After a childhood in academia, J. Daniel Sawyer declared his independence by dropping out of high school and setting off on a series of adventures in the bowels of the film industry, the venture capital culture of Silicon Valley, surfing safaris, bohemians, burners, historians, theologians, adventurers, climbers, drug dealers, gangbangers, and inventors before his past finally caught up to him.

Trapped in a world bookended by one wall falling in Berlin and other walls going up around suburbia and along national borders throughout the world, he rediscovered his deep love of history and, with it, and obsession with predicting the future as it grew aggressively out of the past.

To date, this obsession has yielded over thirty books and innumerable short stories, the occasional short film, nearly a dozen podcasts stretching over a decade and a half, and a career creating novels and audiobooks exploring the world through the lens of his own peculiar madness, in the depths of his own private forest in a rural exile, where he uses the quiet to write, walk on the beach, and manage a production company that brings innovative stories to the ears of audiences across the world.

Find contact info, podcasts, and more on his home page at http://www.jdsawyer.net

Making Tracks - Second Edition by J. Daniel Sawyer

The definitive guide, revised and expanded for today's market!

Audiobooks represent the fastest-growing segment of the book industry. As demand explodes like never before, how can an author capture this audience?

Making Tracks gives you everything you need to produce, and distribute your own audiobooks and radio dramas—from performance technique to studio design to production management, and more. Don't miss out on this unprecedented opportunity!

CURATOR'S NOTE

J. Daniel Sawyer has written, produced, and marketed audio productions for the past 25 years. He's stayed on top of the trends and knows the modern market. His book, Making Tracks, is a go-to volume in the industry…and he's just revised it for 2025. We're lucky to have it. – Kristine Kathryn Rusch

 
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

Foreword

To the Second Edition

Five years ago, the world was turning inside out. Publishing was in the middle of its great disruption, and that disruption was finally reaching the world of audio. Demand was growing faster than in any other segment of the publishing industry, with lots of room for expansion.

For reasons you'll learn about later in this book, audio is my art form. Yes, I'm a novelist first and foremost these days, but I still produce at least six audiobooks a year—this year, I'm already scheduled for fourteen. It's my first love, and one I hoped to be able to give a good boost on its way up.

Still, when I finished the book, I moved on. I'm a novelist, and like any professional writer, I look forward rather than back. In the meantime, Making Tracks became something of a phenomenon in its own little pond, and as the years went by I started getting notes asking my opinion on matters technological and business where my book had fallen out of date.

Then, last in 2016, I attended an industry conference where I had a series of conversations with novelist JF Penn as well as several representatives of some major retailers and distributors that convinced me that it was time for a new edition. Deciding to produce an audiobook of your work (or hiring someone to produce it for you) involves a number of factors, and some of the information you need to make that decision has changed enough in the last five years that it would be irresponsible of me to leave Making Tracks as it was.

So, here you are. This is the second edition. Inside you'll find significant changes to the sections on the business and on the technology. There are more minor changes elsewhere else, including new tips and techniques in the sections on performance, production, and post-production.

The audiobook market hasn't stagnated or stalled in the last five years. It's still heading up. New players have entered the market, and several more are poised to. Audio is now the fastest growing segment of the publishing industry.

And it's not too late to make it a thriving part of your business and career.