How To Turn Your Book Into An Audiobook In Australia

By Tasman Publishers 23 October 2026 12 min read

To turn your book into an audiobook in Australia, choose a narrator (yourself or a professional), record and edit each chapter, then master the files to retailer specs such as ACX's RMS of -23 to -18 dB, peaks no higher than -3 dB and a noise floor below -60 dB. Because ACX only accepts rights holders living in the US, UK, Canada and Ireland, most Australian authors reach Audible, Apple, Spotify, Kobo and library apps through a distributor or a production partner instead.

Audiobooks are where a lot of readers now find books: on the commute down the Southern Expressway, on a long drive to Port Lincoln, or walking the dog before work. If your book is already edited and published, it's the most natural next format. But the path for Australian authors differs from the one on American blogs, and that catches people out. Here's how to turn your book into an audiobook in Australia, from choosing a voice to getting the finished files into stores.

Step 1: Get The Manuscript Ready For The Ear

Start with your final, proofread text. Recording from a manuscript that's still changing is expensive in time, because every late edit means re-recording and re-mastering a chapter.

Then read it as a listener would hear it. A few things that work on the page don't work in audio:

Images, maps, charts and tables. Decide if the narrator describes them, or if you'd rather offer a downloadable PDF companion.
Footnotes and endnotes. Fold the important ones into the text and drop the rest.
Lines like "see page 42". They mean nothing in audio, so rewrite them.

Finally, write a pronunciation guide. Australian books are full of names that trip up narrators who don't know them: Kangaroo Island's towns, Aboriginal place names, the way locals actually say Canberra or Melbourne. List every character name, place name and unusual term, with a note on how you say it. If you can, record yourself saying the tricky ones on your phone. It saves a lot of pick-ups later.

Step 2: Choose Your Narrator

This is the biggest creative decision you'll make. The narrator is the book, as far as a listener is concerned.

Should You Narrate Your Own Audiobook?

Plenty of authors ask, "Can I narrate my own audiobook?" You can, and an author narrated audiobook often suits memoir, business books and self-help, where listeners want to hear the person behind the story. It's personal in a way a hired voice can't quite match.

Fiction is harder. A novel asks the narrator to carry a dozen characters, hold tension across hours and keep the same energy on day five as on day one. Most authors find that tougher than they expected. If you do want to narrate, don't do it alone in the spare room. A director catches slips while you're still at the mic, and an engineer keeps the sound consistent from chapter one to the last line.

Single, Dual Or Full Cast

Narration style	What it is	Usually suits
Single narrator	One voice for the whole book, shifting subtly between characters	Most novels, memoir and non-fiction
Dual narration	Two narrators, often one per lead, alternating by chapter or point of view	Romance, dual timelines
Full cast	A voice for every major character, with a narrator holding it together	Fantasy, children's books, series
Author-narrated	Your own voice, recorded with a director and engineer	Memoir, business, self-help

Do You Need An Australian Accent Narrator?

Match the accent to the book, not to where you live. If your novel is set in a Queensland cane town and told in first person by someone who grew up there, an American voice will feel wrong within a paragraph. Listeners notice. An Australian accent narrator also gets the small things right: the rhythm of local speech, slang that isn't a joke, and place names said the way locals say them.

On the other hand, a fantasy set in an invented kingdom, or a thriller set in London, might suit a British voice better. If you're hunting for an audiobook narrator, Australia has plenty of good ones, and the best will tell you honestly when they're not the right fit.

Hear before you choose. Don't cast from a showreel. Ask for auditions recorded from a page or two of your own manuscript, ideally a scene with dialogue. You'll learn more from three minutes of your own words than from an hour of someone else's.

Step 3: Record And Edit

For professional audiobook production, Australia's narrators and engineers work in treated booths, not bedrooms. The aim is clean, consistent sound with no traffic, air-conditioner hum, chair creaks or neighbour's lawnmower.

