While you probably won’t get rich doing it, there are more opportunities out there than you might think to earn money by recording audiobooks or writing book reviews or summaries. If you love to read anyway, you might consider turning your hobby into a side hustle since you’re already doing the bulk of the work.
How to make money recording audiobooks
Audiobook Creator Exchange (ACX) bills itself as a “marketplace where authors, literary agents, publishers, and other Rights Holders can connect with narrators, engineers, recording studios, and other Producers capable of producing a finished audiobook.” Through the site, you can essentially audition for a narrating gig by uploading samples of your voice. You can get paid a per-finished-hour rate or by sharing a percentage of the royalties from sales with the rights holders (if you think the book will do well enough, this might be the better deal).
As a reviewer, once you finish the 100- to 300-word review, you’ll also be expected to write an article for their “Beyond the Book” vertical to accompany the review. The website mainly focuses on fiction and non-fiction books.
It’s not clear how much BookBrowse pays their freelancers, but they do claim reviewers will “receive a byline and modest payment.” A nice little perk, though, is that you get to keep the books you review. You can apply to become a reviewer here.
Other sites like BookBrowse that pay to review books:
- Booklist
- Instaread
- Kirkus Review
- Online Book Club
- Publisher’s Weekly
- Reedsy Discovery
- Tyndale Blog Network
- Women’s Review of Book
- Writerful Books
How to make money summarizing books
Instead of critiquing the book, you could also choose to write synopses of them, such as for a site like getAbstract. GetAbstract is a book summary website for nonfiction books that aims to offer a full book summary in about a 15-minute read. You can also summarize podcasts and articles.
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How to make money reviewing books
If you are already in the habit of leaving book reviews on Goodreads or other book apps or websites, you could be doing something similar for some cash. BookBrowse, for example, is a website that pays for book reviews—and while they have staff who do this work, they also work with freelancers to review certain books that become available.
