I’ve written previously about my experiences recording an audiobook myself. Like most things with self-publishing, there were tons of things to learn and ways to improve the process. I’ve recorded two non-fiction books and used AI to create an audiobook of my novella Merchant Magician (with Amazon’s virtual voice).
Most authors hire a narrator to produce their audiobook. For fiction, it’s strongly recommended not to read it yourself, since performing is a very different skill than writing. This has never made much sense to me, as readers will happily attend live readings by authors. This is also a performance.
ACX is the production part of the Audible website, which is owned by Amazon. Behind the scenes, authors and narrators are able to construct their audiobook, using a simple web interface. After creating the contents, broken down by chapter and section, the author or the narrator can upload a mp3 for each. ACX does an automatic check on each audio uploaded. After all sections are provided, there’s a human review of the complete audiobook, taking around two weeks, then it’s live for listeners to purchase and hear.
ACX lets you post a project, then search for voice actors by accent and gender. After listening to their portfolio pieces, you can request that they (and any talent that find your project themselves) submit a short audition, reading a portion of your book. Once you’ve selected your narrator, both parties sign a contract. The three options for hiring a narrator are:
- Paying them “per finished hour”, where an agreed upon rate is multiplied by the final length as a one time payment.
- Agreeing to a “royalty share”, where royalties from each sale of the audiobook is split between the author and narrator (after Audible takes their cut).
- “Royalty Share Plus” is a combination of the above payment methods, where the royalty is split, but the narrator also gets a “per finished hour” payment.
My book, Dimensional Traveler, is in the final stages of being recorded as an audiobook. There are tons of enthusiastic audiobook listeners, but LitRPG (the genre Dimensional Traveler is in) are particularly ravenous. When I released Dimensional Traveler, I immediately got people asking about an audiobook verison.
Working with the British narrator, David Winter, went great! I originally wanted a North American accent, but David wanted to move into LitRPG narration, and he won me over. We agreed on a delivery date, and he put me on his schedule a few months away.
Each time he had a recording session, he’d post the chapters he’d produced in ACX. My wife and I would listen and send him feedback. Most of the feedback were typos we noticed for the first time when we were following along with the text and his narration. He fixed the issues and, once everything was posted and approved, our first narrated audiobook went live.
Have you ever hired a narrator to produce an audiobook? How did it go for you?
Thank you!