Sound Strategy: Using Audio Clips to Amplify Your Audiobook Sales

Picture this: A listener scrolls through countless audiobook options, searching for their next great listen. What makes them stop and choose yours? Unlike readers of print or eBooks who primarily focus on plot and prose, audiobook enthusiasts are seeking something more—a compelling voice to tell stories in their ears, the perfect companion for their daily commute, or a production that transports them to another world entirely. This is where the magic of audio clips comes in. These brief snippets of sound are your audiobook's handshake—a first impression for curious listeners, and you want to nail it.

But what makes an audio clip irresistible? Let's dive into the art and science of using your audio clips beyond Audible to turn casual browsers into committed listeners.

Start with your narrator.

In pre-production conversations with your narrator(s) (when you’re giving them director’s notes before they start recording), ask them to take note of any passages that were particularly fun to voice, where they thought their performance really shined, or if you have dual or duet narration, where the chemistry between narrators was especially engaging. Remember—your narrator is most likely a first-time reader of yours, too, and they’re an actor looking for juicy material. That makes them a reliable source for which excerpts from your book might pique the interest of potential listeners and leave them wanting more. Speaking of listeners...

Listen to your listeners.

If your print book preceded your audiobook by any length of time, you might have already received feedback from fans on their favorite parts. Maybe it’s a gripping moment, a turning point, a cliffhanger, a sample of your narrator's voice that is particularly emotional, or a part of your audiobook that shows off interesting sound design—using those audio passages as marketing tools might just be the key to hooking new fans, and hearing your narrator nail their favorite passages might convince some of your readers to check out the audio edition, too! Don’t have any reviews from this particular book? You can always use fan feedback from previous books to point to parts your audience typically loves, or take clues from other authors in your genre. And if your fans loved the audio edition, encourage them to share your sound clips—don’t underestimate the power of word-of-mouth and fan-to-fan reviews in promoting your titles.

Set your sound free!

There are plenty of places to use your chosen audio excerpt to promote your new audiobook and attract listeners. Surfaces like Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube are great places to post reaction videos of you or your beta listeners hearing the audio passage for the first time. Or you can create an audiobook trailer like this one, by playing your clip over a still of your book cover, relevant stock imagery, or the book text. Want to spring for a cinematic trailer like this? Employ a graphic designer or animator to create a short video for your selected passage, or pay your narrator a stipend to voiceover a movie-style trailer for your title, reading fan reviews interspersed with short snippets of dialogue from your book to build excitement. You can also use SoundCloud to embed your selections for each audiobook on your website’s audiobook page—organize by reading order or series so your fans can easily find their favorite titles in audio. For new releases, embed the sample on your blog or in your fan newsletter alongside the announcement that your audiobook is live. Key takeaways:

• Your chosen audio clips should pique listener interest, making them want to listen to more of what they just heard and invested in getting the rest of the story.

• Consider gripping selections, cliff hangers, key turning points, outstanding narration moments, or examples immersive sound design—no spoilers, though!

• Once you’ve got your excerpts, use them wherever you’re promoting your audiobook to remove barriers to discovery (i.e. don’t make them go to a secondary location to hear what your new audiobook sounds like) and give new fans another reason to start listening.

• Take a cue from Hollywood and create a an audiobook trailer for your new release, building excitement for it the same way you would for a feature film.

• Wherever you use your samples, make it as easy as possible for the listener to buy the audiobook as soon as you’ve grabbed their attention by adding a link to your title on Audible.

• Remember: if your audiobook is exclusive with ACX, the audio excerpts you use cannot exceed 5 minutes or 10% of the total duration of your audiobook (whichever is longer), and must be a verbatim excerpt from your audiobook.