Finding Your Audiobook Audience with Ruthie Bowles, The BookFunnel Podcast Episode 21
Jack Shilkaitis (00:37)
Hey folks, welcome to the Book Funnel podcast where indie authors get real world advice on writing, publishing, and growing a career on their own terms. Whether you're just starting out or you're deep into your author journey, we're here to help you build your readership, boost your book sales, and connect with your audience.
Each episode, we aim to bring you insights from authors, experts and industry insiders who've been there, done that, and then some. My name is Jack. I'm our Lead Author Support Specialist here at Book Funnel. I am joined today, as always, by today just my co-host, Emma Allison Kelly at the time of recording is on vacation. Happy vacation, Kelly.
Well, we'll see you when you come back.
And our guest for this episode of the Book Funnel podcast, Ruthie Bowles, an audiobook narrator
Welcome, Ruthie. We're glad to have you here on the podcast. For those of our audience who aren't familiar with you and your work, just give us a quick rundown about who you are and what you do.
Ruthie Bowles (01:25)
Super glad to be here.
All right, so yes, I'm Ruthie Bowles, also known as Tempest Mensa, if you favor the darker romance type of stuff. I'm an audiobook narrator. I also produce and distribute audiobooks for my authors. I'm a diversity consultant, and I've actually also started writing. And I live in Maryland, where it's super hot right now.
Jack Shilkaitis (01:51)
Yeah, yeah, it's for a lot of us. I think we're all kind of getting the same, same sort of thing. Well, we're glad to have you here. It's, I think this is the first time we've had, Emma, correct me if I'm wrong, that we've had a narrator on the podcast. I know we've had some authors on the podcast who have done some self narration. Right, well, okay, we don't want to throw any shade at.
Emma Alisyn (02:07)
who self narrate, but an actual narrator. This is the first, yes. And I have questions.
Jack Shilkaitis (02:14)
And we will get into those for sure. Real quick here though, our tradition on the podcast when we get started is to check in with each other. Of course, those of us here in the Book Funnel Author Support Team, we are all authors. So Emma and myself are both authors. And Ruthie, I know you have some creative projects, whether it's writing related projects or narrating related. So we like to just catch up on what everybody's working on these days. Emma, you were telling me before we got started about
this story that you're working on and all these plot threads and some subtext you're trying to get through to readers. How's that going?
Emma Alisyn (02:44)
Yeah.
The characters won't shut up. It's at 130,000 Night in His Eyes, the second edition. And I actually cut some of it to put in second edition book two because it was getting out of hand. But what I decided to do because the first 40,000 is pretty, pretty set.
Jack Shilkaitis (02:53)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Emma Alisyn (03:08)
I grabbed a pre-made cover from the designer who did the new cover for Night in His Eyes and I'm gonna throw up the first $40,000 and sell it direct for like 99 cents or whatever just to my newsletter because if it's delivered through Book Funnel and I do make any changes I know they can get the updates but if I do it on Amazon and anything changes and so I'm gonna do that yeah
Jack Shilkaitis (03:15)
Hey.
There you go.
Right.
That wasn't gonna be your tip for the day, is it? That you can update your files
after the fact? Did you spoil your tip already?
Emma Alisyn (03:31)
It was not, but that
is a good tip. And one of the major reasons why I love distributing through BookFunnel is because I change a lot of things. I'll tweak like a couple months later when I have fresh eyes. You cannot.
Jack Shilkaitis (03:39)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
You'll pull a George
Lucas and just make somebody else shoot first. I'm kidding. I'm razzling you a little bit. But if you make updates to your book on Amazon, for example, readers, don't think they get any sort of notification. They have the ability to get the updated version of the book. But I think it's something they have to manually initiate, if I'm not mistaken.
Emma Alisyn (03:52)
Yeah.
You have to
ask, you have to go crawling hat in hand to Amazon and justify why the update is needed. And that's super frustrating because you know us indie authors will have versions with old covers, we'll re-edit and it's like all the old stuff. This is actually why I decided to republish Night and His Eyes under a new ASIN because I'm gonna tell everybody delete the old one. Please.
Jack Shilkaitis (04:14)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm Right, right
But yeah, they don't they definitely don't make it easy and you don't have the ability to just send some sort of notification to them Whereas if you sail through book funnel like you have their email too so and this is even relevant to audiobooks too because you could Update your audiobook files. Sometimes there's an error. Sometimes. Yeah, it's the second edition of a book or there's an update or there's an edit
Emma Alisyn (04:41)
Yeah, you can't do it.
Jack Shilkaitis (04:54)
And yeah, you absolutely can go in and make those sort of changes. there it's a bonus tip for everybody unintentional.
Ruthie Bowles (04:56)
Mm-hmm.
Emma Alisyn (04:58)
And
Ruthie, y'all don't know, narrated the first edition of Night in His Eyes back when it was only 54,000 words and...
I'm gonna do a kickstarter or something so I can get the pennies together so she can do too because I just I can't I got yeah I got I mean she's my gal she's my voice she's my errand so we gonna figure this out somehow
Ruthie Bowles (05:15)
It's so good.
Jack Shilkaitis (05:19)
Hahaha
Yeah, that'll be awesome.
Ruthie, what projects have you been working on lately?
Ruthie Bowles (05:27)
Ah, well, there's always an audiobook project on the fire, so to speak. And so I'm recording a 1.5 novella in a big, dark, romantic series. The first one was called The Forgotten and the Feared. And so we're doing book 1.5, and so that's what I'm in right now, which is thankfully...
Jack Shilkaitis (05:30)
Yeah.
Ruthie Bowles (05:52)
pretty short and it's thankfully it's short because we're in the summer and my kids are home. So the shorter projects make me feel like I'm actually getting something done since I can't record as much. And then I'm in the middle of writing a pink horror short story. For those not familiar with like kind of those sub genres of horror, pink means that it like addresses women's issues. I thought I was done and it was sitting, you know, short. was sitting at about 78,000 or no, 7,800 words.
Jack Shilkaitis (05:57)
Mmm.
Ruthie Bowles (06:19)
And I was like, okay, maybe we're done. And then I got this like gigantic creative download, which I then shared with like my best friend. And I was like, ooh, do I have to put that in? And they were like, yeah, yeah you do. So now it's not done anymore. yeah.
Jack Shilkaitis (06:30)
Yeah, Yep, those kind of things will happen. Absolutely.
Right. As for myself, this week, the man is keeping me busy.
The book funnel is is kind of dominating my week. I've got meetings that are spawning meetings It is what it is, you know, it just means I'm important, right? Okay No delusions of grandeur here, but but so I'm but I have a vacation coming up next week So I'm like intentionally front-loading like okay I'm gonna do a whole bunch of stuff before I go on a vacation and I know I'm I'm not gonna be writing much this week at all and I'm gonna allow myself to be okay with that because next week I'm gonna be on vacation and I'm gonna have some extra time
Ruthie Bowles (06:50)
You
Jack Shilkaitis (07:07)
when my kids aren't, you know, doing what kids do. But, you know, it'll be fine, right? The plan that I have in my head will be executed perfectly like it always does, right? No, I, yeah, I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. I will report back. But yeah, that's what's been going on for me. Lots of, and it's good work, by the way, to...
Ruthie Bowles (07:10)
Yeah.
Jack Shilkaitis (07:26)
Book Funnel is a great company to work for and obviously not everybody gets the opportunity to work for Book Funnel, so I'm very thankful. yeah, sometimes you've got to balance that out when you've got a full-time job over here or maybe like a full-time audiobook narration thing you've got going on over here and then you want to write, you you know how it is, you know how it is, right?
Ruthie Bowles (07:44)
Yeah, yeah.
Jack Shilkaitis (07:46)
All right, so we've come to our first segment of the podcast today, our tips from the trenches segment. In this segment, each one of us will share a tip related to self publishing, writing, what have you, that it will be beneficial for you guys in the audience. Hopefully something new, maybe a new way of thinking about something. Sometimes it's related to book funnel, or sometimes it's a little bit more related to the craft side of things, whatever it happens to be.
Emma, I'm going to make you go first because when you don't go first, you will change your tip. So I want to know what's on your mind today. Emma, I'll let you go first.
Emma Alisyn (08:21)
leveraging your readers for marketing when you're on a budget. And I think I may have mentioned this a little bit in my last webinar, but when you are sending out your certified mail campaign or your ARC campaign, however you're doing it, include a link to a Google folder that has lots of images, screenshots with highlights, videos, whatever you've put together.
so they can share those for you and do your marketing. And it also occurred to me, why don't I just have those links in the bottom of my newsletter permanently all the time? Because you never know when they'll pick up a book and they'll be like, I really like that. let me go grab a graphic and share it in my reader group. You don't know, so. And you paid for the graphics either in time or money, so use them.
Jack Shilkaitis (09:06)
Right,
right, no that's a good point. That's a good point. Because you can, I think authors maybe assume that it's all on them, but that's the whole point of having an audience is to, especially if they are your fans, they're gonna be willing to help you out in that regard. So absolutely, and especially if, like you said, you have something to give them, like those materials to make it easier for them to like.
Emma Alisyn (09:27)
Yeah.
Ruthie Bowles (09:28)
Mm-hmm.
Jack Shilkaitis (09:29)
share this on socials, what have you. And you make that really easy, right? As opposed to being like, yeah, if you could write a post about the book, not everybody necessarily knows what to say, but here's a graphic and say, hey, I love this book. And you could just keep it really simple. That's a good idea.
Ruthie Bowles (09:43)
Mm-hmm.
Emma Alisyn (09:44)
Just make
sure your website is at the bottom and like small print in case they don't write any comments. So like mlson.com, jackshilketis.com, you know, so if they do like share it, cause I'll be in these reader groups and they'll be like, where did this image come from? And they'll be hunting, hunting it down, Google reverse search and all of that.
Jack Shilkaitis (09:47)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
Right,
right. So make sure you do have those images probably on your website or social media somewhere so that they do get reverse image searched. But yeah, so that's a very good point. Make sure your website is down there or your name at least is at the bottom. ⁓ Ruthie, what advice do you have for the audience today?
Emma Alisyn (10:08)
Yeah. Yes. They can find it.
Ruthie Bowles (10:16)
Mm-hmm.
Ooh, so I was thinking about this one and there are probably a few I could pick from, especially being an audiobook narrator. But I did settle on one. As you're writing, having characters with vague accents is not always the best idea if you, in fact, have not determined what you want that accent to be. Like in your mind, you wrote it.
Jack Shilkaitis (10:42)
Hmm.
Emma Alisyn (10:43)
about me.