A typical recording and editing workflow looks like this:

Directed sessions. The narrator records chapter by chapter. A director follows the script, flags misreads and keeps character voices consistent.
Editing. An editor removes breaths that are too loud, mouth clicks, plosives (those popping Ps and Bs), stumbles and retakes.
Proofing. Someone listens while reading along with the manuscript, word for word, marking anything missed, added or misread.
Pick-ups. The narrator re-records the flagged lines, which are then dropped back in so they match the surrounding audio.

Proofing is the step people skip when they self publish an audiobook, and it's the one listeners complain about in reviews. A dropped "not" can flip the meaning of a sentence.

Want To Hear Your Book Out Loud? We cast three to five narrators who audition from your own manuscript, direct every session, master each chapter to retail spec and submit it to the stores and library apps you choose. Send us your title, genre and word count for a fixed quote. Get a fixed quote or call +61 8 7111 2944.

Step 4: Master To Retailer Specs

Audiobook mastering is where a lot of DIY projects fail. Stores check the technical side of every file, and they reject audio that's too quiet, too loud or too noisy. ACX, Amazon's audiobook platform, publishes the specification most of the industry works to. As of 2026, the ACX audio requirements say:

Requirement	ACX specification	What it means in practice
Loudness (RMS)	Between -23 dB and -18 dB RMS for each file	Every chapter sits at a similar, comfortable volume
Peaks	No higher than -3 dB	Shouted lines don't distort or clip
Noise floor	No higher than -60 dB RMS	The silence between words is genuinely quiet
Room tone	1 to 5 seconds at the start and end of each file, never more than 5	Natural silence, not dead digital silence, frames each chapter
File format	MP3, constant bit rate, 192 kbps or higher, 44.1 kHz	Higher bit rates are allowed; mixing mono and stereo isn't
File length	120 minutes or less per file	Very long chapters get split, with a header for each part
Structure	One chapter per file, with opening and closing credits as separate files	Credits name the title, author and narrator
Retail sample	Five minutes or less, taken from the audiobook	No explicit material in the sample

Other stores have their own rules on top. Kobo Writing Life, for example, sets file-size limits for uploads. If your files meet the ACX numbers, though, they'll pass at nearly every store. Specs do change, so check the current requirements on each retailer's help pages before you submit.

You'll also need square cover art. Your print cover won't drop straight in, because the shape is different and the title has to read clearly as a small thumbnail on a phone.

Audible For Authors In Australia: The ACX Problem

Here's the catch most overseas guides miss. ACX is the do-it-yourself route onto Audible, Amazon and Apple Books, but ACX says it is currently open to residents of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Ireland, and you need a mailing address, a local tax number and bank details in one of those countries. Living in Adelaide, Perth or Brisbane, you can't simply sign up. So if you've been searching for "Audible for authors Australia", that's why the answers feel confusing.

It doesn't mean Australian authors can't be on Audible. It means you get there another way.

Audiobook Distribution Routes For Australian Authors

Route	What it reaches	Worth knowing
Voices by INaudio (formerly Findaway Voices)	Audible, Apple Books and dozens of other retailers and library platforms	Non-exclusive and open to authors outside the US. Audible delivery needs the book to already exist as an ebook on Amazon.
Spotify for Authors	Spotify	Uploads go to Spotify only. You can share a copy with INaudio for wider reach.
Kobo Writing Life	Kobo's audiobook store	Direct upload, non-exclusive. You may need to ask Kobo to switch on the audiobook tab first.
Library platforms	Apps such as BorrowBox and Libby/OverDrive, used by many Australian public libraries	Usually reached through a distributor rather than directly
A production partner	Whatever stores and library apps you choose	They prepare files, cover art and metadata and submit for you

The split between Spotify for Authors and Voices by INaudio happened in August 2025, when Findaway Voices was carved into two services. Older articles still describe the old setup, so read anything from before then with care.

Wide or exclusive? Going wide puts your audiobook in more stores and, importantly, into audiobooks for libraries. That matters in Australia, where public library borrowing is a big part of how readers find authors. Some exclusive deals offer better audiobook royalties per sale, but you give up those other channels. For most Australian self-published authors, wide is the safer bet, especially since the main exclusive route (ACX) isn't open to you directly anyway.

