YouTube Offers Revenue and Readership for Self-Publishing Novelists

As Audible and Spotify battle each other in the audiobook market, some self-publishing authors have been able to chart a path around them both through consistent, strategic use of YouTube. YouTube is the second-biggest search engine in the world after Google, with more than 2.5 billion users; it says more than 1 billion people listen to podcasts through the platform. And if people will listen to podcasts through YouTube, why not audiobooks?

I spoke with three authors for whom audio is a key driver of readership growth and revenue: Scott Sigler, Derek Slaton, and Victorine Lieske. But each of them has a unique approach with YouTube.

One YouTube strategy is to focus on audio serialization. Anyone familiar with serialization on Wattpad or Royal Road will understand the game plan: Post a new, free installment of your story on a consistent schedule, then monetize in other ways. This describes novelist Derek Slaton, who writes the zombie series Dead in America. He published the first book in the series in July 2018; he didn’t start using YouTube until December 2021. Since January 2024, he’s been writing and publishing the serialization full time, meaning one episode per week; episodes run about 90 minutes to two hours.

• YouTube changed how Slaton structured his stories. Early in the series, Slaton says he “just let the story flow.” That meant that chapters were as long as they needed to be. But once he was committed to YouTube serialization, he set a target of 2,000 words per chapter (equivalent to 12 to 15 minutes of audio) because he says that length is perfect for inserting ad breaks into the weekly episodes. The episodes are also released as a podcast using the distributor RedCircle; they have a sales team that finds advertising for shows they distribute. Through YouTube and podcast ads combined, he makes roughly the same amount as he does through Amazon each month.
• Slaton has stopped advertising his work. Because he publishes weekly stories, he says that has negated the need for him to advertise—he hasn’t advertised since 2023 and now makes more money than he did before because he’s focused solely on producing stories. “Because there’s that constant stream of new content that’s always popping up on feeds, it’s always out there for new listeners and new readers to discover it. That’s been the biggest benefit of being able to consistently do weekly content.” Note that Slaton has developed a universe with hundreds and hundreds of characters, which helps enable long-term serialization.
• Readers can pay Slaton money for early access to episodes or ad-free episodes. He’s enabled YouTube memberships, where listeners pay $1.99 per month to get early access to new episodes, with 150+ members so far. He also runs a Patreon where listeners can enjoy his stories without ads, but only a tiny number of readers have migrated there. “It’s really difficult to move people from one platform to another,” he says.
• Slaton has switched to AI narration. Slaton’s first 100 or so books are human narrated and available through Audible and Findaway, but they bring him significantly less income than the YouTube and podcast ads each month. He’s now published more than 200 titles and has been using ElevenLabs and Spoken to produce AI narration.

Slaton hasn’t seen the need to do many things I normally advise, like have an author website or maintain an email newsletter list. He does engage with readers through YouTube comments and occasionally on Spotify. I asked him if he’s ever anxious about YouTube changing the algorithm or platform in such a way as to reduce his earnings. The answer is yes. “It’s kind of the nature of the beast, and that’s why I’ve started focusing more on podcasting as well, because it’s the exact same content,” he says. “I would hate for it to go away. It would be very painful, but I think at this point I could survive it, but it would result in a lot of cursing.” For more about Slaton’s process, listen to his interview earlier this year with Joanna Penn.

Another YouTube strategy is to post full-length audiobooks. For many books, that means seven- to eight-hour videos. Again, monetization happens through ad placement. Author Victorine Lieske, who started publishing romance in 2010, has about 30 full-length novels on the market; she tries to publish three or four new books each year. Most of her overall earnings come from book sales, but in terms of audiobooks alone, YouTube ad income has surpassed sales—even though her overall audiobook sales increased after posting free versions on YouTube. (Earlier this year, I wroteabout novelist Cindy Gunderson, also a professional audiobook narrator, who has posted all of her audiobooks for free on YouTube and enjoys similar benefits.)

Lieske shared with me some important lessons she’s learned about this strategy.

• Clean up your YouTube channel if needed and stick with storytelling. Lieske first created her YouTube channel in 2009, and over 10 or more years, she had a mish-mash of things posted there. When she became serious about posting her audiobooks on YouTube a few years ago, she cleaned up the channel first and deleted most of the videos. Then she started uploading 15 books from her backlist that were human narrated, one every three days (using the advice of her YouTuber son). “That really kicked it off huge for me,” she says. “It did phenomenally well for a long, long time. Now, over time, it’s gone down. But I think the key is just posting as consistently as you can.” At first she was earning a thousand dollars a month from YouTube ads, but the amount has since dropped to the $400 to $500 range. However, she avoids posting new content unless it’s tightly tied to her stories. “I would be very careful about the kind of content you’re trying to supplement with,” she says, “because people are coming to you for story. And maybe you want to tell stories about your life—and that’s fine, just as long as it goes along with the other content you’re putting up.”
• Make sure your content abides by YouTube policies. Romance writers who have spicy content may need to go into their audiobooks and chop out anything that could run afoul of YouTube’s policies. Then, at the end, you can direct people to the “full” version wherever it is sold.
• Do not split finished audiobooks into separate videos. For a while, Lieske tried splitting her audiobooks into chapters—one video per chapter—and she says that strategy failed miserably. She couldn’t get people to listen through. (In comparison, keep in mind that Slaton’s videos are long, around two hours; even though it is a serialization, each episode is a story that’s complete in and of itself.)
• Be ready to prove your ownership of your audiobooks. YouTube may demonetize your channel if you’re posting audiobooks that are also available elsewhere. While YouTube does allow you to post audiobooks that are also on-sale, they want to ensure you are the rightsholder due to problems with digital audiobook piracy. Thus, Lieske says every author should be prepared to make an appeal video to prove they’re the copyright owner of their works. Because she was making so much money off YouTube ads, when Lieske received her “demonetization” notice, she took her audiobooks off sale from Audible for a while to prove she was in fact the rightsholder. Not only did YouTube put her monetization back in place after 48 hours, but they paid her for the two days it was off.

Other audio-focused authors use YouTube as an ancillary discovery tool, not a revenue engine. Scott Sigler has been offering a free fiction podcast, human narrated and supported by advertising, since 2005. His income is mainly from Audible sales (his self-produced titles are exclusive to Audible) and podcast advertising. For a few years he has invested in live-read streaming on YouTube (no ads), and just recently he began building podcast subscriptions using SupportingCast. He says, “That’s gonna give people an opportunity to get the content directly from the source. So, we become our own little mini-streaming studio with all of our content, and there’s no advertising whatsoever. I think that’s where things are gonna move.”

Bottom line: Slaton and Lieske both told me there’s not much cross-pollination between the platforms for reading and listening. “If you’re reading on Kindle, you’re reading on Kindle. If you’re listening on YouTube, you tend to stay there, and the same with podcasting,” Slaton says. Lieske says, “You’ve got people who are on YouTube looking for entertainment, and it’s a whole different audience than what you’re normally used to.” YouTube can help novelists reach people who are not traditional book consumers, opening a new and distinct market for authors who can produce reliably at scale.

Best practices for YouTube are not really that different from any digital-era content strategy. Put out content consistently, and don’t be afraid of making something for free, because there are many ways to monetize free content. The rise of audiobooks on YouTube is also inextricably tied to advances in AI narration, especially in Slaton’s case—AI can be a pragmatic and necessary tool to keep high-volume production costs in line for individual authors.

Jane Friedman

Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.

Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.