Thank You for Listening to Julia Whelan’s Audiobrary

If, like me, you are an audiobook aficionado, you probably know who Julia Whelan is. But in case you don't, suffice it to say her name is pretty much synonymous with the term narrator. Aside from reading her own novels, she has given a voice to hundreds of stories throughout her career–including beloved tales by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Emily Henry and Nora Roberts (to name just a very limited few). Julia's voice has sounded through thousands of speakers and played through millions of headphones. Her league of avid listeners is often willing to cross genres and try new authors just because she is the one telling the story. Recently, Whelan decided to use her well-earned and wide influence to benefit others in her industry with the aptly named Audiobrary.

In her own words, Audiobrary is "a platform devoted exclusively to human storytelling." Unlike your typical audiobook purchase, the tales you can find on Julia's platform "support the people who make the art, not the corporations that merely distribute it." While Audiobrary's catalog will slowly expand beyond Julia's own writings, it currently includes her three novels, My Oxford Year, Thank You For Listening, and the recently released Audiobrary-exclusive Casanova LLC. For her longtime fans, this third title is easily recognizable, as it first appeared in bits and pieces in her sophomore work as the erotica novel her two protagonists set out to narrate. Now, eighteen months later, Alessandro and Claire's emotional tale about living the life you want instead of the one expected of you is much more than that, and the world of [super] spicy literature is better for it.

In the midst of releasing Casanova LLC, Julia was able to sit down with The FMC to talk about why she created her new platform, her latest book, what she hopes Audiobrary will become in the future, and more.

Let’s start at the beginning. Besides creating the perfect place to release Casanova LLC, which we will talk about in a minute, where did the idea for Audiobrary come from? I know why you created it, but what was the moment where you thought, “I could actually do this. I don’t have to just wish it existed.”

That's a very good question. It was not an intuitive thing for me. My reasons for doing this came about because of a building frustration with the industry over the last five years or so and feeling pretty powerless to do anything about it, coupled with the fact that I was itching for a new project and something to do. The final straw, so to speak, was a friend of mine visiting and saying, “You should have a Patreon. People would probably like to hear you do a poem a week or a short story or something. Maybe that would free you up to do other things.” Audiobrary began from that idea of ‘what if I started creating my own content.’ A few months of cogitating on that led me to think, “Wait a minute. Maybe this could actually be something that helps me solve the problems I'm experiencing in the wider industry. Plus, as you said, it also solved the distribution problem for Casanova LLC.

On that note, when did you decide you actually wanted to do Casanova LLC outside of the bits and pieces in Thank You For Listening?

There's a long period of denial. [laughter] I wanted to do it when I was writing Thank You for Listening, but I told myself that it wasn't a good use of time and that I probably shouldn't. At the end of 2022, I finally said, “No, I'm doing it. I'm going to prioritize this.”

Did it coincide with the Patreon idea?

Actually, it predated that. Casanova LLC was always a larger project. I always planned to sell it to someone as an audio original. But, looking at all of the existing platforms out there, I couldn't find one that was a good fit. The issue was due to the fact that I can produce things myself. I don't need someone to do that for me. All I needed was a place for it to live.

Since one of the things that makes Audiobrary different from other audiobook apps is the amount of money going to the creators, what is the typical business model when you record? How do narrators get paid?

First and foremost, there's always a distributor taking a cut, which is fine. They have every right to do that. It just happens to be–in my opinion–exorbitant. And then you've got authors who are then getting a percentage of the remaining percentage that goes to their publisher. Narrators, on the other hand, get absolutely nothing.

What?

We are paid on a per-finished-hour basis based on how long the audiobook ends up being. It has nothing to do with the time it takes to prep. It has nothing to do with the research time. It has nothing to do with the actual recording time. It's a lump fee for how long the book ends up being. There is no upside to doing a wildly popular book or a massively successful book. You will never see another penny.

Wow. I had no idea. I’m sorry. As a tried and true audiobook girl, that doesn't make any sense.

