ACX Audio Book Deal Negotiations

field19

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I'm in the process of "casting" my audio book and wanted to know what I'll be in for.

I have many questions and if any of you could answer them or direct me to current excellent resources that can, I would appreciate it.

For example,

Would any of the good narrators touch royalty split deals with an unknown author?

Is it possible for a narrator to fall in love with a manuscript so much that they would be willing to do that?

Are there other ways to advertise a new audio book other than by social media. Would good narrators help with promoting it?

Does the age perception of the narrator by the listener help or hinder the sale of the audio book?

Will there in the near future be an alternative to Audible, such as itunes? I heard the monopoly many come to an end soon and I would hate to enter into an exclusive deal through ACX if I could have posted the same audio book with Apple.
 

RightHoJeeves

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I'm in the process of "casting" my audio book and wanted to know what I'll be in for.

I have many questions and if any of you could answer them or direct me to current excellent resources that can, I would appreciate it.

For example,

Would any of the good narrators touch royalty split deals with an unknown author?
I believe ACX has an option where authors do a royalty split with narrators instead of paying the narrators up front. This arrangement lasts for 7 years, and most successful self published authors wouldn't do it because it basically means you're getting less royalties for 7 years. But the catch is that narrators probably aren't going to do it for an unknown, because they want some degree of assurance that they're going to get paid. So they'd probably be happy to do it if you were selling heaps of books.

Is it possible for a narrator to fall in love with a manuscript so much that they would be willing to do that?
If the narrator thinks your book is going to be successful, sure. But they're probably unlikely to do it just because they love the book. Their time is worth money.

Are there other ways to advertise a new audio book other than by social media. Would good narrators help with promoting it?
They might do... but I wouldn't want to rely on them. They've already basically recorded the book for free, they're not likely to want to do promotion for free too.

Does the age perception of the narrator by the listener help or hinder the sale of the audio book?
That would depend on so much, but it would make sense to pick a narrator that is suitable for your audience.

Will there in the near future be an alternative to Audible, such as itunes? I heard the monopoly many come to an end soon and I would hate to enter into an exclusive deal through ACX if I could have posted the same audio book with Apple.
Aye, this is certainly a risk.

From my understanding of audiobook production, they are a great thing to do if you're already selling a decent number of ebooks. An audiobook version won't suddenly sell gangbusters if the ebook is doing poorly. And if the book is selling poorly, then good narrators are unlikely to enter into a royalty split. If the book is selling well they would be, but if the book is selling well then you have the capital to just pay outright for the narration and get all the royalties.

This may be a disappointing response, but it's probably best to hold off on producing the audiobook until you're moving some serious units of the ebooks.
 

M. H. Lee

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I'm in the process of "casting" my audio book and wanted to know what I'll be in for.

I have many questions and if any of you could answer them or direct me to current excellent resources that can, I would appreciate it.

For example,

Would any of the good narrators touch royalty split deals with an unknown author?

Is it possible for a narrator to fall in love with a manuscript so much that they would be willing to do that?

Are there other ways to advertise a new audio book other than by social media. Would good narrators help with promoting it?

Does the age perception of the narrator by the listener help or hinder the sale of the audio book?

Will there in the near future be an alternative to Audible, such as itunes? I heard the monopoly many come to an end soon and I would hate to enter into an exclusive deal through ACX if I could have posted the same audio book with Apple.

I paid up front for all of my titles that I've put into audio. (About twenty, mostly shorter works, but one novel in there.) Best I can answer is that if you want to do royalty share, put your book up for an audition and see what you get. You might luck into someone who's looking to make a name for themselves so wants to work with you. My theory was, if there's upside to putting books into audio, then I want all that upside for myself.

If you do royalty share I've heard that narrators will also push the book since they earn money from sales but that's probably very dependent on who the narrator is and how good they are at sales.

There are some other audiobook promo sites out there, but not many. (Marc or Mark (can't remember which) Cooper has posted about audiobooks extensively on kboards. I'd do a search there to find those threads. The main one has probably twenty links in it.)

I would say you want a narrator that fits your story. If the protagonist is young, you want them to sound young. If they're old you want them to sound old.

When you publish through ACX your books are listed on iTunes as well as Audible and Amazon. There are also some other sites that publish audiobooks that you can publish to if you're not exclusive to ACX. I did my first four titles exclusive to ACX and the rest non-exclusive so I could publish them elsewhere, but have yet to get the ball rolling on getting them listed elsewhere. I plan to use a service that will do that for me rather than trying to list on each site directly.

Also...in terms of when to put a book into audio...I decided my titles were short and I could get a reasonable narrator for fairly cheap ($100/finished hour) and I put some non-fiction titles out in audio that were not selling all that well at the time. The first one I put out got a glowing review from someone and got sticky without any effort by me and earned back my cost of production within three or four months and now makes me $30/month without my doing anything. That was a title that maybe sold a couple copies a month at the time I put it in audio. It was one of the first books I'd published and I didn't have a good cover on it initially so that may explain why it does well in audio but not as well in ebook. That example is probably an exception to the rule. Most say that audiobook sales are some small fraction of ebook sales. So you sell 1,000 ebooks, maybe you get 50 audiobook sales or less. And keep in mind too that what you get paid on your books is not what you think you'll get paid. I have a novel out with a retail price of $20 for the audio and I had some sales recently that paid me 50 cents per sale. Probably Whispersynch sales? But Audible subscription sales pay lower as well.
 

field19

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Would it be a marketing mistake to select a female voice to record my spy/military thriller if my protagonist happens to be a male Delta Force veteran? Would listeners of that genre expect to hear a male voice? Does it even matter?
 

RightHoJeeves

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Would it be a marketing mistake to select a female voice to record my spy/military thriller if my protagonist happens to be a male Delta Force veteran? Would listeners of that genre expect to hear a male voice? Does it even matter?

I suspect it might. Check out what similar military thrillers are doing. If they're all using male narrators, use a male narrator.
 

field19

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That is discouraging. I really love what this female narrator does with the voices, unlike all of the male submissions I've heard. My story really is more of an urban spy thriller with military action flashbacks. It really focuses on relationships and contains several strong female characters.
 

RightHoJeeves

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That is discouraging. I really love what this female narrator does with the voices, unlike all of the male submissions I've heard. My story really is more of an urban spy thriller with military action flashbacks. It really focuses on relationships and contains several strong female characters.

It might be okay, I haven't read your book. I would go with what similar books do. If 99% of the similar books are done by male narrators, then it would be a shame for your book to struggle just because of the narrator's gender.
 

field19

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Below are the narrators I am considering. Have any of you heard of or worked with any of them before?

Bill Lord

Chris Abell

Teri Clark Linden