Expert Audiobook Transcription Services in Australia

As a rough guide, one hour of spoken audio produces approximately 8,000 to 10,000 words of raw transcript. A typical non-fiction book is 40,000 to 60,000 words, so you need roughly 5 to 8 hours of focused recording. However, not all of that will be usable — tangents, repetition, and off-topic sections get cut during restructuring. We generally recommend recording 20–30% more than your target word count to ensure there is enough material after editing. If you already have existing recordings (podcasts, webinars, interviews), those count toward your total.

Good enough that a human can understand you clearly. You do not need a professional studio — a quiet room with a decent phone or laptop microphone works fine. What kills transcription accuracy is background noise (cafes, construction, wind), multiple people talking over each other, and very low recording volume. If you are recording specifically for this project, we send you a short guide on how to get the best quality from whatever device you already own. We accept MP3, WAV, M4A, MP4, MOV, and most other common audio and video formats.

For a standard book-length project (5–10 hours of audio), expect 3 to 6 weeks from receiving your final recordings to delivering a structured manuscript draft. This includes transcription, restructuring, spoken-to-written conversion, gap identification, any follow-up recording, and final formatting. The timeline depends heavily on how organised your original recordings are — chapter-by-chapter narration is faster to process than dozens of unstructured voice memos recorded over months.