It really doesn’t. Most people don't know how it works. I have to be honest; I thought I might be onto something because of fans’ reactions when I told them this was the case. I really realized that I was on to something when I found out most authors don't even know that narrators don't get royalties. Everyone assumes it works the same way publishing works, but it doesn’t.

Is your plan to develop Audiobrary into a distribution platform that gives narrators a bigger percentage than, say, Audible or Libro FM?

While there is a larger distribution apparatus of Audiobrary that is still in development, I don't see it as a competitor to Audible or even to Libro FM–which does really good work–because of the vast library that they have.

I love Libro FM. I want to make sure it is still a valid option. [laughter]

What I hope Audiobrary becomes is a curated collection of titles that are organized by theme, narrator and storyteller. It will happen slowly. I'm resisting that capitalist impulse of growth at all costs. I want to do this intentionally, and I want to do it right. That's why, up to this point, I’ve only really announced it in my newsletter and Instagram. There will be an industry-wide announcement coming soon, but I wanted to make sure that everything was working before that happened. To answer the other portion of your question about narrator pay, yes, the intention is for any product that we have on the site, a percentage going to the narrators, and there will be a larger percentage going to the authors because it's direct-to-consumer. There's not an external distributor.

So, just to be clear, it won't necessarily be every single audiobook. It’ll be a special curated collection?

I'm open to anything, but I do think there are other companies that do that, do it well, and are mission-driven, like Libro FM. I'm more interested in a curated collection of quality products that I'm putting my name on, and that mean something to me.

I totally understand that. Speaking of curated content, I was looking through your future projects page, and one of the things I'm most excited about is the Untitled Persuasion Project. I noticed that one is written by you, so since I have you, why Persuasion specifically?

Oh, this is really great. I'm very glad you asked about this. You know a Persuasion woman when you meet one. [laughter] I was always a reader, but that book was the first book that intimidated me, and I ended up loving it. It taught me that I could read anything and figure it out. Since then, I have had an evolving relationship with that text. I've taught it. I was a TA for Jane Austen classes in college. I reread it every five years or so, and my relationship with it always changes. A friend of mine is leading a Persuasion pilgrimage in the UK at the end of April, where we're going to hike and meditate on this book that just so happens to coincide with my 40th birthday. I'm still figuring out the parameters of the project, but I would like to do an exploration of my personal journey with the book as I’ve gotten older and the way that I reflect on that text as it goes along. I might just end up having to record the process. We’ll see how it turns out, but I’m excited about it.

It's one of my favorites. This is a somewhat controversial opinion, but I really liked the recent adaptation that came out on Netflix. A lot of people didn’t, but I did.

I haven't seen it. I was so prepared to hate it, but I have to let that go.

You may very well hate it. [laughter] But I like it when Jane Austen's texts get a more modernized treatment because I think it makes more people willing to engage with the story. It’s the same way I feel about audiobooks and classic literature. I’ve found that audiobooks make those intimidating texts way easier to consume.

Part of the reason the nerd part of me is very excited about building out Audiobrary is because I would love a place where you can take books like that and add supplemental material such as interviews with scholars, debates about the text, and other things that add an education atmosphere to the texts that people are often intimidated by. There's a snobbery that comes with being able to read classic literature. We tend to view it as ‘you either get it, or you don't,’ when instead, we should hold people's hands through it. A lot of people come to these texts later in life. I was an English major. I lived and breathed this stuff. But most people chose a more practical degree. [laughter] They get later into life, and they want to figure out what all of the buzz is about, and there's no one there to shepherd them through the process.

How have you found and selected the other upcoming projects?

A lot of them came about through writer friends of mine who have a project that, for market reasons, didn't sell five years ago, or they have projects in mind that don't necessarily fit into a traditional pipeline–either there's something experimental about them or something non-traditional about them. That matters less in audio. Length doesn't matter. People like shorter content in audio. They’ve got a two-hour drive ahead of them. What can they listen to? I learned that when I was head of production at Audm, which was an app that put long-form journalism on audio. We had a filter feature based on the length of the article because there was a market for it. There are a lot of projects that go nowhere because they don't fit naturally into traditional publishing pipelines. That seemed a shame to me, especially when I know a writer, and I know their talent.

