Coaching

That is usually where it stalls. You have a tab full of good prospects, you know which ones are worth a pitch, and then you sit looking at a blank message wondering how not to sound like everybody else.

I’m Hannibal Hills. I built Sleuthy. I’ve narrated over 200 audiobooks since 2017 and made 100,000 royalty share sales on Audible alone, nearly all of it for indie authors I approached myself. By 2023 I had stopped auditioning almost entirely and put the time into finding and winning projects instead.

It’s one to one, on a video call, an hour at a time. You bring your real list and your real email. We work on those, not on theory.

What people bring

Your outreach message

The one you actually send. We take it apart and rebuild it together, and you leave with a version you can send that afternoon.

The commonest mistake I see costs people the most time: recording a custom sample of the author’s own book for every cold email. It feels generous, and it caps you at two or three approaches a day when the numbers need twenty. There is no audition stage in outreach. The demos on your website already did that job.

Everything you’re half-sure about

You don’t have one tidy question, you have nine untidy ones. Rates. Whether to go wide. What that clause means. Whether your demo is holding you back. Bring the lot and we’ll work down the pile, most pressing first.

Your shortlist

You’ve run the searches and saved the leads. Now which five do you write to first, and why? Work through the Audiobook Success Matrix in the Store before we meet, so the hour goes on your list and not on the method.

A contract you’re unsure about

You leave knowing which clauses you always change, and where you walk away.

Scaling up

For when the work arrives in fits and starts. You leave with a weekly number and a routine that hits it.

Plenty of people ask about something not on this list and that’s fine. If I’m not the right person for it I’ll tell you.

What actually happens

We get on a video call with your list, or your email, on the screen between us. I read it. I ask you a lot of questions about the authors you’re chasing and what you’ve already tried. Then we rewrite it, live, in a document we’re both looking at.

You do the typing. Not because I’m lazy, but because you have to be able to do this again next Tuesday without me sitting there. You finish the hour holding the actual thing, not notes about the thing. A written summary from me follows within a day: what we covered, and three things to do next.

How it works

1. Get in touch and tell me what you’re stuck on.
2. Eight quick questions, sent before we book. Rough answers are fine. It just means we don’t spend the first twenty minutes of a paid hour on things I could have read in advance.
3. Pick a time. I’m on US Eastern and afternoons suit me best, but I work with narrators in the UK too. Tell me your timezone and we’ll find an hour.
4. Pay for that one session, and we meet.
5. A written note within a day. What we covered, and three things to do next.

Selective, on purpose

There are no packages and no bundles. You book one hour, and if it helped, you book another. Paying session by session is how the coaches I work with do it, and I find it more honest.

Too much coaching can squash the instincts that make you good in the first place. So if I think coaching isn’t what you need, I’ll say so and point you somewhere better. I have done it before.

And if we’re twenty minutes in and I can tell I’m not the right person for this, I’ll stop there and refund you. I would rather give the money back than spend forty more minutes proving I was worth it.

What I don’t do

Book marketing. There’s no magic bullet, and I won’t sell you one. Ask me and I’ll tell you what I know for free.

Your outreach for you. The hour exists to make you good at it.

Hear me first, for nothing

Audiobooking is my free live show, every other Monday, 2 PM Eastern and 7 PM in the UK. It’s a good way to work out how I think before you spend a cent.

There’s more about the coaching, including sessions for authors, at hannibalhills.com/coaching.