One more thing: give the audiobook its own ISBN. It's a separate format from your paperback and ebook. Our guide on how to get an ISBN in Australia covers buying them in your own name.

How Long Is An Audiobook, And How Long Does It Take?

Allow roughly 9,000 to 10,000 words per finished hour. So a 60,000-word memoir runs to about six or seven hours, and an 80,000-word crime novel to about eight or nine. The narrator's pace and the style of the book set the final length.

Production takes much longer than the running time, because every finished hour has to be recorded, edited, proofed, corrected and mastered. As a rough guide:

Casting and auditions: a week or two, depending on how quickly you decide.
Recording: depends on the narrator's schedule and the book's length. A full cast takes longer to coordinate than a single voice.
Editing, proofing and pick-ups: often the longest stage, because it's careful, line-by-line work.
Your approval: you'll want time to listen to the finished chapters yourself.
Store review: each retailer checks files before release, and review times vary.

If you're planning a launch, say a book event at your local library or a writers' festival appearance, start audio production well before the date. Launching the paperback, ebook and audiobook together gives your book promotion one big moment instead of three small ones.

What Affects The Cost?

We don't publish prices in our guides, because no two audiobooks are the same. These are the things that move the number:

Word count. Longer books mean more finished hours to record, edit and master.
Narration style. A full cast involves more voices and more coordination than a single narrator.
Complexity. Lots of characters, accents, foreign words or technical terms take more direction and proofing.
Author-narrated or not. Narrating yourself changes the cost, but it usually needs more direction time.
Extras. Square cover art, a retail sample, metadata and distribution setup.
Deadline. A tight launch date can mean a faster, more intensive schedule.

Some narrators work on a royalty-share basis rather than an upfront fee, which lowers your upfront cost but splits your audiobook royalties. Weigh that carefully, since it can last for the life of the audiobook. For a wider picture of what publishing involves, see our publishing costs page.

How Tasman Publishers Can Help

Our audiobook production service is built for Australian and New Zealand authors. Three to five narrators audition from your own text, so you hear how they handle your writing before you choose. A director sits in on every session, working from a pronunciation guide built from your notes. Every chapter is edited, proofed against your manuscript and mastered to the specs the retailers publish, and you approve the finished chapters before anything goes out.

Then we prepare your chapter files, square cover art, retail sample and metadata, and submit them to the stores and library apps you choose, including Audible, Apple Books, Spotify, Google Play Books, Kobo, BorrowBox and Libby/OverDrive. You keep your copyright and 100% of your royalties.

If your book isn't published yet, we can handle the print and ebook editions too through our book publishing service, so every format launches together. Ready to start? Contact us with your title, genre and word count, and we'll come back with a fixed quote before casting begins.

Audiobook Questions

Can Australian authors publish on Audible through ACX?

Not directly. ACX, Amazon's audiobook platform, says it is currently open to residents of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Ireland, with a local tax number and bank account. Australian authors usually reach Audible through a distributor instead, such as Voices by INaudio, or through a production company that handles distribution for them.

How long will my audiobook be?

Allow roughly 9,000 to 10,000 words per finished hour, depending on the narrator's pace and the style of the book. An 80,000-word novel usually runs to about eight or nine hours. Children's picture books and dense non-fiction can sit outside that range, so treat it as a planning figure, not a promise.

Can I narrate my own audiobook?

Yes, and for memoir, business and self-help it often works well, because listeners want to hear the author. The catch is consistency. You need a quiet, treated space, a good microphone and the stamina to read for hours at an even level. A director and an engineer make a big difference to how professional it sounds.

Do I need an ISBN for an audiobook?

Some platforms don't require one, but wider retail and library distribution generally expects it. The audiobook needs its own ISBN, separate from your paperback and ebook. In Australia you buy ISBNs from Thorpe-Bowker at myidentifiers.com.au, registered in your own name.

Can I use an AI voice instead of a narrator?

Check each store's rules first. ACX's audio requirements say audiobooks must be human-narrated unless otherwise authorised, and other platforms ask you to label synthetic narration. For fiction especially, a human narrator still gives you more control over character, pacing and emotion.