Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Surprise Stipend
I'll explain this with the letter that I recieved from ACX. I was shocked and happy, and shocked. This letter told me that they had great faith in my novel that it was going to make them a lot of money. That made me worried, and relieved at the same time. Here is the letter straight from the ACX team.
Dear Samantha Lovern
Congratulations! I’m pleased to inform you that your book, Maid for Martin (California Love Trilogy), was recently featured in ACX’s weekly Audition List. This email includes our picks for noteworthy books, ready to be made into
audiobooks and is received by over 10,000 ACX producers. By including Year of the Dead (Sustainable Earth)
in this email, we hope you receive additional auditions for your title
and find the right voice to produce your audiobook. For advice on
casting
your book, visit the ACX blog.
Furthermore, we’ve made Maid for Martin (California Love Trilogy)
eligible for a $100 per-finished-hour production stipend, paid for
by Audible. You, along with narrators and producers searching for
titles, will now see a green banner indicating this on the title’s
profile page*. Please be sure to review
the basics of the stipend offer when considering the production timeline. Titles must be fully completed and approved (by you)
within 60 days of the producer’s acceptance of the offer, so please keep this in mind when making offers to producers.
We look forward to hearing your audiobook,
You can imagine my shock $100 an hour for little old me. WOW! I was like yes Lifetime here I come. That is a dream of mine to have Maid for Martin made into a movie and I think that will happen some day. I dream big.
How do you get your book into the Stipend? The only 2 people I know that won this gift was myself and a friend. Both had covers by me, Fury Cover Design, both were Christmas novels and looked to have some romance. I wish I knew more I would try to get this bonus for other novels too. It made finding a narattor a lot easier.
Now onto the questions that Authors have had so far.
An author friend of mine, Alana Woods asked two very good questions.
When you do a royalty split, is it for a set time, or forever?
I spoke to ACX, the royalty split lasts for 7 years. Yes I know that is a long time, but when you don't have the funds up front, it's what your left with. Do you jump in and make some money or make no money. I opted to make some money, and to try out the process to see if I liked it.
Don't go into this thinking . . . someone's taking half of my money. Stephanie Bentley worked hard, she read the book and did it like the pro she is. There is no way I could have done this. She brings the novel to life, she can sound like a man, woman, an old lady a child, she is awesome. She is my partner, we are in this together, we both want Maid for Martin to succeed.
We worked together. She even pointed out mistakes, and I I listened to make sure the Audio matched exactly to the E-book, so whisper sync would work. I think of Stephanie as a co-worker and I think that is the best way to enter the royalty split. I told her she was my partner in crime, though we don't plan on robbing banks anytime soon. :)
Alana Woods also asked.
I know you opted for the royalty split option, but did you by chance investigate how much a flat fee might be with ACX narrators?
Money Money Money I couldn't even think about paying upfront. I didn't have even 50 an hour and that was the lowest hourly rate I saw. Prices varied from 50.00 an hour and up. Most of the narrators I liked were in the 200.00 hourly range. I also didn't want to go in to this not knowing what I was doing, so I wanted to go the royalty split, that way I knew the person on the other side of the mike would care how the audio turned out. They would work hard on getting it out fast, because not only would it be my name on the line but theirs too.
The last question for the day is from a great author friend, and the Host of the hit online show Indie Authors, Jason Matthews. Once the applause dies down I'll speak. :) Jason's question was. What's the uploading process like with audio files once the book is recorded?
This is my next topic but I'll touch lightly on this question. It went fast for me because we had the Stipend hanging in the balance and we wanted to get the book out there for Christmas. I have a feeling that each narrator works differently.
Stephani had done this several times already so she had a plan in mind from the start. She started out with reading a few chapters and then she went back and started recording. Then when she had finished about 5 chapters I would review them. It was a fast process and I'll get to it in more detail in the next blog so don't forget to look for it.
Thanks Jason Matthews, and Alana Woods great questions.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Please excuse any mistakes I'm churning these posts out as fast as I can because I have a huge audience awaiting these posts, and I know a lot of you are on the fence on if you should go with ACX or not. Please comment with any questions.
Samantha Fury is the author of the Street Justice Series
She's written many articles on book covers, for Indie Authors.
She operates several Indie Groups. Editing Services, Cover Artist,
Helpful Indie Facebook Groups, and a wonderful Forum
just for Indie Authors.
Check out Samantha's premade covers here
Part one here
Part two here
Images by
Javier Brosch
From Bigstock
