In Today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* About Publishing to Audiobooks
* Of Interest
Quote of the Day
“The soul of negotiation is knowing you can always walk away.” A popular aphorism widely attributed to business and negotiation lore
About Publishing to Audiobooks
Okay, first, the new novel’s going well at over 37,000 words in and no end in sight. The writing’s pretty much my only excitement and my primary reason to get up, make coffee, and trudge out to the Hovel every morning.
And that’s fine. I’m not complaining. My drive or enthusiasm or whatever is much more than many writers have, or even that some other folks have about their job. I’m grateful for it, and I feel blessed.
More and more I find myself retreating into the wonderful solace of sitting in my writing chair, my fingers moving over the keyboard in an attempt to keep up as I race through the story with the characters. So writing is all good.
Publishing is another, much less important (to me) matter altogether
Less and less I find myself wanting to poke my head up into the publishing world only to get slapped around by money-grubbing non-creative entities.
You know the ones. Their only interest is sucking up the gravy while the rest of us—we who provide them with their living—go hungry. As I said to a fledgling writer at a conference a long time ago,
You know what writers would do if publishers didn’t exist? They’d write.
You know what publishers would do if writers didn’t exist? They’d be muttering “You want fries with that?”
Draw your own conclusions.
I’d already experienced money-grubbing leeches when I considered publishing to paper books. Now a similar situation has reared its ugly head in publishing to audiobooks. But again, you can judge for yourself:
I recently engaged Jason McGinty (and I’m very glad I did) to record the first book in the Wes Crowley saga, Rise of a Warrior.
Jason and I went back and forth via email, first deciding on a payment method and amount, and then about various aggregators we were both investigating as we went. In the end, we decided on a hybrid payment method: both a royalty split and an up-front PFH lump sum per novel.
(Later, because of how things turned out in deciding which aggregator to use, I canceled the royalty split and increased the PFH payment. Both were my unilateral choice.)
The main aggregator/distribution platforms we looked at were Amazon’s ACX/Audible, Author’s Republic, and Voices by INaudio (formerly Findaway Voices).
After hours of investigating each, we learned that ACX is the only one that would provide both a royalty split and an up-front Per-Finished-Hour (PFH) payment.
ACX also offered two different royalty structures: You would receive one royalty percentage (I forget, but probably 70%) if you decided to distribute only to Amazon/ACX (so you’re going exclusive) and a much lower 20% royalty if you chose wide distribution.
Put bluntly, that’s bad math. Or as Jason called it, “highway robbery.”
He was right, of course. If we went wide (and I ALWAYS go wide), they would pay a pittance of 20%, which we would then split per our agreement. Yet all the aggregator/distributor does is provide to retailers the same files that I or Jason upload to ACX. And of course, in the case of many retailers, you can do that yourself.
Of the only two current, viable alternatives—Author’s Republic and Voices by INaudio—both offered only wide distribution (including distribution to ACX/Audible) but paid an 80% royalty.
So choosing one of them seemed like a slam-dunk choice. At that point, my only question was how widely they would distribute my work.
BUT…
payment options were limited: one of those companies enabled (and would handle) royalty splits between the author and the narrator, and the other insisted on only up-front PFH payments.
So when the dust settled, as Jason told me, ACX seemed like our only choice.
But that isn’t quite true, and here’s where my views and yours as a writer and publisher might differ. As always, you do you.
I personally view considering any publisher or aggregator or sales venue as a negotiation. As with any negotiation, there’s a give and take. Eventually the parties agree and strike a deal, or eventually one party can’t abide the other’s terms and chooses to walk away.
But when you aren’t sitting across a table with a human to conduct that give and take, bear in mind that the other party’s negotiation is represented by their FAQs, terms of service, and privacy statement.
I strongly advise you to read all three before you engage with any online company for any reason. If nothing else, at least search for the terms “royalty[ies]” and “copyright” and “ownership” and “license[ing]” and read those sections.
I also strongly advise that when you go into any negotiation (or consider any platforms) you bear in mind that you don’t have to accept unacceptable terms. You can always walk away.
After all, you’re negotiating the value of your copyright: your intellectual property. And believe it or not, in many cases, your IP is far more valuable than your real property.
In my negotiation with ACX, I chose to walk away. That’s why I greatly increased my up-front PFH payment to Jason (voluntarily: he accepts what you offer) in exchange for his professionally recorded first full audiobook version of Rise of a Warrior.
For now, I’ll sit on my audio files.
I’m still considering going with either Author’s Republic or Voices by INaudio, and of course I can also wait to see how the audiobook field expands over the next few years.
The only certainty is that I absolutely won’t use ACX. Why? Because they negotiate in bad faith, offering only take-it-or-leave-it completely unacceptable terms. And I don’t like coercion. Coercion in any form stinks.
Finally, at my goofy, ignorant request, Jason even compiled all the chapters into a single file and provided that along with the more sensible individual chapters. (Just FYI, aggregators upload your book to retailers as individual chapter files.)
He even included a sample chapter because ACX requires it. He did that just in case I decide to go with either of the other aggregators and choose to have them distribute my book to ACX.
That’s how thoughtful he is, and I highly recommend him as a narrator to consider should you decide to expand your own reach into audiobooks. You can reach him by email at jason.mcginty.15@gmail.com.
Of Interest
What Stands Between You and Reality? A fascinating awareness article particularly useful for writers. I strongly recommend reading this.