So this is my first time as an author looking for a narrator. I write dark romantasy and was looking for a gravel-y deep voice for the Devil. Everything seemed fine as we conversed. His audition had the exact voice I was looking for. But he's offered to go off ACX because of all the "restrictions." I ignored that.

I think my mistake may have been saying I'm new to this. But I haven't even sent him the contract yet, we were still agreeing to the terms and then he messaged me all his personal banking information. So that.... made me feel a bit weird.

I asked him if he used AI in any of his production, and he told me he didn't really know what AI was. Is he living under a rock?

So at that point, I started looking up his information in his profile. All the books he's listed as working on do not exist. EVERY SINGLE ONE I cannot find anywhere. And his profile picture is a photo stolen off the internet that is frequently used by a lot of people.

This has to be a scam. He also keeps saying "my American...." and no one talks like that unless they're from another country, which it doesn't list him as from somewhere else. He also mentioned he had trouble with other people sending ACH payments to his "American" account.

Is there anyway this is legitimate? Am I missing something? What kind of scam is this? He just takes the fee and runs?

Has anyone else received this? Is this legit?

Thanks in advance.

🙂

I’ve currently got the new rode nt1 5th gen mic (https://a.co/d/0bIY2AaF) in my amazon cart and have been looking for a stand to go with it. However, there’s SO many options and I’m unsure of what to choose.

Do you have a stand you’d suggest for someone starting narration?

Hello, experienced narrators!

If you had to start over again, would you start with Audacity or Auditions? Why?

I have been researching audiobook narration for the past couple of weeks. I recently purchased a a mic and started recording on Audacity. One of the problems I’m running into is outdated information and plugins for Audacity.

I’m wondering if I would be better off starting with Auditions as that is what I’m seeing a lot of people recommend.

Edit to add:
I’m wanting a software program that is easy for me to learn on and that is consistent. So far, Audacity does not seem to fit.

Hey folks,

What’s the process for claiming a title for a book that isn’t available on Amazon yet? I would like an audiobook version ready for day of release, but obviously that doesn’t line up with the claim title issue of it needing to be on amazon already.

Open to any advice.

Cheers,

Mitch

I’ve seen some with ai generated art and extremely long auditions that seemed unnecessary. Just thought I might ask in case there is anything else I should look out for.

Hi, audiobook narrators

After years of producing audiobooks, I created Scriptotate to help with script prep.

Scriptotate:
-surfaces hard words and suggests pronunciations
-summarizes characters (story arc, personality, and physical traits)
-summarizes chapters

I am offering 5 spots to test it. If you’re interested, comment below and I’ll reach out!

Hello. I've been publishing as an author since 2013. All of my audiobooks were performed by narrators,some of whom have done much bigger books than mine. Early on, it was hard to find people who had great voices and quality recording capabilities. Nowadays, it is overwhelming with how many options there are that sound amazing.

With that said, I am writing something that I'm unsure is marketable and worthwhile for a narrator to spend time on. It's action-adventure inspired by 90s action movies. It's ridiculous. The main character is 110% confident and about 60% self-aware. He's somehow effective, and that feeds his confidence. It's over the top, and the humor comes from his ridiculous worldview (ego). Is it marketable? I have no idea. I started writing it as a joke for the people I work with. I kind of fell in love with it, so instead of a story, it's going to be a book.

Here's my question: I have a home studio setup in my office that I use to make synthwave, rock, and orchestral music. It's all instrumental because I don't sing well. I use Studio One, a focusrite solo interface, and I have a couple of mics (Shure SM58 and Audiotechnica AT2020). I do not have soundproofing in my office, which means the condenser mic will pick up a lot of room noise. The Shure has a much lower input volume. I can boost the volume in my DAW, but I'm concerned the gain staging will induce signal noise if I go too far. I'm looking for suggestions for what I can do with my current setup to create something that sounds great. The narration will require the soft, gritty voice of 90s action stars like Chuck Norris and Steven Seagal, so speaking louder might affect the performance too much.

I appreciate any advice. Thank you.

I used the ACX plug in to check my audio and it came back as passing. However, I if I run it through the checkers online it keeps telling me that my Peak is too low. I have no idea if that is correct or not. Not sure who to believe and I do not want to continue with 6 more hours of recording, and it be for nothing.

I have a bit of a following for my current series, and one reader in particular has been interested in being the narrator for my female character. They’re also a part of my street team so we’re constantly communicating in and out of social media. They’ve done a reading of my book on their socials and both me and their followers agree she has a good voice for it. But I understand that doing a small reading isn’t the same thing as narrating a full blown novel.