Ruthie Bowles (10:44)
I'm not talking
about you. I'm just saying sometimes, you know, some of the books that I've narrated, they're really big worlds. And then I'm like, okay, so do you want everybody to have a general American accent? And then the author's like, come again? And I'm like, well, you've got people from over here and people from over here and yeah, they're completely made up places, but you know, what do you want them to sound like? And they're like, you know, and so then it becomes like a big surprise, but I have.
Jack Shilkaitis (11:05)
Mm-hmm.
Ruthie Bowles (11:09)
where I'm like prepping the manuscript and I have to come back and ask the author later like, hey, this character, you said they have a vague accent. Did you have something in mind? Because just the way it's written doesn't necessarily tell me how they're supposed to sound. Like, did you want them to sound British? Did you want them to sound Irish? Did you want them to sound, you know, Nigerian? You know, something? Like, what did you want them to sound like?
Jack Shilkaitis (11:20)
Right.
Ruthie Bowles (11:33)
Because even a vague accent is still an accent of a kind and sure, I could pick one, but it might not fit with what you've got in mind in book three and we're on book one kind of deal. that would probably be my big thing. You could still write vague accent if you want. Just be prepared for the question of like vague accent from where and then maybe to dovetail a little bit. Be very careful with your light accents. The lighter an accent a character has, the less like that accent it sounds.
Jack Shilkaitis (11:42)
Great.
Ruthie Bowles (12:00)
And I think sometimes authors will write like they had a really light accent or authors will request light accents, not realizing that the lighter it is, the less distinguished it is. So usually we try to go for something more middle of the road, not like a caricature, but something a little bit more middle of the road. So that way it's still identifiable as like from a listener's perspective. But if it's too light, then it just starts to sound, you know, exotic, vaguely exotic somehow. And then that doesn't, you know, convey the story experience that you were hoping for.
Jack Shilkaitis (12:09)
Mm-hmm.
Sure.
Right, right. is it, is it, so somebody who's thinking about this, is it probably best to start with real world accents and kind of have a vision of like, okay, like there's this existing accent that I'm familiar with and then work based off of that? Or is it,
I guess what would your suggestion be in there? As someone who has never had one of my books narrated, you've got all sorts of questions popping off in my head. like, my gosh, Ed. I have the idea in my mind of what these characters sound like, but no, there's a real world, when you give it to the narrator, they have to know what they're working with.
Ruthie Bowles (13:03)
Yeah, so I would say that most of the time it's best for the most part to stick with real world accents because, because what people don't always realize is when they try to create an accent where they like, you maybe they'll tell the narrator like, hey, you know, I want it to sound kind of Russian mixed with Spanish. Those accents come from completely different places in the mouth. They've got different oral postures and the accent and the language developed in its place.
for the people that speak it and that's how it is. So when you try to make an accent, unless you are, unless you have a background in linguistics is what I'll say. And like, I can acquire accents, but I don't have a background in linguistics myself. So I'm saying if you have a background in linguistics to understand where sounds come from in the mouth and how then they like come together to like create a cohesive accent, trying to manufacture an accent, like mix one up would probably not come out very well.
Jack Shilkaitis (13:31)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Sure.
Ruthie Bowles (13:58)
But if
you're kind of able to keep it in mind as you're creating your world, like, this is kind of like the accent that I think that these people would have, and these people, and these people, or whatever, I think that ends up working out a lot better.
Jack Shilkaitis (14:05)
Yeah.
Right. No, that makes sense.
Emma Alisyn (14:12)
Well, how do you handle that if you have a character like Erin who's a polyglot, was raised in multiple languages? Because someone asked me in a webcast the other day, what is the accent of this character Erin? I'm like, well, she speaks English, French, Kikuyu, and Evernessy. I'm like, I have no idea what she sounds like. And she also code switches, which I don't know if I conveyed that well in the book. But so I'm like, how the hell?
Ruthie Bowles (14:33)
Yes.
So yeah, so as somebody who speaks a few different languages, typically what happens is you don't just learn a language, you learn the accent. And that's what people don't always realize. Like they think, for example, like in Spanish, like no is the same in Spanish as it is in English, but that's not entirely accurate because if you listen to a Spanish speaker say the word no.
Like it comes from a different place in their mouth. And then, and I said Spanish speaker, but like obviously Latin America, the Caribbean, like it's a huge place. So the way that the N and that O come out is gonna be different. So when you learn a language, you're also learning the accent. So for a character like what you're describing, Emma, like that person's gonna shift into the accent for the language that they're speaking, which is why if it's something they've been raised with, if it's something they have a lot of experience in and maybe a particular talent.
That's why you would find somebody who perhaps speaks, you know, maybe they're from the UK, but like their family also speaks, you know, Spanish from, let's say, Guatemala. When they speak Spanish, that's what their Spanish is gonna sound like, because that's how they learned how to speak Spanish versus a person from the UK learning how to speak Spanish a long time later, unless they have a talent for accents as well. In such a case, then, you know, maybe their Spanish isn't gonna necessarily reflect where they were born and raised.
Jack Shilkaitis (15:31)
Mm-hmm.
Emma Alisyn (15:49)
So is it helpful if the author like if the author would like hunt down on YouTube like a native French speaker who also speaks Kikuyu or English and then sends you that so you're like I think it sounds like this? Is that helpful to the narrator or do you kind of want to just make it up?
Ruthie Bowles (16:04)
It can, it can be,
it can be helpful. And I would usually probably resort to that kind of thing. Like if we're talking about a character's voice and like maybe what I've presented as an example. So me personally, as a narrator for any character that talks more than like three times, I'm gonna send you a sample for that character's voice because I don't wanna have to go back and like re-record it if.
once we're all done, you're like, actually, this character voice is wrong. So I'm sending you character samples for the characters. So if we're going back and forth about a character, then I will usually start to pull samples and see what I can find online to see kind of what's going on. But yeah, so most of the time, like I said, using myself as an example, when I'm speaking English, this is for the most part how I sound, except, except.
if I'm kind of floating with various subgroups in English, then my voice will change. So right now, I'm just kind of using something that's pretty neutral. But depending on who I'm with and who's talking, my voice can slip and slide and go into a lot of different places to reflect the group that I'm in. And so that's kind of how I imagine, that's how I imagine that character, honestly.
Jack Shilkaitis (17:06)
Right,
right. There's a lot to think about there. Like I'm just imagining a situation where you have a character who is to add another layer of complexity to it, who maybe is speaking English, but they are speaking it with, gosh, no yeah, I can't, like there's so many layers of that that as an author, I haven't had to think about, but no, that's a great tip. ⁓ For those who are...
Ruthie Bowles (17:28)
Thank you.
Jack Shilkaitis (17:30)
thinking to just have that in mind. That's part of your world building and stuff you can do at that stage too, I imagine as well. So yeah, all right. My tip for today, this actually is something that came through author support this week. And I answered this question for somebody and that is delivering a subscription model with BookFunnel. And how exactly do you do that? Because for those who are familiar with BookFunnel direct sales, the way that our direct sales delivery works is you...
Ruthie Bowles (17:34)
Mm-hmm. Yes.
Jack Shilkaitis (17:56)
is pretty familiar with it. We'll get to that in a little bit. The way that works is you create a product in your store that's connected to BookFunnel. That product also exists in BookFunnel. You have your book uploaded there and everything, and you have a delivery action associated with it. And then when that product sells in your store, that triggers the delivery action. BookFunnel delivers the book. But subscriptions don't really work that way on most platforms, and they don't trigger BookFunnel delivery actions. So what do you do?
When you want to do a subscription model There's a few things obviously you can still sell subscriptions through your sales platform Shopify or what have you whatever you happen to be using Go ahead and set that up like you normally would just know that that subscription is not going to trigger a book funnel delivery action What's ideal is if you can connect your sales platform actually to your mailing list service?
and have your mailing list service also connected to BookFunnel. And it can kind of act like a bridge in this case to be used with a BookFunnel restricted landing page. So BookFunnel restricted landing page requires the reader to confirm that there's a subscriber on your mailing list before they can get the book. Basically, to give a quick explanation, let's say you're using Shopify and MailerLite. Just for example, you have Shopify and MailerLite connected to each other.
You might even have BookFunnel and Shopify connected, but for the purpose of this subscription model, we're going to assume that that doesn't really matter. Somebody purchases your subscription or signs up for your subscription. You just need to have Shopify tell MailerLite, add this person's email to this group in MailerLite. And then...
trigger an automation sequence to send them a delivery email. That delivery email can contain the link to a book funnel restricted page and that restricted page is connected to that same list. So you're essentially delivering the content in that way. Right now for subsequent releases, like if you have an audit, like a monthly or annual subscription, but you want your new releases to go out to those subscribers as well for that bulk delivery is probably what I would recommend because it's super simple. You could use restricted pages to
But somebody came in through the author queue this week with this question and it was something that we don't always get, but it's one of those things that we want. There is a solution for it and we want people to know that it's kind of similar to we do have an integration with Patreon. So if you use Patreon as your subscription service, you use that with restricted pages. It works really well for that. It's kind of the same. You're kind of just duplicating that same process. But I highly recommend you connect your mailing list service.
to your sales platform and use that one to connect to BookFunnel because then it makes the use of those restricted pages a lot smoother. Otherwise, you're having to rely on something like download pages, which any link can be shared. It's the internet, guys. In case you didn't know, you can copy and paste anything on the internet, but download pages that aren't restricted pages don't do that verification step like the restricted page does. anyway, kind of a little obscure and...
Ruthie Bowles (20:46)
Mm-hmm.
Jack Shilkaitis (20:50)
Not necessarily something everybody's trying to do. But if you are, it can be done. yeah. Now you're thinking about it, like, hey, maybe I should start a subscription, right? Especially with Fourthwall, too. You said you use Fourthwall, Ruthie, as well? And I think their subscriptions are pretty easy to set up and pretty slick, Fourthwall is a pretty impressive platform. We might have to pick your brain on that ⁓ at some point. Yeah.
Ruthie Bowles (20:55)
Hmm.
Maybe. ⁓
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep.
Yeah, that's what it looks like.
I've liked this so far.
Jack Shilkaitis (21:17)
Yeah, we can get into that here.
Ruthie Bowles (21:17)
Yeah. Okay.
Jack Shilkaitis (21:20)
We're going to shift to our main topic, though. Today, we're obviously we have Ruthie here, an audiobook narrator. kind of and we've kind of already gotten to it with your tip here. We want to get a feel, especially for those in the audience who have never worked with a narrator before. I like what some of the expectations could be. So we have plenty of questions there for you. But first, kind of want to get your origin story.
how you became a narrator, how you got into the audiobook narration and that sort of thing.
