It was rejected again. I did this two more times, only for it to be rejected twice more.

I had a decent microphone, a Blue Yeti, and a very quiet room, but I just couldn’t manage to get the quality to a high enough standard for it to be accepted by Audible. That’s when I stumbled across the free software Audacity.

What is Audacity?

Audacity is the most amazing audio editing software ever, and it’s free! You can download it here: https://www.audacityteam.org/

https://www.audacityteam.org/

Whoever made it is wonderful. I use it to edit all my audio on my online courses and audiobooks. There are lots of incredible things you can do with Audacity, but in this article, I’m just going to show you how to make your audio sound crisp and clear.

Step 1 — Open Audacity

Firstly, you need to open Audacity and just double check that the correct microphone has been selected. Otherwise, it may just use your laptop’s in-built microphone to record your audio.

Choose the correct microphone

Step 2 — Record something

To record in Audacity, all you have to do is click the big red circle. Or, you can also press R on your keyboard.