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How to Upload Your Audiobook Directly on Kobo

  • Updated

In this article, you'll learn how to easily upload your audiobook directly through the Kobo Writing Life dashboard. We'll guide you through everything you need to know, including file size requirements, how to troubleshoot common upload issues, and the steps to sign up for audiobooks. Plus, you'll discover how to upload a sample to help showcase your audiobook to potential listeners.

 

How to Upload your Audiobook

Welcome to Kobo Writing Life audiobooks! We are very excited to be providing the ability for our authors to upload their audiobooks directly through the Kobo Writing Life dashboard. It is a quick and easy  process we have outlined below. 

Note: If your audiobook is already in the Kobo store under a distributor, please make sure to remove it from the distributor before adding it to KWL in order to prevent duplicates in our store. 

 

To upload your audiobook you will first need to:

  1. Log into your Kobo Writing Life account.

  2. Select Audiobooks on your dashboard. 

    A screenshot of the top bar of the Kobo Writing Life dashboard with the audiobooks tab, third from the left after ”Dashboard” and ”eBooks”, circled.
  3. Click “Create new Audiobook”.

    A screenshot of the top of the page once audiobooks tab has been selected, highlighting the ”Create new audiobook” button on the top right side of the page below the navigation tabs.

    Once on the audiobook uploading page, you can start inputting your audiobook information. You will first be asked to describe your audiobook. This includes the following: 
      • Title: The name of the audiobook you are uploading. Please enter your title exactly as you would like it to appear in our store.
      • Subtitle: The subtitle for the audiobook you are uploading. Please enter your subtitle exactly as you would like it to appear in our store. This should be the official subtitle of your book and should appear on your audiobook’s cover image. 
      • Series Name: If your book is part of a series, please include that information here. Including series information for your audiobook will link all books in a series together on our store. 
      • Series Number: Enter the book number from your series here. This will only populate when a series name has been entered.
      • Contributors: Please include both the author and narrator of your audiobook here. You can do this by selecting “Add another contributor” once you have inputted the first contributor of your title.  
      • Synopsis: A brief description of your audiobook as it should appear on your product page in the Kobo Store.
      • Publisher Name: The name of the audiobook’s publisher. If you are a self-published author, you can enter your name. If you are an individual doing business as a publisher, you can enter your publisher’s name here.
      • Imprint: The trade name under which your audiobook is published. Publishers may have different imprints to reflect their content types.
      • Publication Date: This is the date the content was original published. Please be advised: this is not the date the book will be released to customers on our store. This date is visible on the bottom of a book’s product page. If not date is supplied, the date this title is published will be used. 
      • Release Date: This is a required field. This is the date the title will be available for purchase and customers will be able to download this audiobook to their library. 
      • Audio ISBN: Kobo’s term for the 13-digit ISBN (International Standard Book Number) assigned specifically to the audiobook being submitted. Please note that this must be a unique ISBN – you can’t use the same ISBN that you have for the print version of your book. If no ISBN is provided, we will assign your audiobook a Kobo-specific ISBN. The ISBN will be displayed with metadata at the bottom of the book page and if used in a kobo.com search it will directly link to the book page (e.g. https://www.kobo.com/search?Query=9781551994963). Please note, ISBNs on our platform cannot contain dashes. 
      • Language: Please select the language of your audiobook. Displayed at the bottom of the book page, also used on kobo.com for filtering search results by language.
      • Is this content abridged or unabridged? Please specify the format of your audiobook. An abridged audiobook is shortened to only include the main details of the story. Unabridged means the entire story is included with nothing cut out.
  4. You will then be required to enter the categories for your title. These categories will determine how your audiobook is labelled and categorized in the Kobo Store. We recommend selecting three categories for each book to ensure that customers who are browsing through our store have a better chance of finding your titles.
  5. Next, you will need to upload your cover image. We accept cover images in .png, .jpg and .jpeg file formats. We recommend the minimum size of cover images be at least 600px by 600px. Covers for audiobooks should be square. However, if they are not, they will be automatically adjusted. Please note: cover images cannot exceed 5 MB in size. 
  6. Now you are ready to upload your audio files! You can drop files directly from your computer into the Upload Audio Files section or select the folder on your desktop that contains your audiobook files. We only accept audio files in .mp3 format. An individual file cannot exceed 200 MB in size and all files combined cannot exceed 2 GB in size. Please wait for your audio files to be completely uploaded before moving to the next step. You will know when files have been successfully uploaded when the "Listen to confirm content" prompt appears . 

    A screenshot of a successfully uploaded audio file with the “Listen to confirm content” widget highlighted.
  7. Once your files have been completely uploaded, you can then start to make your Table of Contents. The Table of Contents organizes your audiobook to make sure it is in reading order and what customers use to navigate the audiobook when downloaded to their app. You can move the files up and down to ensure they are in the correct order and provide the chapter title for the file. You can add the Chapter title under the “Name of Content” section. You can also listen to the file to confirm you have given the file the correct Chapter Heading. Please note: What you list in the "Name of content" section will appear in the Table of Contents customers use to navigate your audiobook on our apps. See below for an example:

    A screenshot displaying the user interface of uploaded audio files that can be reordered and renamed.

 

A screenshot of the corresponding Table of Contents in the Kobo app, showing how the “Name of content” in the KWL dashboard will display as section names in the Table of Contents in the Kobo app.

8. You will then be asked to provide the geographic rights for the title. Please select the countries you own the rights to sell your title in. 

9. The final step is to set the price for your title. Please input the price of your title in all the available currencies. Audiobooks pricing is slightly more complicated than eBooks. The royalty percentage thresholds are as follows:

  • 45% royalties for audiobooks with a list price greater than or equal to $2.99
  • 35% royalties for audiobooks with a list price lower than $2.99

There are also special rules that apply for audiobook subscription customers: *If a customer redeems a free trial token for your audiobook, the royalty amount will be 0. If they redeem using a paid token, the royalty amount will be 32%. Otherwise, the royalty amount will be the values displayed above.

For more information on pricing, please see How to Set the Price on Your Audiobook.

 

10. Once all steps have been completed you can then select publish! If you have missed any steps, you will receive an error message. Otherwise, your audiobook is in good hands and has been sent for processing. It will soon be available on the Kobo store in 24-72 hours. 

 

Audiobook File Size

Currently, audiobooks cannot be more than 200 MB for each individual file and all files cannot combine to more than 2GB.
In order to reduce the file size for your audiobook to meet these requirements, you may consider compressing your audio files to a lower bitrate. Most audio is compressed to 64kbps upon ingestion to the Kobo system, so any higher fidelity is not necessary. You can also reduce your file size by converting to mono audio files rather than stereo if you have not done so already. Using one of or both of these techniques can help to reduce the size of your audio files while still providing a quality listening experience.

 

Audiobook Upload Troubleshooting

If you experience an experience an error when uploading your audio files, there are a couple things you can try to troubleshoot:

  • First, clear your cache and try accessing your dashboard again
  • If that doesn't work, please try accessing your dashboard through a different browser. For instance, if you're using Safari, try with Google Chrome.

If you're still receiving an error message after taking these steps, please reach out to writinglife@kobo.com and we will investigate the issue further.

 

How To Sign Up for Audiobooks

The audiobooks tool is being rolled out slowly and is not yet active on all accounts. If you would like us to enable the tool on your dashboard, please email us to request access and be sure to include a list of the audiobooks you wish to upload with us, including title, author, and plot summary information in your request.

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