Ruthie Bowles (21:48)
Okay, so it's important to state, I actually didn't have any performance experience. I was a marketing consultant before I became an audiobook narrator, and I was in the US Army before I became a marketing consultant. To be fair, the only pattern there really is I also didn't have any marketing experience, and yet I did that pretty successfully for five years before I decided I wanted to do something else.
I recorded a book for fun off of ACX, the Amazon Creative Exchange, acx.com. I created a profile on there because I read a blog post that was like, get paid to read 10 ways. And I was like, nine of these ways are probably trash. And I was right. But I found, I created a profile. I auditioned for one book, never expected to hear back from that author ever again in 2019. And she came back and was like, oh my gosh, you're so great. Yes, please.
So I did perform that book. I narrated it. It went up in 2019 and I was like, that's cool. But I was still marketing consultant. And so it wasn't until 2022 when like my kids went back to school and my husband went back to work. Cause that's what kept me from doing the next book in the series was everybody was home and up under me and I didn't have this nice fancy booth that I have now. And I was like, you know, I'm gonna see if I can find more authors who are willing.
Jack Shilkaitis (22:52)
Mm-hmm.
Sure.
Ruthie Bowles (23:03)
to let me narrate their books. And if I do find them, then I will keep doing this. And I sent my first audition on January 1st, 2022, because I made the commitment on New Year's Eve of 2021. And here we are in 2025. I have continued to find people. I kind of went into it knowing that, you know, I will learn what I need to learn. I will change the wheels on this car as it's moving.
Jack Shilkaitis (23:17)
Hooray!
Ruthie Bowles (23:26)
I know that means I'm gonna make some mistakes and I did, but I've continued to find authors and I guess the authors find me now. But I just, you know, I worked on my skills. I was kind of like, you know, I love to read. I've always loved to read as a kid. I love to read. And my husband tells me pretty much every day how dramatic I am. And he doesn't always say it like it's a good thing, but perhaps it can be a good thing in this case. And so that's what I went into this.
hoping for and like Emma was one of the authors that I connected with that very first year, I think within like the first six months. And that's how it's been. And now I get to, I've had very steady streams of work and authors keep coming back and I've met readers at events and all types of stuff. It's still every day kind of beyond my wildest dreams that like, I grew up kind of rough a little bit and now
I get paid to not just read books, but perform them. And that's just absolutely astounding to me.
Jack Shilkaitis (24:21)
All right. I'd be curious to know if that's the way a lot of narrators get started, like just that interest in reading. And then...
Ruthie Bowles (24:28)
I think so. Some
of us have performance backgrounds, right? And then they also have an interest in reading, but some of us don't. And we're just like, you know, let's see. Cause that is a big thing. Like by the time I'm done with an audio book, I've probably read your book at least three or four times. you should like it.
Jack Shilkaitis (24:31)
Sure.
Right, right,
right, right. And it's a different kind of performance. For acting, you're relying so much on body language, visual cues, and here, it's almost like radio. You're relying entirely on your voice in order to communicate sometimes very.
complex emotions and ideas. So I imagine there's a challenge to that. Maybe, I don't know. Do you think it was to your benefit that you didn't have a previous performance background? So this was kind of like, you learned it that way the first time around or I don't know.
Ruthie Bowles (25:16)
Yeah,
think in a way, in some cases, it's been helpful because I haven't had, I don't have that expectation that people will be able to see me. And then I just kind of knew, know, just natural talents being what they are. If my voice doesn't, you know, absolutely drive you insane, it's pretty expressive. And I have a naturally, you know, wide range for my speaking voice. And yeah, so I think that...
I'm very visual, like as I'm performing, like I'm visualizing what's happening, the same as when I'm reading. And so for me, I think that that kind of helps it come out in my voice because I'm actively imagining what's happening. But I think that for people who have that experience of that visual acting, it could be a hurdle. Now that makes me want to take this back to the group chat and find out.
Jack Shilkaitis (25:58)
Sure.
Yeah,
or even like even like voice acting, I think would also be different because you still have the expectation that the eventually your voice is going to be paired with something visual. So, yeah, that's that's a it's a totally it's its own thing. Emma, I really like the fact that Emma has worked with you in the past, and I want to kind of get like perspective from both of you on what it was what it was like working with each other on that.
Ruthie Bowles (26:06)
It is.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Jack Shilkaitis (26:30)
Obviously, Ruthie, was like early on, sounds like in your narration career. So what how how difficult was Emma to work with as an author? Was she like?
Emma Alisyn (26:41)
There is
no story behind that Jack, because I threw the manuscript at her and walked away. It was like, do your thang. ⁓
Jack Shilkaitis (26:44)
Hahaha
Yeah, I'm just razzin'.
Ruthie Bowles (26:48)
Look, I was like, yeah,
Jack Shilkaitis (26:49)
I'm just razzin'.
Ruthie Bowles (26:50)
she answered my questions, but basically was like, here you go. And I was like, my gosh, I get to just do this? Okay. But I'm actually really looking forward to working with her again, because I'm like, Emma, I want to show you everything that I've learned since then. I am so good now.
Jack Shilkaitis (27:04)
Mm-hmm.
Emma Alisyn (27:06)
idea
what I was doing. I had no idea what I was doing and I feel really bad now because I was... Jack, you know I was self-narrating one of my books because I'm gonna get into self-narration for some of my shorter pieces and I was realizing as I was narrating, I did Ruthie wrong because language and words you choose on the page that sound really nice are to narrate and I'm like...
Jack Shilkaitis (27:15)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Emma Alisyn (27:30)
I'm gonna start using contractions more. For one.
Jack Shilkaitis (27:33)
Mm-hmm.
Ruthie Bowles (27:33)
And she sent me an email about that. And I was like, wow,
that's weird that she said, but yeah, authors don't realize that like, it's not so noticeable the contraction or lack thereof is not always so noticeable in like the non-dialogue text. But once you start hitting characters that are like angry or mad and they're just like, I cannot, you know, versus I can't, it does make a difference.
Jack Shilkaitis (27:39)
Yeah.
Right?
Right. Right. Or you'd have to be... ⁓ go ahead. I'm sorry. I was gonna say, or you'd have to be consistent. Like, maybe there's certain characters that never use contractions, but there's certain ones who do. That's one thing I know I've done in the past. Like, this character does not use contractions intentionally. But yeah.
Emma Alisyn (27:58)
guess than that. No go ahead Jack.
Ruthie Bowles (28:04)
Yes.
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I feel like in Emma's book, Renaud would probably not use contractions, but he's old as dirt, so I don't...
Emma Alisyn (28:17)
No, doesn't. Yeah,
and walking class B personality disorder, so we won't go-
Jack Shilkaitis (28:19)
When you and you probably get a feel for that ⁓
Emma Alisyn (28:24)
He's gonna be interesting in the second edition to narrate. just, I'm gonna tell you that. But my question was, cause I know a lot of authors probably wanna know, when you're in the writing phase or maybe in the revision phase and you know you want to get this book in editing, what can you do as a writer, like keeping that? Cause like, I'll write with like social media in mind. Let me make sure I.
put in some nice snippets in here. But so if I know I'm going to get the book narrated, what can I keep in mind as I'm writing to kind of make that process easier for the narrator?
Ruthie Bowles (28:58)
Well, yeah, so depending on what it is that you're writing. So like if your genre has like world building and stuff, the series Bible or the book Bible, those things are outrageously valuable, especially if, you know, if we're gonna be narrating a whole series together, let's say it's got, you know, three, four, five books in it, and I'm only reading book one because you haven't published books two and three yet.
it's helpful to know like, this character, doesn't come out until book three, like their big secret, but because of this big secret, they need to sound this way. They need to sound as if they're from this place, even though we haven't explained that they're from that type of place. I had that happen with a book once and it was my bad, cause I didn't ask and I rerecorded that character's stuff. But yeah, it was a secret that showed up in book two that I had no way of knowing cause book two wasn't out yet.
And so those series Bibles, character profiles and things, like sometimes authors make those for social media just to like share like, know, screenshots of them or whatever. But they're actually really valuable because again, like you may not remember everything that you had in mind when you were writing it, but now it's on the page and there it is. whether you remember or not, you're gonna have to, somebody's gonna have to make a decision about, you know, how these characters sound. And it's not always accents, sometimes it's.
If you've got non-human characters in your book, then you may want them to sound a particular way or you envision them sounding a particular way, whether it's dragons, demons, know, monsters from the deep or whatever it's gonna be. And then there's monster romance. So like those things intersect, you know, all over the place. But yeah, the series Bibles, the book Bibles are probably some of the most valuable things that you can kind of build as you're going, especially for those details where you're like...
You know, when you guys are writing and you're like, ooh, this is gonna be so good. What an Easter egg for three books from now. Yeah, I need to know that.
Jack Shilkaitis (30:43)
Yeah, yeah, I could definitely, I could definitely see that. You're right.
Ruthie Bowles (30:47)
You don't even have to spoil it for me. It's fine. Just say,
Ruthie, say this line with extra foreboding and move on. And I'll be like, okay.
Jack Shilkaitis (30:54)
Right.
Emma Alisyn (30:55)
So in terms of world building, because I'm thinking about the series I'm going to do, if you have like two groups or two cultures that have a long negative history, I'm guessing then as a narrator, if you know that, you'll know that anybody who's had in a conversation from these two cultures, it's gonna, there's gonna be some subtext there, even if it's not immediately applicable applicable to that conversation. So like tell me that
Ruthie Bowles (31:14)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Emma Alisyn (31:19)
They're from warring houses or something, because that's going to change how they talk to each other.
Ruthie Bowles (31:23)
it's gonna change how they talk to each other and it's gonna change how they talk about each other. Because even if it's not like immediately nasty, right? Like let's say we're dealing with like some diplomats or whatever, the diplomats, there's still gonna be some subtext there if like, just because I'm putting on my nice face doesn't mean that I actually want to be nice to you. So there's still gonna be something there. And it's very possible that you would have written that out. So I'll know like, subtext, got it. But if you don't, for some reason, having it in your book Bible or series Bible will be really helpful.
Jack Shilkaitis (31:27)
Mm-hmm.
Ruthie Bowles (31:51)
And you don't wanna have to try to make one just because I asked for it. That's the other thing.
Jack Shilkaitis (31:56)
Yeah,
I could see emotion probably being the key there for a lot of like whether it again it's subtext or what have you and even different characters like having Like they have a personality and I imagine sometimes you can probably get the gist of that just by reading the especially strong characters I would imagine Secondary characters are probably a little bit easier because authors tend to write secondary characters with more emotional complexity than primary characters. That's just my
inner editor coming out. But but yeah, like this person is like angry all the time. And you need to understand that when you're delivering any other lines, like, you should probably, you know, pretend like you, you know, woke up with a hangover or something like that. Like, those are the kind of details you'd want to you'd want to have that you're not necessarily going to include in the book itself, but can add a lot to the experience of the the audiobook for the reader. Yeah, yeah.
