In Today’s Journal
* On Audiobook Narration, Part 2
* Of Interest
On Audiobook Narration, Part 2
Working with an Audiobook Narrator, for Indie Authors
A guest post by Jason McGinty, an audiobook narrator
What to do after you find a narrator?
Once you’ve found a narrator, the narrator pretty much takes it from there. If they’re just pretending to be a professional like me, they’ll probably do all of the editing and production themselves, or they might hire a producer of their own, but that’s all up to them.
ACX (and I would assume the other platforms too) have their own standards for audio quality that they hold narrators to, so you can be reasonably sure you’re not going to get a crap product.
That said, there are a couple of things for you to do at different points in the process. Again, I will talk about ACX because it’s what I know best, but I would assume other platforms have similar processes.
The first thing the narrator will submit is a 15-minute sample for you to listen to. This gives you a chance to listen to their voice and make sure their style fits what you expect once it’s applied to your own book.
The narrator won’t be able to upload anything else until you approve the sample. If you don’t like the sample, you can let them know what you’d like to change, or if they’re too much of a lost cause you can ditch them and find a different narrator.
Once you’ve approved the sample, the narrator is off to the races and they can start uploading their finished project files. They will usually upload one audio file per chapter, unless you have an exceptionally long chapter, in which case they might have to split it into two files.
You will be able to listen to all of the files at your leisure as they’re uploaded. If your narrator is awesome like me and you trust them, you don’t even have to listen to the files if you don’t want to.
When the narrator has finished recording and uploading their files, they will hit a submit button on their end. At that point, they can’t make any more changes, and the ball is in your court to submit the project for ACX’s quality review. Do that, and you’re done.
The last thing you will need to do before submission is upload a cover image. This should be a square version of your book’s cover. It has to be square, and meet the requirements of the platform you’re using. You can make it yourself, or get somebody else to do it, and it can be uploaded at any point before you submit the project for review.
ACX says their review can take “up to” 10 business days, but in my experience they take every bit of that for every single project. All of my projects through ACX have been released on the 10th business day after submission.
If they find any problems during their review, like a cover image not meeting requirements or audio not being up to par, they will reject it and kick it back to you. Either you or the narrator will have to correct the issues and then resubmit for another 10-day review process. I have never had one rejected, so it’s not too hard to get it accepted as long as you pay attention to the requirements.
After that, you’re done and your audiobook will be available on Amazon/Audible and Apple Books. Again, this is if you’re using ACX, but other platforms might publish it to different places.
Speaking of different places, we need to talk about distribution rights. This ties in with production cost, so we’ll talk about both at the same time. I know you’ve been wondering how big of a blow to your wallet this is going to be, so let’s talk about that now.
How much is this going to cost you?
It depends on the project and the narrator. Narrators get paid in three ways:
- Up-front price based on a per-finished-hour (PFH) rate. “Per-finished-hour” means the total is calculated based on the length of the final product. If the rate was $50 PFH and the final product came out at 2 hours long, you owe the narrator $100. This will be paid on completion by you, and you won’t be able to submit for review until the narrator confirms they’ve been paid.
- Royalty share. The narrator gets a cut of the purchase price for every sale of your audiobook.
- Some combination of 1 and 2.
Whether you go with up-front PFH, royalty share, or both, the rate and/or percentage share will be negotiated by you and the narrator. Most narrators on ACX will display their preferred payment method and range, but it’s all subject to negotiation between you and them.
Notice that this could be either really cheap or really expensive for you up front, depending on the length of the book and the PFH rate, if you go with that.
When you create the project, ACX will give you an estimate of how long the finished product will be based on the word count, which should give you an idea of what the total cost will be based on the rate you negotiate.
The other thing to know about when it comes to these things is distribution rights. Again, I’m going to tell you about ACX because it’s what I know, but I also know for a fact that some of the other platforms have their stuff set up differently from ACX.
Back tomorrow with Part 3 of On Audiobook Narration: Options. Talk with you again then.
Of Interest
How Inaccurate Genre Labels Affect a Book’s Visibility