How to Create & Publish Audiobooks on Ream

It's here! 🙌The definitive guide to create and publish audiobooks on Ream.

Many of the tools used in creating e-book stories are the same to create audiobooks. For more information on how to create e-book stories, see this help guide.

Let's dive into how you can create audiobook chapters on Ream...

Head to the Stories tab of your Author Dashboard and click Begin under Add New Story.

Be sure to select the Audio choice. Here you can either create a new audiobook story, or continue adding chapters to an existing story that hasn't been published yet.

Add your audiobook cover (required) and fill out the Metadata and Details for your audiobook. See our image requirements here. Please note: required fields will be highlighted in red if the field is left blank, and you won't be able to move forward until those fields are complete.

Next, upload your audio files, one chapter at a time. You can either drag and drop or select from a file. Please note: audio files must be in .mp3 format.

If files are anything other than .mp3 file format, an error will occur and the file won't upload. Refresh your browser tab to start over and upload the correct format.

Your uploaded audiobook will be shown in your stories page, signified by the headphone icon. Click the 3 dots to 'view' your audiobook, get a shareable link, add information or delete the story.

Now that your files are uploaded, you can publish them to your page tiers.

Some points to remember:

Like ebooks, readers can comment in chapters, and those comments can be replied to or deleted by authors.
As you may already know, audio files are much larger than text files and it takes a larger area to store these files on our servers. Authors will have one GB of data storage available to them at no extra cost. After that, authors will have the option to upgrade to Ream Unlimited Data for only $4.99USD, which will give you Unlimited Data for audio files and you can deliver your audiobooks to unlimited readers! This can be found in the Settings tab of your Author Dashboard (currently named Income) to upload additional files.

*Once this tab is live, the cost of the additional audiobook data will be shown to authors on the same Settings tab.

Publishing & Scheduling Your Audiobook:

Like publishing e-books, there are six main parts to publishing audiobook chapters on Ream.

Publish Now — publish individual chapters to any tiers you want (Public, Followers, or Paid Tiers).
Publish All — publish all chapters in a story in just a few clicks to any tiers you want (Public, Followers, or Paid Tiers)
Create Release Schedule — set a recurring schedule to publish chapters on specific days and times to any tiers you want (can be weekly, bi-weekly, monthly)
View the Story Publishing Records (bottom of publishing page): this section allows you to see previously published chapters including their release dates and the tiers they are available in.
Unpublish – allows you to unpublish a specific chapter from a specific tier. Great for making chapters available to Followers or Public for a limited-time!
Unpublish All – unpublish all chapters in your story from all tiers. Perfect for fixing mistakes (we all make them). Note: we will be adding the ability to unpublish all from specific tiers in the future.

#1: Publish Now

Publish Now enables you to publish any chapter to any tier(s) at the click of a button.

If you use Publish Now to publish multiple chapters within a 5-minute window then only a single notification email will be sent to your readers (learn more here about Ream's notification emails and here about tier publishing on Ream).

To Publish Now...

Step 1: Navigate to the Chapter Controls section and Click to expand on the Chapter List.

Now you will see all of the chapters currently in your story.

As you add new chapters on the Content page, they will appear in the Chapter Controls.

Note: Queuing has ZERO effect on Publishing Now. Queuing is only for creating a release schedule.

Step 2: Just click Publish Now next to the chapter you want to publish. Then select the tiers you want to publish your chapter to... and TA-DA!

Your chapter is now published!

You can learn more here about how you can share a link to a specific chapter with your readers.

Note: once you Publish a chapter to all of your tiers it will disappear from your Chapter Controls section since there is no other tier to publish it to.

Don't worry! You will still see this chapter in the Publishing Records section (more on this soon).

#2: Publish All

Publish All enables you to publish all chapters in your story to any tier(s) at the click of a button.

When you Publish All a single notification email will be sent to your readers. Don't worry we won't spam your readers with 100 different chapter updates!

To Publish All...

Step 1: Navigate to the Chapter Controls panel and click on the Publish All button at the bottom of the panel.

Step 2: Select the tiers you want to publish to and click Yes to confirm you'd like to publish your chapters.

Note: if chapters have already been published in your story, then they will remain published when you Publish All.

#3: Create Release Schedule

Schedules enable you to publish chapters at recurring dates to specific tiers.

For instance, let's say you want to publish a new chapter in your story to Tier 1 and Tier 2 at 9 am ET every Friday. In just a few clicks you can set this Schedule up and have your chapters published for months on end!

There are 3 parts to scheduling:

Queuing Your Chapters
Creating the Release Schedule
Managing your Created Release Schedule!

Part 1: Here's the lowdown on how Queuing Chapters works:

Before you can Create a Release Schedule you will need to Queue the chapters that you want to add to the Release Schedule.

The good news is that as you upload new chapters to Ream, you can queue them with one click and add them to your existing Release Schedule without having to go Schedule it again (this saves you a ton of time!).

Note: only chapters you add to the Queue will be added to Release Schedules. This means that if you don't Queue a Chapter, it won't be included in a Release Schedule.

Queued Chapters are released from a Schedule in the order they are displayed on the Content page. You can re-order chapters anytime on the Content tab and this will change the order chapters release in for your schedule.

To Queue a chapter head to the Chapter Controls section.

Then you can click Queue All to queue up every chapter in the story for a Release Schedule.

Or you can check the box next to Unqueued for individual chapters and once checked they will be Queued and be added to any Release Schedule you have.

IMPORTANT NOTE: One last very important thing to know about Queues is that there is only one Queue for ALL of your Release Schedules.