Ruthie Bowles (32:45)
Right.
for sure.
Jack Shilkaitis (32:50)
That makes sense.
Emma Alisyn (32:51)
If you are an author and you don't have any audiobooks but you want audiobooks, when would you say is the right time to pull the trigger on that? When should you do your first audiobook?
Jack Shilkaitis (33:01)
Mmm.
Ruthie Bowles (33:02)
So I would say it's probably gonna be different for authors across the board just because of things like genre and genre also indicating like length, right? Not always, of course, but we do understand there are certain like genre expectations, right, in terms of how long or short like books might be. Like if it's, you guys correct me if I'm wrong, but like it seems like.
dependencies, exceptions being what they are. Contemporary romances are often shorter than fantasy romances, but sometimes that's not the case. Of course, know, Emma had, you know, over a hundred thousand words sitting on her heart, you know, and now we have to rewrite a book. So that's like always a factor, right? Cause somebody who's writing shorter books could probably start in on audiobooks because the cost is going to be less.
Jack Shilkaitis (33:32)
Mm-hmm.
Ruthie Bowles (33:47)
Than somebody who has been you know, who's going to be writing longer books. And so if your books are a bit longer I guess regardless length regardless it can help you if you kind of feel like you've gotten a proven concept is making audiobooks for your series going to Expand its reach and therefore generate more income for you because obviously it is a bit of an investment
Or is it gonna be something where you're like, I had planned five books for this series, but it's not, you know, I'm not getting the readership that I wanted. So I'm actually gonna keep it to three. And then that might mean that you won't feel invested enough to make, like if you made the first audio book in this series that was supposed to have five books is now gonna only have three, are you going to make books two and three? And everybody comes to audio books for different reasons. Some people are like, you know what, I, you know.
I just, want the audiobooks because I listen to audiobooks and I love audiobooks. I want to hear Ruthie narrate my book. Okay, fine, here, that's what we're doing. Like I want you to hear it too, great. But some people it's like, know, just from an accessibility standpoint, they want to make sure that their books are able to be found in those ways. You know, some books take off with the first couple of books in a series, but maybe it's the third book that really puts you on the map. And now you feel like, okay, yeah, I'm ready to make audiobooks.
Jack Shilkaitis (34:45)
Mm-hmm.
Ruthie Bowles (34:57)
It's a very business dependent reason and not everybody has the same reasons for coming to audiobooks. And now if you're looking at from a financial perspective specifically, then I would recommend having a proven concept. Like is your marketing machine, is it well oiled and going? Do you have all those touch points that you wanna have and your systems are set up? Your readership base, your arc readers, do you have an audience for audio? Because.
Some of your current audience may also listen to audio, but it is somewhat of a different market. They're Venn diagrams. They're not over, like it's not a circle. It is a true Venn diagram. And so you're gonna be able to reach new people, but do you have a plan for reaching those new people?
Jack Shilkaitis (35:32)
Right.
Yeah, no, it's interesting because there's a similar concept with social media which is that if you're building up like say a social media platform on YouTube let's say and then you want to turn around and be like, okay now I want to build a profile on TikTok, right? You're starting from scratch there. It's like a new audience and that what you said there makes sense because yeah, there's gonna be a portion of your audience that will dabble in both.
Ruthie Bowles (35:43)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Jack Shilkaitis (36:01)
But if your sales are primarily, and I guess this would probably apply to print as well too, right? You're gonna have readers who are gonna prefer one method over the other. And if you're switching to audio, yeah, that's a big consideration. have to like, I can see where the business side of things kind of takes over. And you have, it's a business decision at the end of the day.
Emma Alisyn (36:07)
Mm-hmm.
Ruthie Bowles (36:19)
Yeah.
It is, it is. And if you have the funds to have your audiobook made, then maybe that first audiobook is how you learn those things and how you acquire those systems. But it just depends on if you have the capital available to make that type of investment and be committed to being like, okay, I want my audiobook to be a viable stream of revenue as well as my print and my eBooks. So I'm going to go ahead and use this audiobook to learn how to market.
Jack Shilkaitis (36:28)
Yeah.
Ruthie Bowles (36:46)
audiobooks and to connect with this new audience and you know like events events are a new space for me in terms of selling audiobooks, but I did sell some so now I want to sell more it's it's great you know and it's but it is different and and it's getting people to kind of know that they can come to you for that especially in the current environment where most readers do not expect indie authors to have audiobooks and so they may not even ask and they may not even look
Jack Shilkaitis (36:47)
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Right, right, right, exactly. Because I mean, a lot of the audiobook listeners out there are probably, they're probably using Audible, right? Or they're probably in one sphere or the other, right? Spotify, and so they have different ecosystems that they're probably, and so the first place they're gonna look is in that ecosystem. So as an indie, it's not to say like, there's indies out there who are killing it with audio and ebooks, and they're doing great.
Emma Alisyn (37:12)
you
Spotify is a big one,
Ruthie Bowles (37:24)
Mm-hmm. Yes.
Yes, yes.
Jack Shilkaitis (37:36)
And I think one of the direct sales is a big piece of that, if I'm being honest, because it gives you so much control over the process that running Facebook ads to your own website to sell your own books makes a whole lot more sense for a lot of authors, I think, than running those ads just to Amazon and letting them take a big chunk of the money.
Ruthie Bowles (37:41)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Jack Shilkaitis (37:57)
So if you're if what would be your advice then for somebody who's like, Okay, yeah, this is I'm doing this. I'm learning. This is my first audio book, and I'm going to learn the ropes as I go. Assuming that you've got the capital investment, right? What would be your advice then for for going in there? What are what are some of the best ways to then market that audio book or find that audience?
Ruthie Bowles (38:10)
Mm-hmm.
Well, so first, every single thing that you ever do whenever you mention this book in the future needs to include the fact that you have audio. And if you are exclusive to Audible, like I'm not judging you, they give you 40 % of the royalties if you're exclusive and they give you 25 % if you're not. So like, I'm not judging you.
But if you're exclusive to Audible, then say that. Say that the book is available on Audible. But if you're wide, then say that. And you don't have to say every single place you can find it, because wide means a lot of places. But say the big ones. Is it available on Kobo? Is it in Kobo Plus? Is it also on Audible? And then you've got like Libro FM is one that we get some good listens from. And then also Spotify is another one. So just say, have those few in there. But you want to make sure that it's available, because if I'm a reader and I click on the post and I see.
Then I'm like, okay, I'm definitely checking out your link in bio. And again, as you said, if you have the ecosystems that I use, then I'm way more likely to be like, okay, she said Kobo Plus, let me go over there because I have a Kobo Plus subscription and I will listen to it there. And so that's like probably one of my top things is that authors forget all of the time to mention that they have an audio book, period. And every single post, every single email, whatever it is that you're sending,
Jack Shilkaitis (39:14)
Right.
Ruthie Bowles (39:30)
is an opportunity for a reader to be the first touch. So you're not always talking to people that have seen you before, right? So they don't just know that you have an audio book. And like I said, they're not gonna check. And if you're not mentioning it, then they may not ever know for quite some time. So that's like my top thing. Every single thing that you do now should include the fact that this book.
has an audio version. Make that very apparent because depending on what type of post you're doing, your TikTok videos, your YouTube videos, like we knew YouTube videos came up in search results, but TikTok videos come up too. So if TikTok is a big platform for you, they'll come up. Instagram Reels will come up in Google search results as well. So like if you're doing a video and that's in there, it's in the caption, I can see that you have an audio book, then maybe I found you from Google and I wasn't even on Instagram originally or TikTok. So you always wanna make sure that you're mentioning it.
Jack Shilkaitis (39:59)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Ruthie Bowles (40:16)
Any of your collaborations that you do, you wanna make sure that they're mentioning it when you're posting in event groups because you're going to an event, make sure that you're mentioning it. But it's really just getting into that habit. Like it's just like how people will say, and you can find the ebook on Kindle Unlimited or wherever it is that you can find it, right? Maybe you're not on Kindle Unlimited. Maybe you're on Kobo Plus as well, right? For your ebook, make sure you're saying that you have audio and a few places where they can find it.
Jack Shilkaitis (40:39)
Right, right. And then I imagine there's some of the same kind of principles that apply with like ebooks with you have reader magnets, you have with with audio, I know that you have like free samples, a lot of that's kind of built into some of those ecosystems. So people can like sample the first chapter the first five minutes or whatever the case may be.
Ruthie Bowles (40:53)
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Yes.
Jack Shilkaitis (40:58)
And you see a lot of authors having success with trying to replicate that reader magnet model with ebooks in audio as well, like having an audio magnet or something like that. Or is it more like you just need to find them on the on the platform that they're on and just kind of be in all those places or be dedicated to one platform and just hope they find you there.
Ruthie Bowles (41:20)
So I have found for myself, so I actually have, and I deliver these via book funnel, but I have some short stories that I've written that the readers get. Whoever signs up for my newsletter, they get them. And it's like, you can get the e-book versions, but people aren't coming to me because they want an e-book. They're coming to me because they want audio. And so I have found that successful for myself. But I've cultivated an audience of audio people. ⁓ So I think...
Jack Shilkaitis (41:43)
Mm-hmm.
Ruthie Bowles (41:44)
that if I'm just spitballing here, which I am, I would say that that would probably actually work out pretty well once you started to pull those audio listeners to you because you have now a dedicated segment of your audience that would really want that versus creating some type of audio magnet and trying to attract people to it for that particular reason. ⁓ But you know, it's anybody's game right now. Audio is still just very Wild Wild West.
Jack Shilkaitis (41:54)
Yeah.
Sure.
Ruthie Bowles (42:11)
I would say, so expectations aren't ironclad at all. But again, it's one of those things, if you have as a magnet, the first few chapters of your book and you've already created the audio for that, why not offer those same chapters in audio as part of it and make sure that you're marketing it that way. So really, if you've already got it made, then it's a small duplication of efforts there. But again, if you're using a platform like BookFunnel, then those things can be delivered and it's delivered automatically. You don't have to.
Jack Shilkaitis (42:12)
Right.
Right.
Ruthie Bowles (42:39)
touch it or do it again or do anything with it. So it could be a good way to kind of test those things out.
Jack Shilkaitis (42:43)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Emma Alisyn (42:44)
Now you mentioned
YouTube briefly and that's been on my mind because I had an idea to start putting some self-narrated pieces experimental. We're calling them author readings not audiobooks so we can adjust expectations. Do you feel like YouTube is maybe a missed marketing opportunity for authors? I think I've seen like three and I've listened to them on YouTube and then got went and bought the ebook version and I'm sitting here thinking why don't more authors
Jack Shilkaitis (42:48)
Mmm.
