The $$$, Heartbreak, and Minor Success of Self-Funding Audiobooks

How Reddit, Q-Anon and the algorithm shaped my audiobook journey

Last year, out of the blue, an audiobook I released in 2022 suddenly picked up steam. It happened completely out of nowhere and after examining every corollary I could think of, I came up blank. Maybe 2025 was just the right year for a dark comedy about a man pretending to be sasquatch, maybe I just got algorithmically lucky. Either way, it was a bumpy ride to get there.

I started dabbling in audiobooks in 2019. My first novel in my monster hunting series, The Nick Ventner Adventures, released in 2018 and I was hard at work on the sequel. To promote the series and fill time between releases, my publisher and I reached out to audiobook narrators with a tantalizing promise: “We can’t pay you now, but if this ever makes any money, we’ll cut you in.”

Unsurprisingly, that call led to few responses, but much to my surprise, there were some interested parties. There were also some who were content to curse me out for exploiting audiobook narrators for “exposure”—Reddit is really feast or famine that way. After all of it, we had one promising lead.

An independent audio engineer and voice actor offered to do a full audio drama production of my prequel novella, A Man of the Mountain, as a test before jumping into Whiteout. We would split any revenue in thirds between him, myself and the publisher. What he produced was an incredible, visceral version of my story.

We received the files at the end of 2019 and went into the new year riding high on the promise of a brand-new decade… and then 2020 happened. Our audio drama performer went into the deep rabbit hole of Q-Anon. What started as strange posts that seemed mostly harmless quickly escalated into racism and hurtful rhetoric that I wanted nowhere near my stories. Shortly after the audio drama’s release, I had it pulled and went back to square one.

My audio ambitions remained dormant through the pandemic. Aberrant Literature released Downpour, the second Nick Ventner Adventure in fall of 2020. Despite positive reviews, it fell flat and never found the audience we wanted. Aberrant Literature closed its doors in 2022 after a final short fiction collection and was kind enough to return the rights for The Nick Ventner Adventures to me.

With the rights in hand, I searched for a new way to invigorate the franchise. Despite Downpour’s poor commercial performance, I believed in the characters, my writing and the world. I still do. There’s an audience for pulp action-adventure monster hunting with humor out there and I’m finding them one by one.

Enter Findaway Voices. This platform made it easier than ever for independent authors to connect with potential audiobook narrators. This is where I met Stuart Bentley, a Canadian actor and audiobook narrator. I knew from our first introduction, we were going to hit it off. Stuart is a dynamite narrator, kind human, and understood the world I was asking him to bring to life immediately.

Once more, my idea was to pilot with A Man of the Mountain and move into Whiteout later. Given that I was now financially on the hook for the cost of production, I wanted to use the novella as a pilot test. Even still, audiobook narration is expensive! These are high-tier performers with plenty of offers and the range of costs is wide ($50-$300 Per Finished Hour [PFH]). Still, I took the plunge and decided to see if there was a market.

Stuart’s production of A Man of the Mountain was incredible and yet, once again, sales fell flat. I made less than $10 in the first year. I’d show you a sales/listening graph, but it’s too sad, so here’s a photo of my cat looking disappointed instead.

At this point, one might say: Stop trying to make audiobooks happen, they’re not going to happen!

Yes, that would be smart. But I did not. In 2023, I self-published another novella through Kickstarter, The First Ambassador to Crustacea. It’s a science fiction comedy about an ill-fated political mission to a planet of psychic crabs and militant lobsters. I was sure to cover all my expenses through the campaign and easily broke even.

I had no intention of creating an audiobook for that title, but then out of the blue, I got an e-mail from Joel Simler. After some chatting, he graciously agreed to do the audiobook for a very cheap fee and a 50/50 revenue split (which I told him would probably be peanuts).

The First Ambassador to Crustacea released as an audiobook in 2024 and… It also fell flat. If you’re sensing a trend here, it’s because you’re smart. Joel and I also made about $10 in the first year. Here is another picture of my cat being disappointed (he makes that face a lot).

So, 2024 passed without any major audiobook news. I signed a deal with a new publisher for the full length follow up to Crustacea, One Night at Kedasi, but that didn’t release until late 2025. But in the summer of 2025, something started to happen. Out of nowhere, A Man of the Mountain started finding listeners on Spotify. Finally, I have a graph I can show you.

A Man of the Mountain went from nothing to a peak of 8,300 hours in a single month (a little over 100 monthly listeners). Over the back half of 2025, it made around $250. That’s more than I made of royalties in the prior year off all my print books combined.

As you can see from the chart above, the peak didn’t last forever and has since declined to a new baseline, but weekly listens are still stronger than they were before. I can’t explain what happened other than the algorithm on Spotify decided people needed Sasquatch lit, but I’ll take it. Folks continue to find A Man of the Mountain and that’s awesome. At this rate, I will actually break even at some point next year on the production.

Earlier this year, I invested in the Whiteout audiobook, once again narrated by Stuart Bentley. I know full well that I may not make it back, but my hope is to capture some of that spike and continued listenership A Man of the Mountain generated. I don’t have a release date yet, but as soon as I do, I’ll be posting it here.

I also directly put the money from A Man of the Mountain into yet another short form audiobook. This time, I wanted to pay Joel up front. On June 6^th, we released the audiobook for The Dark Humor Will Continue Until Morale Improves. Joel’s dry humor was perfect for this book as it was for Crustacea.

Early signal on that audiobook is looking much better than my past adventures. I can say for sure that profitability is a long way out, but I do think these audiobooks helped me find a fresh audience. Sales of Whiteout’s paperback followed the listener growth on A Man of the Mountain.

It’s a long winding journey to say what most authors will tell you from the start: Success is a bit of a crapshoot. You need to be good, you need to have timing, and you need to have a bit of luck. For my part, I’m going to keep at it with an eventual goal of breaking even on these self-funded productions.

I think my point with this post is that sometimes betting on yourself can feel like a waste of money and in a strict sense, it might be. But sometimes, timing is on your side and the algorithmic tech gods that will help you out. Best of luck to all the other writers out there. If you’ve got an indie audiobook you want folks to check out, drop it in the comments, I’m looking for my next read.

If you enjoyed this ramble and want to support me, consider checking out one of my three audiobooks!

A Man of the Mountain (Dark Comedy/Action Adventure) – A tabloid reporter calls in ‘real’ monster hunters to investigate a string of murders in a small PNW town. books2read.com/AManOfTheMountain

The First Ambassador to Crustacea (Sci-fi / Comedy) – Zip Turbine, captain of a ‘totally legal’ cargo hauler gets roped into an ill-fated political mission to a psychic crab planet. books2read.com/crustacea

The Dark Humor Will Continue Until Morale Improves (Political Satire / Sci-Fi) – A collection of comedic short stories born from frustration with capitalism, AI, and corporate f**kery. books2read.com/darkhumo