One Queue to Rule them All! This means that if you Queue a chapter it will be added to all Release Schedules you have created for that story. If you Unqueue a chapter then it will be removed from ALL of your Release Schedules.

Which speaking of... we should get into how to create a release schedule!

Part 2: Here's the low-down on creating a release schedule.

Now that you know how queuing works, we can create a release schedule to share these chapters with our readers!

To begin just click the Create Release Schedule button in the top right-hand corner of your screen.

Once you press this button, the Schedule Creation portal will appear. Here's what it looks like...

Wowza! A lot is going on here. This Scheduler is super powerful and designed to meet the needs of nearly any chapter release schedule you desire.

The next step is to fill out the Release Schedule according to your specifications and click the Add Schedule button.

Here's how the different parameters of the Story Scheduler work (note that scheduling Community posts on Ream works differently, you can read about that here):

Interval: this can be weekly, bi-weekly (every other week) or monthly. This helps you decide how often you want to release Queued chapters.
Days to Schedule: this can be used to select days of the week you want to release your chapters. This can just be one day of the week or you can choose multiple days of the week. For Monthly intervals instead of choosing a day of the week you will select a day of the month such as the 1st, 2nd, etc.
Tier to Release to: you can select Public, Followers, or Paid Tiers. You can even select multiple tiers for one schedule to make your scheduling process super simple and streamlined. This guide covers in more detail which tiers see your chapters on Ream.
Time: this is the time of day you'd like your chapters to release on. Your local time zone will be displayed and it will be released at that time (the exact moment) for readers across the globe. That means a 9 am chapter release on the East Coast of the United States would be published at 6 am on the West Coast.
✨Important Update✨: as of July 2024, the scheduler will no longer be following Daylight Savings Time. This means that in the summer months your scheduled chapters will release one hour earlier than the time you select. For example: if you select a 9:00 am release time PDT (west coast), the chapter will actually release at 8:00 am PDT during the summer months. When Daylight Savings Time ends (winter months), the time you choose will be accurate. We apologize for any confusion this may cause.
Schedule Start Date: this is when you'd like the release schedule to start. You can select today if you want it to start immediately, or you can start it in the future :). Pro Tip: you can use different Schedule Start Dates across different schedules so that tiers can get the same chapters on different days with just a few clicks of a button. For instance, maybe Tier 1 gets chapters starting March 1 but your Followers have to wait an extra 30 days to read those chapters so the Schedule Start Date would be on April 1 for that tier.
Chapters to Publish: this is how many chapters you'd like to publish in each release date. The default is one, but you can choose any number you'd like! If you enter 3 Chapters to Publish this means on every instance of the Schedule 3 Queued Chapters will be published. So if you set there to be one release date every Monday at 10 am ET, then 3 chapters would be released on that date and time. However, if you chose 5 Chapters to Publish, 5 chapters would be released then. You get the idea ;).

With your Release Schedule now set to perfection, you can hit Add Schedule! Your chapters will now be released to your readers without you doing anything else. Yay!

Now we can get to the last part of scheduling...

Part 3: Managing Your Created Release Schedule!

Once you create your Release Schedule, you can view it on the Publishing page in the Schedules panel.

At a glance you can see what tier the chapters in the schedule will be published to as well as the recurring day, interval, and time.

At any time you can click Remove Schedule to remove the Release Schedule in its entirety. You can then create a new release schedule or choose to publish the chapters manually.

You can also choose to Publish Now for any chapter queued in a release schedule. If you do so, it will move up the other chapters in the Queue to be published earlier in the Schedule.

Lastly, you can also Unqueue and/or Queue chapters at any time in the Chapters Control panel. In real time your schedule will update to reflect the release dates for all currently Queued Chapters in the order they appear on the content page (which you can change this order anytime).

Phew! Now with the deep dive on scheduling, we can head to unpublishing chapters.

#4: View Story Publishing Records

Next we head to the Published Chapters panel at the bottom of the page.

Here we can click on Publishing Records to expand the history of all currently published chapters in our story.

Now you can see all your Published chapters for your story!

You can see the date the chapter released on and the tier it is available in.

Now, this leads us to the final two parts to Publishing on Ream...

#5: Unpublish Chapters

This one is easy!

Just click the Unpublish button next to the individual Chapter and Tiers you'd like to Unpublish the chapter from.

Confirm you'd like to Unpublish the chapter and that's it! Your fans in the specific Tier you Unpublished from will no longer have access.

You can Unpublish any number of chapters from any tier at any time you'd like!

But I know what you're thinking. If I want to unpublish an entire story it will take a long time to do this for every chapter!

That's exactly why we also have...

#6: Unpublish All

The Unpublish All button allows you to Unpublish ALL of your chapters in a story from ALL of your tiers.

Here's how to do it.

First, click the Unpublish all button at the bottom of the Published Chapters panel.

Then click Yes to confirm you'd like to Unpublish all chapters in your story.

And that's it!

Now you have the full details on how to Publish and Schedule Chapters on Ream. Looking for more information about Publishing stories on Ream?

We highly recommend checking out these helpful guides linked below...

Even More Guides to Publishing on Ream

Here are some other helpful guides about Publishing on Ream:

Creating Your Story Details on Ream (genres, tags, and more)

How Public + Follower Chapters and Community Posts Work

Pro Tips on Publishing Chapters to Maximize Discovery

Which Tiers Can See My Chapters on Ream?

Adding Text Messages to Stories in Ream

Emails Ream Sends to Followers and Paid Members

If you have any questions, please contact our Support Team at support@reamstories.com.