Emma Alisyn (43:11)
audiobooks on YouTube.
Ruthie Bowles (43:12)
So for a lot of them, in terms of the whole audio book, if they don't have an audience yet that's positioned them so that way they can generate ad revenue or something like that from that perspective, then for them, they're kind of like, I'm putting this up for free and I'm nothing for it, right? ⁓ But in terms of readings or samples,
Jack Shilkaitis (43:27)
Mm-hmm.
Ruthie Bowles (43:31)
I do think that is a missed opportunity and I credit my success, at least a good chunk of it, as an audiobook narrator to the fact that I got over any qualms I had about talking to people via social media, recording videos and stuff. I got over that years ago as a marketing person. But for a lot of authors and like a lot of narrators, this is their first time, their first go-round, being self-employed and having to use social media as a means to market in some shape, or another. And so they aren't yet over
the nervousness or the fear or they're like, you nobody wants to hear me do that. And so for anybody who does feel that way, I'm kind of like, it's not gonna kill you, right? Like the reason why we don't do those things is because it's some amorphous fear that we don't identify in our minds. But when it comes down to it, why aren't you doing this? You're not doing this because you think nobody will watch, nobody will listen, okay, and?
Jack Shilkaitis (44:10)
Hahaha.
Ruthie Bowles (44:23)
Like if you don't make it, they're definitely not listening or watching. And then if they truly don't, at least you have a data point now and you can iterate or you can decide you really hated it and you don't wanna do it anymore. But when you're sitting on the cusp of what if, and then you turn around, all of those possibilities go up in smoke, right? You have to make a decision and move forward. Like it's not gonna kill you and it's not gonna hurt you. The worst that'll happen is that nobody will see it.
Jack Shilkaitis (44:25)
Right.
Emma Alisyn (44:27)
True.
Jack Shilkaitis (44:41)
Mm-hmm.
Ruthie Bowles (44:47)
that's the worst that will happen. Nobody's gonna come to your door and be like, that was awful. I want you to pay me now because I listened to that. Like that's not happening, right? So.
Jack Shilkaitis (44:53)
Right. Right.
Emma Alisyn (44:55)
Man, all
of that is how I feel about TikTok.
Jack Shilkaitis (44:58)
Yeah,
yeah, no, it's interesting because there's actually there's a few authors I know who are like from what I can tell just doing some research on them and there's one of them that I actually want to ask to have on as a guest on the podcast, but they their content comes out on YouTube first in usually hour-long short audiobooks like at least an hour and as someone who myself has found some
Ruthie Bowles (45:16)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Jack Shilkaitis (45:25)
public domain audiobooks that I wanted to listen to on YouTube, there's an audience there that's looking for audiobooks on YouTube. So I think the idea would be, the most optimistic idea is like maybe it's some element of discoverability. can put up, I think from what I've seen is like as long as it's an hour long, you're gonna get people to buy in that there's enough value there for their time. You'd be like, okay, I'll listen to this, right?
Ruthie Bowles (45:28)
Mm hmm. Yeah.
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Jack Shilkaitis (45:51)
If it's less than an hour, maybe hit or miss, but if it's at least an hour long, it's something that's gonna be worth my time and I can check it out. But then it's like any other social media platform, and it's like either you've gotta be, in most cases, driving traffic there yourself, or you've gotta be trying to work with the algorithm. And I think the YouTube audiobooks algorithm, I don't know it inside and out. I'm sure there are authors there who know how to work it.
It's not maybe not easy just at face value to like realize like what how you would navigate that. Which is interesting that there's authors who seem to be doing YouTube first for their audio books, which is just interesting to me. I don't know if that's something that you've encountered because I don't know how common that is. But. Yeah.
Ruthie Bowles (46:30)
Mm-hmm.
I don't think it's super common just
because a lot of people who come to YouTube aren't necessarily expecting to listen. They're expecting to watch something. But like, mean, all of our samples for the website, for each book that we have for sale are hosted on YouTube. And they're all public. And the idea, of course, is that if anybody searches, you know, like our current...
Jack Shilkaitis (46:43)
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Ruthie Bowles (47:01)
that's on pre-orders, Blood and Brujas. Like if somebody searches that up, like Blood and Brujas audiobook, I'm hoping that Google will serve them up that sample in their search results because it's on YouTube and there's a link to go and buy the book. So maybe that wasn't what they were looking for, but they know it exists now at a minimum.
Jack Shilkaitis (47:08)
Right, right.
Ruthie Bowles (47:18)
and multiple touch points being what they are, like if that's one touch point among many, if that's what they're searching for, then that may cause them to go and look and see like, yeah, okay, it's on Audible and I have an Audible credit, so I'm gonna go ahead and get it or Kobo or Spotify or wherever it is that they end up falling next when they go look for it.
Jack Shilkaitis (47:18)
Yeah.
Right, and there's probably different, I know TikTok is experimenting with some long form video too, which might be worth looking into because TikTok is more of a discoverability platform than YouTube is, so maybe that's a future development, but no, I think you're right. People go there to watch stuff as opposed to listen. you know, but it can, right, it's still discoverable.
Ruthie Bowles (47:40)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yeah.
But you, like people can find folks on there. You know, like you can find
your people, but like you want, it's not an easy fix. YouTube is not a new platform. It's sophisticated now. And it's kind of like how TikTok, like TikTok in 2020 is different than TikTok in 2025. It's a lot more sophisticated now. And so you've got to learn more in order to make that platform work for you. so this isn't, I think I can say for all of us, like this isn't anybody saying you couldn't find an audience on YouTube. That's not it.
Jack Shilkaitis (48:00)
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
No.
Ruthie Bowles (48:21)
But you're probably gonna have to do some work and be willing to experiment to see what's gonna work and to decide, do you want to do this level of work to make this platform work for you?
Jack Shilkaitis (48:30)
Right.
And it might be different doing it on a social media platform than than trying to do it the more traditional way on a an ecosystem like audible, right, where there's different expectations and that sort of thing. Absolutely. So I wanted to ask you to about because you use BookFunnel to distribute some audiobooks. Right. So tell our audience about how I guess how you're using BookFunnel. We've obviously had audiobooks.
Ruthie Bowles (48:39)
Mm-hmm.
Jack Shilkaitis (48:54)
the feature's been around for a while. It was in beta for a long time. And now it's fully released, but how are you using that as a narrator and so forth?
Ruthie Bowles (49:04)
Yeah, so I was using BookFunnel for myself for quite some time, like when I was able to still do just like the short audios, and that was what I was talking about before. I would write little short pieces, I would narrate them, and then I was developing an email list. So that would be part of what you got when you subscribed to my newsletters. You get these few short stories, ebook and audiobook, have fun. And then it started percolating in my mind. I was doing royalty share with some of my authors, like royalty share plus and stuff like that.
Jack Shilkaitis (49:12)
Mm-hmm.
Ruthie Bowles (49:32)
and we were exclusive to Audible and it had been percolating in my mind since I got started. But it was in 2023 in like November, I was like, hey, BookFunnel, like we could potentially use BookFunnel to host the audiobooks, right? Cause you guys were rolling it out and I was starting to see it and I was like, ooh, that's looking good. And I already like BookFunnel. So I put together like a business proposal. I asked my authors if they'd be interested. They said, yes, I put together a proposal.
They gave me feedback, we like went back and forth and know, notes and stuff like that. And then I put, you know, I got a contract made and me and a bunch of my authors, we leapt off of the platform. so that started in like November, December of 2023. And we started publishing audio books in August, the very end of August going in September of 2024.
And it was because I was able to use like the the smallest amount I ended up upgrading my account from an individual to like your teeniest publisher Because you could have like ten pen names under that one and then that was like an add-on with the audio and And that is how we started doing it and originally I was hooked up to pay hip and and that works seamlessly and that's like been my favorite part is like somebody buys from the shop
Jack Shilkaitis (50:27)
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Ruthie Bowles (50:44)
Book Funnel sends it to them. I followed all of your guys' instructions. This is not a paid advertising. I promise for anybody who's hearing this, but I followed the instructions and I haven't had a problem. And I point everybody, like, if you have any trouble, like here's the email that Book Funnel told me to share with everybody. And so that's what I do. I share it with everybody. And then I saw that fourth wall. lot of my author friends have been talking about fourth wall. And I was like, ooh, that would be nice, but you know what? I can't do it because
Jack Shilkaitis (50:55)
Hahaha
Emma Alisyn (50:56)
you
Ruthie Bowles (51:12)
They're not integrated with BookFunnels, so nope, it was a non-starter. But as soon as that email came from BookFunnels, like, hey, we have an integration with 4th Wall now. I was like, you know. So then it was like, okay, we can start looking at moving over, and then we were, you know, just launched like some merch and everything. So it would be nice to have it all in one place. And so I migrated everything over. was like, you need to migrate sooner rather than later, because the only thing you're gonna do is publish more audio books, and then this work is gonna be so much harder later.
Jack Shilkaitis (51:31)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Ruthie Bowles (51:40)
So I moved everything over into Fourthwall and I actually really like the integration between BookFunnel and Fourthwall. I create the product in Fourthwall and then I can find it in BookFunnel, which wasn't necessarily the way that it was set up for Payhip. So I really like that in terms of ease and I'm not at risk of selecting the same product more than once because y'all keep track of that. Like I'm just like, this is so great. But yeah, so it's been a really smooth experience. People buy on the website and...
Jack Shilkaitis (51:52)
Mm-hmm.
Emma Alisyn (51:57)
you
Ruthie Bowles (52:06)
and then it gets delivered via BookFunnel. And this is actually my first time running a pre-order for a book that we're direct selling first. It's always available exclusively on the website for a week, but we've had it up for pre-order for a couple of weeks. And BookFunnel sent me an email being like, hey, don't forget to double check and lock your files. And I was like, okay, I'll do that. Thank you very much. And now we're just waiting for those files to be delivered on the 27th. So it's been a really smooth experience for me.
Jack Shilkaitis (52:14)
Mm-hmm.
Right?
Excellent.
Ruthie Bowles (52:32)
I needed somebody I could rely on. And so for me, was kind of like having already used BookFunnel for other aspects of my business. I was like, you know what, these people really show up. Like they respond to their emails. They're real people when they respond to their emails. And I was like, if I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna be responsible for other people's, right? Other people's audio books.
I wanna make sure that I'm doing it on an infrastructure that's genuinely gonna be supportive, that I can grow with so you guys have really good expansion options for when I need to make the next steps up. And so those were all factors in the decision to do it because I needed, again, in my proposal draft, I needed to kind of explain how I was gonna deliver these, how they were gonna be reliable, secure. And so yeah, that was.