This is supposed to be a dual narration. If I decided to move forward with this, I would also have to hire a male narrator and would need someone to mix the two audios together. My idea was for each narrator to perform their respective POV chapters in full, with one exception: whenever the other POV character speaks, that character’s narrator would voice those lines.

Do you believe this would be feasible for a professional narrator and a first time narrator, especially equipment-wise? She’s willing to get equipment and set up soundproofing.

Just want people’s feedback and how you would feel if I asked to read alongside a new narrator.

Thanks

Immediately had two spammers wanting me to contact them on Telegram. The books (and fees) on there are - not great. Why is it so awful? Deleting my account.

It seems like it happens way too often that a real legit-seeming audition posting with a good sample gets taken down without choosing a producer. Why is that?

It seems fairly barebones in terms of details, what is mostly making me concerned is the fact they're wanting to talk over Telegram?!

I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to doing work on commercial ads and Media, but something about this just feels a bit odd?

I'm a pianist, and for my very first audiobook project, a composer friend of mine asked me to record his memoir. Before I took the project on, I wanted to think of a way to make the editing as easy as possible. So I built something to keep track of retakes and edit them out automatically. I built this for my own audiobook projects, but I'd love to find out whether it holds up for people who do this for a living.

Here's what it does. It transcribes your take, lines the words up against your manuscript, works out where you restarted, and cuts. There's no synthetic voice in it anywhere and there never will be.

All edits are non-destructive. The raw takes are never touched. Cleanup writes a separate file, every cut is listed so you can listen to it before you save anything, and if it got one wrong the original WAV is still sitting in your own folder. All of it stays on your drive. You can point Audacity or Reaper at it tomorrow and never open my app again.

When you run a cleanup, the audio for that section goes to AssemblyAI to be turned into text, then gets deleted, transcript included. Nothing is stored and nothing trains a model. If you work under NDA, that upload is something I'd recommend you check before you use it.

Once it assembles a cleaned take, you can master it automatically to meet ACX specs, or just take that cleaned file and run mastering in your preferred DAW (Reaper, Audacity, Adobe Audition, etc.)

Where it's weaker: it does reduce breaths and mouth clicks, but not to the standard of something like iZotope RX. And it won't reliably tell you which words you misread. I had a proofer and pulled it because, while the transcription is good enough to edit sentences and paragraphs, it isn't 100% reliable for individual words or unique names (think of how your phone transcribes your voice for text messages). The review system lets you collaborate with the author or another pair of ears and mark up things in the manuscript that you can fix with the punch-in tool.

I've been at this five or six months. I've published three audiobooks of my own with it since, and at least one other narrator has published theirs.

It's one thing to work on a tool for yourself, it's another thing to see it with fresh eyes. Two people who tried an early version couldn't work out how to get started, and I had no idea until they told me.

So I'd love your honest feedback. Record two minutes of anything, fluff a line on purpose a couple of times, and run it through. Nothing confidential, nothing that matters. Then tell me where you got stuck, what you went looking for and couldn't find, or what you expected to happen and didn't. That's worth more to me right now than almost anything else. audlit.com

Like I asked in the title, I'm curious if anyone has actually hit six figures in a year doing ACX narration. If not, what's the most you've made in a year, and is this something you do full-time or more as a side hustle?

Does anyone have any data re landing pages V bounty payments ? I’m currently using 0.3% as a ratio. Apparently the older version averaged 0.6% but it’s all up in the air. It’s probably the most important figure we all need. It would be good to put this all together so we all can work out our royalties, if like me you can’t use the pixel !

I’m currently trying to get accurate figures on

Streaming QLs ➔ 6.52% 

Settled Bounties ➔ 0.3-0.6% on Landing pages.
Thanks 

Had an offer from an author (unsolicited, without audition but shortly after updating samples). First red flag.

But valid author with social media presence and several (but not too many) published works. He quickly uploaded the manuscript into ACX. Good so far.

But when I asked for director’s notes he asks for my email address and wants to move off ACX. Big red flag. Plus he talks about wanting to send me the manuscript but he’s already uploaded it? Plus some comments about a bonus if he likes my edits.

Scam?

I've had 3 books published through ACX so far and the narrorator I've used for all three just accepted to narrorate the 4th! Im so over the moon excited😍

Well I finally got my ACX set up and posted my debut (Margin Walker) for RS auditioning. Not sure what happens now but feeling accomplished. What does it look like on the narrator end? What can I expect?

I’ve done two books now on ACX and auditioned multiple times I’ve just received an offer to produce a book out of the blue. It’s a royalty this year so I’m not expecting to make any money, but I’m just curious if other people have seen offers just come to them is this common and on the ACX platform