E55: How to Distribute Your AudioBook into Audible and Other Audio Platforms – Interview with Jessica Kaye

Jessica Kaye

         The Founder of Big Happy Family (AudioBooks Distribution Company), A former President of the Audio Publishers Association and A Grammy Award-winning audiobook producer with more than 500 audio titles to her credit, she’s also Lawyer specialized in the Entertainment Law.

Jessica-Kaye on Be Efficient Tv with Ahmed Al Kiremli 2

What’s a copyright Vs. trademark Vs. Intellectual Property? Can you Why its hard for the Authors to publish directly to iTunes and Audible? What’s ACX and do you recommend using it?

Do you help in distributing only audio books or ebooks, paperbacks, CDs and other forms of content? What are the platforms that you distribute to? Do you take exclusive right or how it works?

Video Interview

With English and Arabic Subtitle

Audio

Bio

Introduction

Jessica Kaye is the Founder of Big Happy Family (AudioBooks Distribution Company), A former President of the Audio Publishers Association and A Grammy Award-winning audiobook producer with more than 500 audio titles to her credit, she’s also Lawyer specialized in the entertainment law. She has served as a member of the Board of Governors for the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Academy for Recording Arts & Sciences

Bio

Jessica Kaye holds both a Law Degree and a Masters Degree in Business. In 1990, Ms. Kaye founded The Publishing Mills, an audio and literary publishing company that successfully published nearly 200 titles. Ms. Kaye has produced several Grammy Award nominated works, including Crank Calls by Jonathan Winters, winner of the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Recording.

She has served as President of the Audio Publishers Association and as a member of the Board of Governors for the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Academy for Recording Arts & Sciences. Ms. Kaye is admitted to practice law in both California and Connecticut.

When she returned to private law practice, she found that she had a number of publishing clients with audio programs but too few to contract with download providers. To rectify that, she founded a digital distribution company. That company is Big Happy Family Audio.

She is the founder of Big Happy Family, LLC, a digital distribution company for audio programming. She was the creator and editor of, and a contributor to, the short story anthology Meeting Across the River (Bloomsbury, 2005).

Website & Social Media Links 

https://bighappyfamilyaudio.com

https://www.kayemills.com

https://twitter.com/jessicakayeEsq

https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=2447542

https://www.facebook.com/BigHappyFamilyAudio

 

Interview Questions

Questions

  • What’s your background and how did you get into the audio world after practicing law?
  • What’s audio publishers association?
  • What’s https://www.kayemills.com
  • Do you represent or pitch authors to publishers?
  • Why did you sell your company The Publishing Mills?
  • Can you brief us about the entertainment law?
  • What’s a copyright Vs. trademark Vs. Intellectual Property?
  • What was your involvement in the projects that won the Grammy? Examples of these projects?
  • You established Big Happy Family at 2006 and then George Hodgkins joined the company in 2009, why you decided to make this move and what’s the focus of each one of you, how many employees you have offline and online?
  • Why its hard for the authors to publish directly to iTunes and Audible?
  • What’s ACX and do you recommend using it?
  • Do you help in distributing only audio books or ebooks, paperbacks, CDs and other forms of content?
  • What are the platforms that you distribute to?
  • Why iTunes and Spotify is not within your platforms that you distribute to? What are the platforms that will expand to soon?
  • How long it takes you usually to list the licensor digital content on all of your platforms?
  • Fiction or Non Fiction works better with Audio and why?
  • How’s your fee structure works?
  • Do you help the licensor in title or description of the content?
  • Do you take exclusive right or how it works?
  • Do you take exclusive right only for the audio version of the content or other versions?
  • How long is the term of the agreements that you sign with the licensor and are you flexible with the period of the contract?
  • What kind of third party companies you license to in general?
  • Tell us more about your other projects that you are currently working on or planning for the future?
  • If I have a series for my content weather its audio interviews or content in other form of series do you take the exclusive right for all the content or only for the episodes that the licensor submit to you?
  • If you get the exclusive right for only the submitted episodes then you sign an agreement for each episode with the licensor or how it works legally?
  • When signing with a traditional publisher do they accept that the author keeps the right for the audio or ebooks versions of the book?
  • Why in some of your distributed content on audible other distribution or publishing names are mentioned instead of Big Happy Family?
  • Authors can use their own codes when they work with you or you generate the required codes for them?
  • Do you recommend that the author make their own code so they can keep them in case of cancelation with the distributors?
  • Do you have a system for the licensor to see live the sales performance across the platforms that you distribute to? Or how it works?
  • How often you send sales reports to the licensor?
  • In case the licensor or author wants to cancel the distribution deal with you, how long it will take you to remove the distributed content from all the platforms? And is there’s an other things that the author needs to know about cancellation?
  • Share with us some of the tools or software that make you more efficient?
  • What’s your daily life and work routine looks like? 
  • What are your other hobbies?
  • Who are your top 3 mentors?
  • The most important factors for success in 3 words?
  • What’s the biggest failure moment in your life and what did you learn from it?
  • What are the Top 3 apps that you use on your smart phone?
  • What are the habits that you are trying to develop to stay efficient?
  • What do you do to change your mood when you are depressed?
  • What’s the best advice that you ever received?
  • What’s your favorite quote?
  • If you have the chance, what would you say to advice your younger self?
  • What are your top 3 favorite books?
  • What are the top 3 people that you are inspired by? 
  • What makes you really happy?
  • How people can contact you?

Transcript

Transcript

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