Jack Shilkaitis (53:14)
Yeah.
Ruthie Bowles (53:14)
Like
I said, I'll just say it one more time, this was not a paid ad. I did not plan to come on here and gush to book funnel, but it's true.
Emma Alisyn (53:18)
Ha!
Jack Shilkaitis (53:21)
If you're gonna do
it, this is the place to do it though, right? So, but no, that's awesome.
Ruthie Bowles (53:24)
It is.
Emma Alisyn (53:25)
Now I do have a
question though, because authors will come in queue asking about how to restrict the audio to the BookFunnel app. And I want to tell them so bad, just let them download the files. But people are afraid of file sharing and all of that. What's, what are your thoughts or your model on that? Do you just let them have the files and go or do you restrict it?
Ruthie Bowles (53:45)
I do restrict it, but that's mostly just because, again, like for me, it's not just my stuff, right? Like in some cases, like some of this intellectual property isn't mine. I'm responsible for it. Some of it, I do own the audio rights for some of the books that I distribute, but.
Emma Alisyn (53:51)
Yeah.
Ruthie Bowles (54:00)
for a good chunk of them, this is not mine. So I tend to favor the more restrictive. But the thing is, when I've talked to people at events about it, I'm like, hey, you listen in book funnel, it's very similar to the audible experience. Or if you're listening in Spotify, it's very similar to the Spotify experience. And so I think what helps in terms of my mind, in terms of rationalizing that, is that the experience isn't all that different from what they would have if they were in audible in terms of the player.
I can't even, like I tried screen recording once, an audible book, not because I was trying to steal it. It was my own voice, first of all, but I wanted to just share a snippet and then I wanted it to look like it was playing in the audible player. I thought that would look cool for social media. And then I played it back and it was mute. Audible said, no. Right? And so it's...
Emma Alisyn (54:31)
Yeah
Jack Shilkaitis (54:46)
Mmm.
Emma Alisyn (54:47)
Wow.
Ruthie Bowles (54:49)
I would say that while I can understand people wanting to have those files, I'm not willing to play around with other people's stuff. ⁓ also piracy, yeah, and piracy is a thing. And I think audiobooks, at least at the moment for the most part, appear harder to pirate. But of course, if I'm letting you download the files, then I imagine it would be pretty easy then.
Jack Shilkaitis (54:58)
Yeah.
Emma Alisyn (54:59)
Yeah, it's different when you're a publisher, yeah.
Jack Shilkaitis (55:13)
Right. Well, there's a difference in different genres too. Where, and we've seen this, where authors in certain genres, there's just an expectation from the readers that they're going to get the files. I think it's more in like science fiction, that sort of thing. So I don't know, maybe the tech savvy readers are like, why can't I just have the files and then I can put them on my dongle over here or whatever they're wanting to do. So I think there's a difference in reader expectations sometimes.
Ruthie Bowles (55:36)
Yeah.
Jack Shilkaitis (55:40)
But there's another thing that for direct sales authors in particular to consider, which is that you potentially and granted, keep in mind this does make it like another layer of complication here if you want to go this step, but you can charge extra for that if you want to.
Emma Alisyn (55:58)
Mmm. Yeah.
Jack Shilkaitis (55:59)
Right. You can charge one
one price for the I mean, this is your audio book. You will have it. It is yours, but it will be just in the book funnel app or cloud reader. And then here's the upgraded price if you want to have those downloadable files. And I think. That might address some of that that concern, because at least you're you're getting compensated for that additional flexibility.
Ruthie Bowles (56:21)
Mm-hmm.
Jack Shilkaitis (56:21)
for
some authors, yeah, the file sharing and the generally what we see with ebooks is same sort of thing with audio books. That yeah, casual file sharing is going to happen. There's nothing that you can really do to prevent it. But at the casual level, you should kind of take it as a compliment. Because like this was great. And I want to share it with you like with a friend or family member or something like that.
obviously blasting it out there on the internet or putting it out there where tons of people can find it, we discourage that we don't want people to do that. But if it's on a small level, like that wouldn't worry too much about like the small potatoes type stuff is generally what we say. ⁓ Obviously, for some authors, especially if you have a large audience, this is a different it's a totally different, you know, situation where we've had authors who like
Ruthie Bowles (56:58)
Mm.
Jack Shilkaitis (57:06)
they're delivering their arcs and they've had arcs that have been pirated before and then because the arc was pirated that hit their launch and their launch was down by like five figures. So that's it has a real impact on some authors but it kind of depends on where you're at. And so it's maybe one of those things where like if you're wanting to get discovered maybe be a little bit more open about it. But then if yeah if you are at the stage you're like
Emma Alisyn (57:13)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ruthie Bowles (57:24)
Mm-hmm.
Jack Shilkaitis (57:33)
you're managing audio distribution for other people, right? Or you are at that stage where, yeah, you can say, no, it's exclusive and you just gotta, you gotta kind of deal with it because you have a lot to lose. And then, then you have the flexibility to do that with BookFunnel is the idea. And that's why we make the features the way we do. It's not one or the other. Like you can kind of, you can kind of, kind of choose what you want to go with in that regard.
Emma Alisyn (57:36)
Yeah.
Ruthie Bowles (57:50)
you do.
Jack Shilkaitis (57:58)
So I know you also mentioned some events that you've been going to, and this is something we've been talking a lot about. So reader events, what have you been doing? Getting yourself out there? we talking about like, you going to the local farmer's market? Or are you going to conventions? What's the scale here?
Ruthie Bowles (58:16)
So yeah, so I've been attending events since 2024 as a narrator. ⁓ I had gone before as like an assistant and stuff just to kind of get an idea of scope. But I started selling audio books in May at my first book convention. Like I've had tables before, I've done panels and stuff. I do all of that stuff.
Jack Shilkaitis (58:23)
Mm-hmm.
Ruthie Bowles (58:42)
But yeah, I sold for the first time in May at Monsteroddica BookCon in Baltimore, Maryland. Had probably about, I think they had 400 readers there. They sold out of their tickets really fast in 2024 when they went up for sale. And so it was a Monster Romance book convention. And yeah, I sold audio books there.
And this is again, I followed the instructions on the Book Funnel website. They're very helpful everyone. And so like I figured out how I could print my codes at home. I designed what I called book cards, like purchase cards, which again, those instructions in Book Funnel. And I really love the Avery matte clear labels.
Jack Shilkaitis (59:18)
Mm-hmm.
Mmm.
Ruthie Bowles (59:27)
because
I designed my card to have a space, a light colored space just for the size of that label, printed them out and I had them printed at Staples, the cards. Single-sided postcards, they were relatively cheap. And then I just stuck those stickers, the code stickers onto the cards. And then in terms of purchasing, I learned in 2024 that it is not sufficient to tell people to go to your website because most people are not gonna do it.
Jack Shilkaitis (59:52)
Yep.
Ruthie Bowles (59:52)
especially if you're, like in my case, I'm an audio book narrator, so I don't have like a print book to give somebody, right? So they're not gonna go to my website. And Ruthie, are you sure? Yes, I am sure. I tried that.
Jack Shilkaitis (59:59)
Right.
And you're not going
to burn CDs and hassle with that, right?
Ruthie Bowles (1:00:05)
Right, I'm not burning CDs, we are not going back in time. My children
would be like, what are those? Is it a frisbee? No, bam, it down, it's not a frisbee. And so what I did was, is I got a PayPal's Zettel app. They have a card reader and it connects to my phone. And it's just like, and that was the key I realized, I need to be just like everyone else. I need to meet expectations. Readers are coming up to this table.
Jack Shilkaitis (1:00:11)
Right. Right.
Ruthie Bowles (1:00:31)
Maybe to spend some money and I need to meet expectations and not be confusing So I made the experience as much like the authors and vendors surrounding me as possible So I'm like, yeah, you can buy these audiobooks. I ran like a little sale And I was like, yeah, you just tap your card here or tap your phone. Whatever you want to do They tapped it I gave them the cards for the books that they purchased and then I explained to them very quickly how to you know Get my books calm put in the code that asks for your email
And you know, people did that. They downloaded them once they got home or in some cases while they were still at the event. And it went very smooth. And then I had an author who was at Imaginarium just earlier this month. And that was in Washington, D.C., Imaginarium Book Festival, fantasy, science fiction, book convention. And that was pretty big. I don't know exactly how many people they had there, but it keeps getting bigger every single year. And I think this was like year five or six. And it's one of my favorites.
that I've attended and one of my authors was there and I was like, you know what? Here are the book cards and they had a QR code that I made that attached to my stuff. It was like, you just have people scan this and we can sell the audio book. What made this exciting is that it was the book that we have on pre-order right now. So anybody who bought it at Imaginarium got the book way in advance of everyone else and we were running on sale and it's an exclusive audio edition. has almost an additional hour.
Jack Shilkaitis (1:01:42)
Okay, yeah.
Ruthie Bowles (1:01:49)
Audio that you won't be able to get anywhere else if you're not buying it direct from the shop like from us at an event or from the shop online And that worked out really well too because again a plenty of authors are like scan this QR code And then you pay me and that's basically what I did. I created a product QR code
Yeah, product QR code, they scan it, it's got the specific amount, it has the audio book cover on there. Again, meeting reader expectations, everybody feels safe, it's not a scam. author gave them the book card and the readers were just so excited and happy to be able to get it early, so.
Emma Alisyn (1:02:14)
hahahaha
Jack Shilkaitis (1:02:15)
Right?
Yeah.
And I think there's an element of like striking while the iron is hot. They're there in person in front of you. Right? Yeah, exactly. And if you tell them, you'll just just like go to my website sometime and you can buy the books there. Like, yeah, they're not gonna eat. They're just not gonna remember to do that. And so
Ruthie Bowles (1:02:27)
Ready to spend money.
Mm-hmm.
No, no, not
when they're ready to spend money and that was what I figured out the disconnect was. And again, since I didn't have, like I'm not selling print books or anything like that. So I needed to be like everybody else, which is a struggle because I am the rainbow fish, but it's fine.
Jack Shilkaitis (1:02:51)
Mm-hmm.
Did you sell any bundles by chance or are these just individual audiobooks so far this way?
Ruthie Bowles (1:03:01)
Ooh, okay,
so at that time, it was just the individual audio books, but I actually did, I'm planning on using that new feature, because when I saw it come through, I was like, that is so great, because I have one dark romance series that has eight books in it, and I don't wanna print eight things. I don't wanna print, that's so much print money. Right, and so yeah, so I'm actually really looking forward to that. have an event.
