You Can Earn Money by Reviewing Books and Recording Audiobooks
While you probably won’t get rich doing this, there are more opportunities than you think to make money recording audiobooks or book reviews or resumes. If you love reading anyway, you might consider turning your hobby into a part-time job since you already do most of the work.
How to make money recording audiobooks
The Audiobook Creator Exchange (ACX) bills itself as “a marketplace where authors, literary agents, publishers, and other rights holders can connect with storytellers, engineers, record labels, and other producers capable of creating a finished audiobook.” Through the site, you can essentially audition for a performance by uploading samples of your voice. You can choose to pay at the rate per hour completed, or you can choose to share a percentage of royalties on sales with the copyright holders (if you think the book will sell well, this might be a better deal).
Another proven ACX alternative is Findaway Voices .
How to make money from book reviews
If you’re already in the habit of leaving book reviews on Goodreads or other book apps or websites, you can do something similar for little money. BookBrowse , for example, is a website that pays for book reviews, and while they have employees who do the work, they also work with freelancers to review certain books that become available.
As a reviewer, after you complete a 100 to 300 word review, you will also be required to write an article for their “Beyond the Book” vertical to accompany the review. The site is mainly focused on fiction and non-fiction.
It’s unclear how much BookBrowse pays its freelancers, but they claim that reviewers will “get paid modestly.” A nice little benefit is that you can save the books you’re viewing. You can apply to become a reviewer here .
Other sites like BookBrowse that pay to review books:
- List of books
- Kirkus Overview
- Online book club
- Publisher’s Weekly
- Reedsey Discovery
- Tyndale Blog Network
- Women’s book review
- Writing books
How to make money writing notes
Instead of criticizing a book, you can also write a synopsis of it, for example for a site like getAbstract . GetAbstract is a non-fiction book summary website that aims to provide a complete summary of a book in approximately 15 minutes of reading. You can also summarize podcasts and articles.