Small Press Audiobook Project

The Small Press Audiobooks project (SPA) is a collaboration between the Contemporary Small Press, Cast Iron Radio and Inpress Books working alongside an array of producers, actors and studios across Britain. The project aims to help small press publishers of fiction, non-fiction and poetry with the production of audiobooks. Most of the financial production costs for the audiobooks will be taken care of by the project and an enabling scheme to distribute and sell the audiobooks for maximum profit share to the publisher is currently being devised.

The project is open to ALL UK publishers who employ fewer than 5 full-time staff.

Why audiobooks?

Figures from the Publisher’s Association show that audiobook sales surged 43% to £69m in 2018 but the cost of audiobook production can be high given the time and the technical skill required, making it particularly difficult for smaller presses to publish them.

This project aims to help with that. 

Project Stages

The project is in its early stages and is currently fundraising with multiple partners (the Arts Council, various trusts, individuals, foundations, crowdfunding, etc) and the hope is to produce 36 titles per year for an initial three-year period dependent upon the project having a strong list of initial titles with which to improve the chances of ensuring its funding.

At this early stage, for any presses interested in this initiative, we require that they nominate up to three of their titles for our consideration. 

Please download and fill in the application form (right-click to download) and email your submission to smallpressaudiobooks[at]gmail[dot]com by no later than Tuesday 18^th February 2020. 

We have tried to anticipate a few questions from publishers in the FAQ but if you have any other questions, please send them in the email with your nominated books.