Jack Shilkaitis (1:03:11)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Ruthie Bowles (1:03:28)
in September where I think that that will be outrageously useful. So I will report back on my findings, but I am pretty excited about that, that I'll be able to do that.
Jack Shilkaitis (1:03:33)
Yeah.
Yeah, we were excited to add that because there's so many bundles are the big thing right now when it comes to direct sales, whether it's in person or not. was like, what? You know, the print codes feature has like I've always said, it's like one of my favorite features that nobody really talks about. And now it's kind of getting its its 15. It's going to get more than 15 minutes. But, know, it's 15 minutes of fame these days. And it's really starting to shine. And I'm
Ruthie Bowles (1:03:43)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jack Shilkaitis (1:04:01)
I'm so happy because it's one of our one of the those features that Damon created like ages ago. It was really simple. Like the concept is really simple. And like, you know, we were just, guess, ahead of of the industry to some extent here because and maybe you can speak to this, but being at those events, you you get to interact with readers in a way that you don't over the Internet. And I.
Ruthie Bowles (1:04:03)
Yay!
No, yeah,
absolutely.
Jack Shilkaitis (1:04:25)
And I imagine that's important not just to be able to sell the books, you know, you're in person, you know, you're a salesman, you know, whatever the case may be, that's not what I'm talking about. But like, you're getting to interact and form a connection with that reader. They're going to remember you.
in a way that they're not going to remember the author that they've only like gotten their newsletter from. Like they have an experience where they actually met you. That's a memory in their brain. You know what I mean? I don't know if you've noticed that you see an impact from that or...
Ruthie Bowles (1:04:50)
Yeah, no.
Yeah, and actually I noticed that when I was a marketer because I developed a lot of relationships online and then I would go to events and then I would notice how much better the investment in the relationship people were willing to make once they had met me in person. And so there's that part. And then the thing that I ended up hearing that was like my favorite compliment was, you are exactly like how you are online.
Like meeting you in person is like the same experience. And so that speaks to like brand authenticity, which was one of the big points that I was making often as a marketing consultant is to have like that authenticity and consistency because consistency is one of the elements that helps people to trust you, that you're not gonna, know, take off a mask and suddenly be someone else. So when I am online, you know, I'm cultivating relationships and things like that, but I have found that
Emma Alisyn (1:05:20)
Haha
Jack Shilkaitis (1:05:21)
Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Ruthie Bowles (1:05:48)
you know, if you have met somebody, you know, met somebody, you've developed a relationship online and you have a chance to meet them in person, the investment in that relationship often increases. And let's say you're meeting them for the first time at an event and then they follow you later, as you noted, like as you said, the investment in that relationship is more because they have this tangible.
concrete point in time that they can reference in their memory when they met you and how you made them feel is gonna be something that that really sticks out and so whether somebody came up to ask me about how I got started as an audiobook narrator if they were an author and they wanted to ask just some questions about audiobooks and things like that I did it I answered the questions and I took the time to speak with them because I don't know when that's gonna circle back around and I don't necessarily have an expectation that they themselves will circle back around but
Jack Shilkaitis (1:06:11)
Right.
Ruthie Bowles (1:06:34)
a measure of how strong a brand is, is what people are saying about it when it's not in the room. So when you aren't in the room, how are people talking about you? Are they talking about you? Right? And so that's what I try to make those investments are, is like that opportunity in person. I've seen some of the same readers and same authors at events. I see a lot of the same authors at events, but I see some of the same readers too. And now they make a point to come up and talk to me. And I know that, you know,
Jack Shilkaitis (1:06:43)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Ruthie Bowles (1:06:58)
We're not friends, but we are friendly. And they know that if I'm at an event, they can count on me to have a smile, maybe a fist bump, maybe a hug, maybe. You know, that I'll have that for them. And that's nice to have when you're going into a big room full of mostly strangers.
Emma Alisyn (1:07:07)
Hehehehe
Jack Shilkaitis (1:07:13)
Right, Yeah, no, it's interesting how like the publishing industry has kind of changed. Obviously, with with the rise of the e-book, everything like you could build a mailing list.
It used to be traditionally published authors. you need to go on a book tour. You need to go out there. You need to get in front of readers. You need to do book signings. That was kind of just the normal thing. And then the rise of the e-book and the e-reader meant that you could do all that from your laptop from behind a screen. And now so many people are doing that. And this is something that's come up on the podcast before, just like the sheer number of books that have been published.
Ruthie Bowles (1:07:34)
Hmm.
Jack Shilkaitis (1:07:44)
in the last like decade is more than like all of human history prior to that, or something to that effect. So how do you how do you stand out? Or how do you attract readers? I think one of those ways is to like that, that not everybody wants to do but it's like, get face to face with them, and actually meet them in person. So I know that's something that we've been talking a lot about. And it's cool to see that.
Ruthie Bowles (1:07:44)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Jack Shilkaitis (1:08:07)
more and more authors that we talked to and have on the podcast are like, yeah, I did a reader event over here and did that. So it's just really, really cool to hear that that, you know, even the narrators are doing it. Okay, that's it.
Ruthie Bowles (1:08:18)
yeah, you're seeing more and more narrators
at events for sure. For a variety of reasons, know, connecting with authors, but also connecting with the readers.
Jack Shilkaitis (1:08:24)
Yeah.
Right, right.
Emma Alisyn (1:08:27)
thinking about that lately, especially in the age of AI.
see audiobook as an adjacent but different emotional experience, which is why I've been thinking more and more about how I can produce them. Because I know how I feel when I hear the voices of my favorite characters. do you, what do you think, are there different emotional experiences you are tugging on when you're reading versus the audio and in terms of long-term platform building?
are you really going to want to focus on providing both of those experiences?
Ruthie Bowles (1:08:55)
So, I would say that when I'm reading, I'm kind of immersed in the experience for sure, but when I'm performing, I kind of take on the character, if I'm being honest. I was doing a kind of like a live directed audition for something where we were switching between a lot of small auditions, and it was so weird to feel my...
I don't think I notice it as much when I'm in a book because it's the same setting, even if I'm slipping in between characters. But with this one, I was slipping in between different audition snippets in completely different worlds. And I could feel my brain really do a hard shift into whatever I had decided that next character was gonna be. And so for me as a creative, it's a different experience.
Whereas when I'm reading it, I'm a part of the story in my head, because again, I'm a big visualizer. I'm a part of the story in that I'm in the story. And sometimes I am in the character, but there's an added as element, like a physical element in terms of the performing of it, for sure.
Emma Alisyn (1:09:58)
Have you ever cried? I know I cried a couple times when I was self-rating scales of Sapphire and Gold. There was one chapter I could not, I'm starting to cry now thinking about it, but I could not get past because I'm like, yeah, you understand when you're them. God, I agree. Yeah. It's like you're taking on all their emotion, all their baggage. You're taking that on.
Ruthie Bowles (1:10:14)
Yeah, actually there.
All of it. Yeah,
yeah, there's actually, there's a lot of books that have my genuine tears in them. And so what I tend to do as a performer, I will keep going as long as I feel like to myself, I am still like, what's understandable, right? I was gonna say legible. Like, obviously that's not quite right. Legible, but for your ears. ⁓ And so what I'll do is like, once I get through the scene, I'll play it back to confirm.
Emma Alisyn (1:10:35)
Hahaha
Jack Shilkaitis (1:10:36)
Right, right.
Emma Alisyn (1:10:39)
Yes.
Ruthie Bowles (1:10:44)
my initial feeling that I was still legible for one's ears. And as long as it is still understandable, then I'll keep it because that is how I feel is like I have been moved to such an extent as I have taken on the feelings and the personality and the experiences of this character. So yeah, so lot of the fantasy books that I've done, I mean, honestly, any of the books that have like kind of those big moving scenes, so they don't have to just be fantasy. There's definitely some of the contemporary ones that have gotten my real tears in them.
yeah, there's quite a few actually.
Emma Alisyn (1:11:14)
Now how
are you? Because I know some of the spicy romance authors are like, how are you doing those spicy scenes? Like did you trip up at first or now you're like, done it all.
Ruthie Bowles (1:11:25)
Honestly, I think I go to a different place in my head. Like, because I will narrate them. I narrate them. Fine, right? And then the author's like trying to start playing stuff on the internet. And I'm like, who, who is that, madam? Like, this is a Wendy's. I beg your pardon. Like, don't you throw that shade on me. And they're like, you did it. And I'm like, you wrote it. Like, I don't remember that, first of all. I blacked out, probably.
Jack Shilkaitis (1:11:39)
Ha
Emma Alisyn (1:11:47)
You
Ruthie Bowles (1:11:51)
No, it is kind of a surprise sometimes, but I just get so into whatever it is that I'm performing that it's just a completely, the time for being embarrassed or anything like that is not right now because we're in the moment. This is the character. This is it, right? This is iconic. This is what we're doing right now. And then it'll be later when we're like, I've got to record pickups or something right in the middle of a line where I'm like, I nailed that delivery, but I said the wrong word or something. Now I'm playing back a pickup and I'm like,
Dang, because we're listening to it in isolation now and I gotta fix it. But yeah, when authors decide to start playing like the beginnings of a scene, that's okay for social media and I'm like,
I would say don't tell my mother, but my mom keeps listening to them. So yeah, yeah. She likes to listen to her favorites over and over. And if you can believe it, for any of the audio book listeners, my mom listens on one X y'all. She listens on one X.
Jack Shilkaitis (1:12:32)
There's something to unpack there.
Emma Alisyn (1:12:33)
you
Ruthie Bowles (1:12:46)
So she's really dragging it out.
Jack Shilkaitis (1:12:47)
Right, right.
I think my wife has been listening to some audiobooks recently. I think she also listens on 1x. I used to listen to like YouTube on 2x all the time and then for whatever reason I slowed it down. yeah, I imagine if you're a voracious reader that 2x option is your friend. Right, if you can understand. Yeah, right, right.
Ruthie Bowles (1:12:55)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, it really can be.
Emma Alisyn (1:13:08)
I don't
know what you all talk about, one X all the way.
Jack Shilkaitis (1:13:11)
Well, I'm not in
Ruthie Bowles (1:13:12)
I was asking my
mom because it sounded like she was getting through the audiobook so fast. And I'm like, mom, what speed are you listening on? And she's like, one, one, just one. What are you talking about? And I'm like, you got through that whole audiobook on one X. And she's like, I listen to it in the car. I listen to it at work. Because she's an accountant, so she works with numbers. So the fact that there are words playing in her ear, that doesn't bother her. And I'm like, there it is. Like, she's finished.
Jack Shilkaitis (1:13:22)
Hahaha
Yeah.
Emma Alisyn (1:13:27)
Yes.