Currently, however, the only original content is Casanova LLC. This project was obviously conceived initially for Thank You For Listening. In the forward, you talk about the deeper-than-intended connections in the audiobook, but did fleshing out this story have the reverse effect on how you look at your sophomore novel? Does it feel richer content-wise now?

That's a very good question, too. It does. I would not go back and change anything about Thank You For Listening. I think it's fine the way it is, but Casanova LLC deepened June French and Nick Sullivan’s relationship. I will say that the recording process of Casanova LLC made me want to go back and make a new edition of Thank You For Listening. There were just so many funny, very meta instances between Sebastian York and me that happened during the recording process that I might as well have written into Thank You For Listening.

Hmm. If only you had a platform where you could put a special edition.

[laughter] I'd have to think about it.

Also in the forward, you mention Audiobrary is the result of you doing what you want. A lot of the time, people see that as a negative or brash personality trait, but I actually find it quite scary. What was your experience like?

I recently learned about Uranus opposition. It's the astrological version of a midlife crisis. It explains the desire to burn down the existing structure and rebuild that hits when we get into our late 30s/early 40s. I could feel that coming for me. I was so unsatisfied with the limitations of what I was doing creatively and financially within this industry and watching it change while the terms stayed the same that I was prepared to completely walk away from it. I've done it before. I've built careers that I've walked away from. I do this periodically. I was prepared to figure out what else I wanted to do with my life. However, I felt that everything that I didn't like about this industry had nothing to do with everything that I love about this industry. And that everything I didn't like was fixable. People were just choosing not to fix it. So, I figured on my way out the door it was worth seeing if I could change it. For me, there's no fear because I'm willing to walk away. I don't care what people think because I don't need them. There's a freedom in it. Audiobrary is an experiment. We're just trying it. But I'm going to put everything that I have into it, knowing that I'll be fine one way or the other.

There's nothing to lose.

Truly, there's nothing to lose because the current state is unsustainable.

What was your favorite part of writing and recording Casanova LLC?

The surprise of it at every level. Objectively I think, and it's been reflected back to me, this is my best book. I would have never thought that was possible when I started writing it. I was surprised by how affecting it is, how much I ended up loving those characters and by the recording of it. Watching my colleagues, whom I love dearly, bring their best and fullest selves to it was such a joy. I recorded my last two books alone. I'm very, very particular about who gets to touch my writing, and watching the cast just rise to the occasion and be such champions of my work was incredibly fulfilling.

Finally, what are some of your dreams for Audiobrary as it grows?

I would love to have a fully functional production house that sources and produces amazing, diverse stories that benefit all of the creators over the long term. The most obvious difference is that my rates for narrators are higher than anyone else's because I believe in that, too. Even on a per finished hour basis, we are woefully underpaid for this job. So, I start at a higher rate, but the idea behind this is sustainability. What I don't like seeing is these professional narrators who have done upwards of 1000 books, but they're getting to retirement age, and their output is slowing down. To know that there are 1000s of books out there that people are still paying money for and people are still making money on and that these narrators are getting none of that is so offensive to me. What I would like to see in five years is that we have created a system where people are at least getting mailbox money for the projects that they've done. I'm hoping that publishing, in general, takes this as a challenge. I don't want to be the only person doing this. The best-case scenario is that this gets big enough that it scares people into doing the right thing. No matter what, Audiobrary will be creating our own quality product, and we will survive because of the people that I want to work with and the quality of projects that we attract. But I would love this to change the overall business model.

It's just crazy to me that narrators are not paid royalties at least. To me, an audiobook is the same as a book. Honestly, they are the way I prefer to read.

As a traditionally published author, I know how hard it is to find points of discoverability for your book. The industry is so saturated. To have a way for people to find your book is very difficult. One place where that can happen is with your audiobook narrator. You get to borrow their audience. That is something that should be respected and compensated. Don't take narrators for granted. What we do is an art form. Storytelling is something that people have been doing since the dawn of time.