I’ll be honest with you. I’ve been putting off recording an audiobook for years.

My excuses were plentiful: I don’t have a studio. I have an accent. It’s too expensive. I don’t know the technical side.

Then I sat down with Gunnar Habitz, a 28-time published author, course creator, and Substack writer from Sydney, Australia, for an episode of the Substack Writer’s Salon. And within an hour, he dismantled every single one of my excuses.

Here’s what I learned.

The Mindset Shift You Need First

Gunnar opened with a story that stopped me in my tracks.

He bought a book from a well-known Australian sales expert, whom he personally knew. When the audiobook version arrived, it wasn’t his voice. A professional actor had read it. And Gunnar said: “I heard the voice. I know how he speaks at conferences. It’s his words, but not his voice. Then I realized — that’s not good.”

That’s the mindset shift. Your readers don’t want a perfect voice. They want your voice.

As one of our live viewers, Coach Sean, put it beautifully in the comments: “Your true readers want to hear your words. Those who are hung up on your accent are not your real audience.”

I needed to hear that.

What It Actually Costs

Here’s the breakdown Gunnar shared, and it’s far more accessible than you’d think:

Studio route: $2,000–$2,500 to record at a professional studio, get it edited, and submit to Audible. High quality, but is the ROI there for an indie author? Gunnar had his doubts.

The bootstrapped route: Gunnar’s preferred approach for self-published authors involves two main tools:

* Riverside FM — a recording platform with built-in noise reduction and audio optimization. Around $20/month (and they often have free trials). You record your book yourself, chapter by chapter, in a quiet room.

* ElevenLabs — an AI voice cloning tool. Around $5–$10/month for the starter plan. You upload your Riverside recording, it clones your voice, and then it can generate audio for additional books in minutes.

Gunnar’s total investment to produce two audiobooks? A couple of months of software subscriptions — well under $100.

The Step-by-Step Process

Gunnar shared his exact roadmap for indie authors. Here it is:

Step 1: Have the courage to record yourself. The authors want to hear you. Not an actor. Not an AI clone (unless necessary). You.

Step 2: Find a quiet space. You don’t need a professional studio. A quiet hotel room, a silent library, even a closet with soft walls can work. Many city libraries now have podcast recording rooms — free to use.

Step 3: Record in Riverside FM. Record each chapter as its own file. (Gunnar’s tip from experience: don’t record three chapters in one take. You’ll regret it.) Before you start, record a few seconds of silence so the software can calibrate the ambient noise level.

Step 4: Upload directly to Spotify. Spotify has a lower barrier to entry than Audible and is actively competing for market share in the audiobook space. Gunnar uploads directly from Riverside to Spotify, no studio engineer needed.

Step 5: Use ElevenLabs to clone your voice for future books. Feed ElevenLabs two-plus hours of your Riverside recording, and it creates a professional voice clone. You can then upload the text of any book and generate an audio version in about 30 minutes — even for a book that takes two hours to listen to. Gunnar used this for his fiction series.

Where to Distribute Your Audiobook

This is where things get interesting. You have more options than you think:

* Spotify — accepts recordings straight from Riverside. No professional audio engineering required.

* ElevenLabs Reader (11 Reader) — their own marketplace where listeners can purchase your audiobook directly.

* Your own platform (Kajabi, Gumroad, Teachable) — sell the audiobook as an upsell or order bump at checkout. 60% of Gunnar’s buyers add the audiobook when it’s offered as a $10 bump. And when you sell it yourself, you keep nearly 100% of the revenue. Compare that to Spotify’s ~60% royalty or ElevenLabs’ ~70%.

* Your Substack — offer the audiobook as a bonus for annual paid subscribers.

* Audible — yes, this is possible, but requires professionally edited audio. Gunnar’s workaround: hire a sound engineer on Fiverr for around $200 to take your Riverside files and make them Audible-ready.

The Accent Question

I asked Gunnar directly — because this is something I personally wrestle with. Does having an accent hold you back when recording your own audiobook?

His answer: “There are people who want to read the book from us, not from anyone else. And there are people who want to hear the story from the author. That is better — authentic — compared to perfectly read by a machine or by a professional actor.”

He even pointed out that discovering Tony Hughes’ co-author through an audiobook — because the co-author read his own book in his own voice — led Gunnar to buy four more books from that author.

Your accent is not a barrier. It’s a fingerprint.

A Note on Audible and AI

One important clarification for those wondering: Audible (Amazon) does not currently accept AI-generated voice clones. If your goal is Audible distribution, you’ll need to record in your own voice and either edit the audio yourself or hire a Fiverr sound engineer (~$200) to make it Audible-compliant.

But as Gunnar said: “Audible is not everything.”

Spotify, ElevenLabs Reader, and your own platforms are legitimate, profitable distribution channels — and you keep more of the money.

The Big Takeaway

What struck me most about this conversation is how much of the barrier to creating an audiobook is mental rather than technical.

The tools are affordable. The process is learnable. The platforms are accessible.

What’s actually standing between you and your audiobook is the belief that you need a studio, a perfect voice, and thousands of dollars.

You don’t.

You need a quiet room, a $20/month subscription, and the courage to press record.

This post is based on my Substack Writers Salon conversation with Gunnar Habitz, a 28-time published author, course creator, and strategic networker based in Sydney, Australia. You can find him at his Substack and on LinkedIn.

Have you recorded — or considered recording — your own audiobook? I’d love to hear where you are in the process. Drop a comment below.

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