Ruthie Bowles (1:13:36)
She's finished so many books like so fast and she's like, okay, well, I guess I'll go back to this other one. And so she's listened to some of my books, think like five or six times.
Emma Alisyn (1:13:44)
Wow, you know what, think, cause I know my mom reads my books and she'll read the spicy scenes and that doesn't bother me at all. We're all adults, but I think I might pause if it was in audio. Like my spicier scenes have gotten a lot dirtier. So over the years. So I'm thinking like my mother or even like my daughter's 21 year, 21 now I'm like, or my 15 year old, when my children finding it on YouTube, I'm like,
Yeah, you didn't know your mama was like that.
Ruthie Bowles (1:14:10)
Well, I told my mom, the very first one she listened to, was like, Mom, I was like, we need to have a talk. Right? And I was like, look, I was like, there are spicy scenes in these books. I was like, I'm not telling you, you can't listen to them. I don't have a problem if you listen to it. I was like, but if you develop a problem, you can't make it my problem. All right, like that's your choice. I didn't force you. You are free to abort mission whenever you would like, but like don't make it my problem.
Emma Alisyn (1:14:15)
Yes. ⁓
Jack Shilkaitis (1:14:16)
Hehehehehe
Emma Alisyn (1:14:29)
Yeah!
Mm-hmm.
Ruthie Bowles (1:14:39)
that it was too picante for you. So that's basically how I was like, okay, mom, this is the line, all right? If you don't like it, just then don't listen to these. But no, she's been fine. So I'm like, okay, here we are.
Emma Alisyn (1:14:43)
Hahaha
Is there anything you won't narrate? Have you ever come to that line where you're like, nah man, I just can't?
Ruthie Bowles (1:14:58)
not as like a general rule. If I'm reading something and I'm like, okay, like maybe this will come up on a line depending on how it's executed, for example, then I'm like, okay, maybe I need to read this first before I agree to take it on. So that way I'm not like saying I'll do it. So I'm not, I'm not, I'm not saying like I have no lines or no limits. I mean, I've narrated horror romance.
That is a genre and it is horror and it is romance, you know? So I have narrated even those and enjoyed them, you know, because horror, think, has a lot to offer us if, you know, if it's something that you feel comfortable consuming. And so, yeah, so I wouldn't say there's like a hard and fast line. It would definitely be on a case-by-case basis.
Emma Alisyn (1:15:22)
Yes.
Yeah.
Jack Shilkaitis (1:15:41)
Well yeah, horror, there's a range of emotions there that aren't.
Emma Alisyn (1:15:43)
I'm thinking about Miranda
Grant right now. I'm like, yeah, that would be a doozy to narrate.
Jack Shilkaitis (1:15:49)
that I am not familiar. So, yeah.
Emma Alisyn (1:15:51)
I know, dark romance author, like really
super dark, like banned from Amazon dark. I'm like, I wonder how that would be to narrate like.
Jack Shilkaitis (1:15:59)
Yeah,
yeah, no.
Ruthie Bowles (1:16:00)
Yeah, and mean,
again, it just kind of depends, because I'm even thinking, was like, maybe this is a line, but maybe it isn't. It just kind of depends on what's surrounding it. And everybody has lines, and I totally respect that. But I very much enjoy the artistry of the profession, right? And so if I feel like, from an artistic perspective, I can connect with the piece, even when some of the darkest of dark things are happening.
then it's usually something that I can perform.
Emma Alisyn (1:16:26)
Now that brings up one more question because you're also a diversity consultant and I'm wondering, have you ever narrated some content where you were like, I don't think the author wants to convey that the way they're conveying that or it was obviously not characterized or whatever the situation is because I'm thinking about some controversial books and like, would you want to be the narrator on those books?
Ruthie Bowles (1:16:30)
Mm-hmm.
So I have had things come up in books and most of the time, if I bring it up, the author's fine with it. Like, I'm trying to think, what was it? It was just like a word choice. It was outdated word choice. And like, did I think it was the worst thing in the world? No, but part of what I do as like a consultant, like it's diversity, but it's also communications, right? And so sometimes I can look at things and be like, hey,
I know who your target audience is and this may not land the way that you would like it, but if we just switch this word, this one word, to something else, it'll be fine, right? And so then usually authors are like, yeah, okay, yeah, we could do that, that's great. And it works out fine. I had one book where the author was like, well, if you can't handle that, then you can't handle any of my other stuff. And it wasn't a matter of handling. And I was like, okay, like this just suddenly got combative, so I think it is best that I not narrate this book.
Emma Alisyn (1:17:17)
Hmm.
you
Ruthie Bowles (1:17:39)
And I was done with that and that was fine. I've only had one that had a response like that. But it was also somebody that I didn't, like I didn't, there wasn't much of a relationship there. Which again, is fine. Like you don't have to have a serious relationship with everybody. I don't have serious relationships with all of my authors. But there's usually a good kind of working foundation because if I narrate a book and because I narrated it, my audience,
or people who like audiobooks notice something in it, I'm getting dragged right next to you. So like, don't want that. So it's in my, like, I'm not trying, like, if I wanted to drag you, I certainly could and then I'd be out of business. So that's not what I'm trying to do. It's always kind of like, hey, this could be, but it doesn't really happen that often. And the few times that it has, most of the time it's had a positive outcome.
Emma Alisyn (1:18:08)
Ha ha ha ha!
Jack Shilkaitis (1:18:09)
Yeah.
Ruthie Bowles (1:18:25)
That's not what they're hiring me for though, so that's always kind of like a risk. I'm like, man, I recognize you're not hiring me for this. I do. But, but.
Jack Shilkaitis (1:18:31)
He
Emma Alisyn (1:18:32)
Yeah, well, it goes into
trusting your narrator. Narrators and cover designers I don't f with. Like if I hire you is because I trust you and I trust the vision and I already understand the cover designer's vision and the narrator's vision is going to be separate from mine, which I think is the huge value in still having human narrators and cover designers is they bring another layer to it. And I think it's vital.
Ruthie Bowles (1:18:53)
Mm-hmm.
Emma Alisyn (1:18:55)
as an author and this is just me my author opinion if you're gonna hire a narrator trust them like trust that they're having a genuine connection with your book an emotional experience and like if they tell you something you know maybe take it
Jack Shilkaitis (1:19:10)
especially if they know what your target audience is. And I think that's lot of familiarity and someone who's been in the industry, especially if you're a first-time author, not first-time author, but first time having your books narrated. Maybe it's worth it to find somebody who's a little more experienced in the narration field.
Ruthie Bowles (1:19:10)
Yeah
Emma Alisyn (1:19:13)
Yeah.
Ruthie Bowles (1:19:25)
Mm-hmm.
Jack Shilkaitis (1:19:33)
Right? Rather than doing your first rodeo with somebody who's maybe it's their first rodeo, you know, I just so to speak, right? Does that make sense?
Ruthie Bowles (1:19:39)
Yeah.
It does, it does. But yeah, it's just the way that my, like, and so when authors come to me, I know that they come to me not unaware of the fact that I have developed a brand for myself. And so it's, you you didn't pull me out of a hat. And like I in most cases, it's the author coming to me these days. And so it's kind of like, okay, well, you came to me knowing that there was kind of a brand and already established thing here, and it's not in my best interest to,
to just let you, you know, it's like, I don't know how often guys do this. Okay, Jack, so you tell me, but I feel like Emma would get this, but it's like, if you and I are going out and we're friends, right? So I'm not trying to sabotage you. It does not to my benefit for you to go out looking crazy and I look good, right? So you're not gonna leave looking crazy from this house with me.
Jack Shilkaitis (1:20:14)
Sure.
Emma Alisyn (1:20:24)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jack Shilkaitis (1:20:25)
Yeah.
Emma Alisyn (1:20:28)
You ain't going out
your house like that, like next to me, no. Yeah.
Ruthie Bowles (1:20:31)
No, like you might leave by yourself like that, but you're not leaving
with me like that.
Jack Shilkaitis (1:20:34)
Yeah,
I mean sometimes it's to your benefit if you're not the crazy one potentially, but no, I get what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, no, I get that. Right. Right.
Ruthie Bowles (1:20:39)
Yeah, because it is it is a partnership that's what we're doing right is a partnership My name
is gonna be tied to your book And so I just want it to be as successful as possible So so on the few times where I have brought that to the author it's it's it's always couched in kind of this Hey, I I've read the book love the book. Here's this thing, right? And I think if we just tweak this this mitigates any potential risk or anybody
you know, pulling it out and being like, hey, this is like outdated terminology or it's so outdated that it's now offensive terminology potentially, right? And like that obviously wasn't what you were trying to do. And I get that, but because I've read, you know, I've got the whole thing here in front of me. So if we just make this tweak, we'll be good.
Jack Shilkaitis (1:21:22)
Yeah, well, and the audiobooks, like it's a collaboration. This is at the end of the day. You're not a robot. Just like text to speech, reading the book out loud like you are creating the audiobook to really to the same extent that the author has created the book. You're bringing it to life. So there's.
Ruthie Bowles (1:21:27)
Yeah.
No.
Yes, and you'll probably
appreciate this metaphor, but I'll say I'm not a sock puppet.
Emma Alisyn (1:21:44)
Hahaha!
Jack Shilkaitis (1:21:47)
All right, well, that's going to do it for us today. Ruthie, I want to thank you for joining us for this episode of the podcast. there's anything that you want to shout out, your website or what have you, I'll give you a moment to go ahead and do that here before we wrap things up.
Ruthie Bowles (1:22:00)
Awesome. Okay, so if you are looking for me, Ruthie Bowles, you can find me by searching my name on pretty much any platform. You'll find audio books if you search me on Google, you'll find a whole lot more. And if you're looking for my site, that's nomarketforthatbook.com because most of the authors who work with me have heard some form of that phrase. So they know that they're the ones I'm talking to. Nomarketforthatbook.com.
Jack Shilkaitis (1:22:24)
Awesome.
Awesome. Well, thank you again for joining us. There's so much more we could talk to you about. Right? There's Emma's got a whole list of questions. I'm sure if we let her, you know, run wild. But we'll just have to have you back on to talk again in the future, I think is the idea. Yeah, it'd be awesome. It'd be awesome. So with that, though, thank you again for joining us. I want to thank you, Emma, for
Ruthie Bowles (1:22:40)
It would be an absolute pleasure.
Jack Shilkaitis (1:22:47)
co-hosting today with me as always. Couldn't do this without you.
Thank you of course to our audience. you are watching here on YouTube, please like the video and subscribe to the channel. If you're listening on any podcasting platforms, please review us there, leave a review and follow us.
Thank you again for listening and we will see you all in the next one.
