I've been asked many times over the past few years, mainly by physicians and other healthcare professionals, about an audiobook version of my book, Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Engagement
My publisher has given me permission and the rights to potentially do an audio book for the upcoming 2nd revised edition
I am researching different production and cost options. But more importantly, I need to understand demand and customer needs. How many people are even going to be willing to read the book? Clearly, I *can* create this product…. but *should* I create? That's the classic “lean startup” question, should I build it? There's more “market risk” than “technical risk” with a project like this.
So what steps can I take?
Contact me here if you want to express interest in the potential audio book. I can use this list to keep them updated on experiments I do along the way and market to that list.
I could buy targeted Google AdWords ads for terms like “lean hospital” or “lean healthcare” or “lean hospital audiobook” (a term that admittedly probably doesn't get THAT much traffic). The ads would take people to my email list sign up page. I can measure the number of ad clicks and the number of registrations for the email list.
I can use my blog and my existing Lean Hospitals email list to get feedback from those who had downloaded the first chapter of the book, for free, in PDF form.
I can do surveys to ask about price points – how much are people willing to pay for an audio book?
I can produce a prototype audio book of just the first chapter. I can give this away (in exchange for an email address to use for future marketing) or sell it as a standalone file for a low price. This chapter might serve as the “minimum viable product,” of sorts. If nobody (or a relatively small number of people) downloads a free chapter, I can decide to scrap the idea of trying to sell a full audio book before investing too much time into it.
From my reading of the Lean Startup literature, that seems to be one key — to learn early, learn often, learn quickly, especially in the case where you can decide that a project is not worth the time. It's better to decide that earlier than later.
I can survey potential buyers about price points, preference in having it read by the author or by a professional, etc.
If I decide to go forward, I could ask people to help finance the project by pre-ordering a copy of the audio book, giving them a discount or special offers for doing so.
Other thoughts or recommendations?
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Check out my latest book, The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation:
Are you aware of the Audiobook Create Exchange?
http://www.acx.com/
It’s backed by Audible, who are owned by Amazon.
http://mickrooney.blogspot.com/2011/05/audible-launches-audiobook-creation.html
Thanks, Ged. I had one other person tell me about that via email, but thanks for posting the info. I will definitely be looking into that.
mark
I now have a lean startups style landing page:
http://www.LeanHospitalsAudioBook.com
(September 2013 update: I’ve actually stopped that landing page and the URL now forwards to this post).
Here is a blog post about my landing pages for the audio book and my Healthcare Kaizen book:
http://blog.kickofflabs.com/authors-using-kickofflabs-to-raise-awareness-about-the-lean-movement-in-healthcare
There are now two “proof of concept” audio files that I’ve recorded:
Basic MP3
A file that was tweaked a bit by former guest blogger Mike Lopez.
Let me know what you think.