Review Time
Phony offers! Bogus writers! No money! Okay at the risk of sounding like a ranting loon I will describe my first, and last, experience with ACX "Audiobook Narrator" job platform. I'm a veteran stage, tv and film actor with over 20 years of professional experience. In late spring '21, I decided to try my hand at audiobook narration, as many of my actor friends have sung its praises for the work. I will preface this, as an actor, 'work' is how I get benefits like medical insurance. In the ACX platform an actor can audition for any audiobook that is being cast. I filtered out anything that was non union since I wouldn't be able to work a non union job as a union actor. I chose a title that sounded fairly interesting, "The 7 Steps to Take Your Marriage from Good to Great". Having never been married, I thought I could make a couple of bucks and possibly walk away with some new information about the institution. This was to be my first audiobook narration audition done in my apt. I laid down the audition track which was a short excerpt from the audiobook and sent it off to the writer/author/ producer. It was to be 'royalty share' pay plan and since I'm a professional actor with a great voice, I fully expect my books to sell! Within 10 minutes, I received an email saying "We love the audition! You've got the job!" I was floored. I know my sound is unique but was this possible? My first audition? Wow, I'm gonna make a killing in Audiobook Narration!! Whoopee. Pandemics be damned. My next step was to learn how to use the editing equipment well enough to record a 123,000 word book in a month! Since I'm more into sports and women than tech/geeky things, my next thought was, "This is gonna be a LOT of work". My first assignment was to upload a 15 minute sample of the first chapter in 48 hours. This would cement my relationship to the author, Dr. Terry L. Orbuch, also known as Dr. Love from the Dr. Phil show. I literally spent the next two days recording and editing these 15 minutes. Seriously had to be about 8 hours total of the two days. Being the perfectionist that I am and not being tech savvy enough to know the editing software I read and re read the chapter out loud until I could do it in its entirety without a mistake! Exhausting, right! And, that was just 15 minutes! Phew. Okay, well, part two is now done. I send the 'first 15 minutes' off to Terry. I ask if she knows anyone in a studio who might be able to cut this piece together? It might make it go a LOT faster than if I do it myself. Then I wait for a response. And, wait. And wait.No response from the author for two days which is FINE! Dr. Love's got more to do than check up on her progress of her audiobook! Probably appearing on Dr. Phil or CNN that week.Four days go by. Nada. Not a peep from Terry. Not even a nuzzle. I send an email query to ACX Narrator Support asking if they have any advice when an author stops responding to the narrator. Two days pass from that email with no answer. On the third day, I receive a call from someone at Amazon, Audible's parent company. They told me that they removed the title from their website and that the 'author' was actually not the real author but someone else in the world that probably would have taken a completed audiobook and tried to sell themselves OR sell it to the REAL Author!! Excuse ME!?? I was blown away at how LAX the security was for the ACX, Amazon Brand! I literally spent close to 10 hours of my time working on this thing only to have be a complete mirage of actual employment. I now do data entry work instead. At least I know that the who, what, where and when I am to be working and for how much is actually real! I will pass on audiobook narration and ACX from now on. And, as an aside to the audiobook craze, I prefer to pick up a book and read it myself anyway. Don't people read in this country anymore?
worst existing site, be careful because they close your accounts for no good reason, they invent all kinds of infringements (fake sales, copyright infringement, etc) just to not pay you. It's shameful and I don't understand how they can say they are part of Amazon, bad publicity for Jeff Bezos, publishers are treated with fish in the face and no respect!
I only recognize my books live on kdp on my Ltd, and ACX just closed my account without any apparent good reason. I have not used trademarks or infringe copyrights, but they want it even if the law says I am not forced to do so. I checked for Plagiarism, and it was ok. I am new at ACX, and I did not even start to narrate. What's going on?! I read about many people who had the same problem, without a good explanation. I am the author and use a different pen name based on what I am writing.
So I am pro voice over Ex BBC. I voice for a number of publishing houses because good and have lots of experience, but also because I still broadcast. There is a great deal of free publicity in using someone on the air. Every single self publish author has turned me down, instead using a free voice!!! instead of one that could actually sell their books. On one occasion the authors then publishing company, made her change and use me because as an author she was strait up useless at navigating the media landscape. I went to ACX as an experiment and get closer to publishing houses, which worked. By OMG why would an author not spend a few hundred quid on a person with contacts, but their publishing company would. ASX is not set up to help authors sell books, it is set up to accumulate cannon fodder for Amazon.
I too just put in a lot of my time and hard work on 2 audiobooks that took a month's time at easily 10 hours a day. After successful uploads of chapters meeting all ACX's criteria and then the 2 week review of product from ACX it was available for download only to find out 2 days later that it is being canceled due to copyright infringement from the rights holder. I had agreed to Royalty Share mind you because I figured in the long run I would make more money than for the amount of time went into it vs pay on the hour of the finished product (not that pph was offered). I have reached out to the rights holder to question this email received from ACX so I will have to see if I hear anything back, however my issue is that if my audio had to go through such stringent processing on the side of ACX shouldn't they also be as stringent on vetting right holders status. I'm pretty sure other publishers of audiobooks that have been around longer than ACX have not had any problems with finding out if their right holders are legitimate. I am pretty sure this is a legal issue waiting to happen against ACX. Let me know if anyone knows of a good lawyer wanting to take the case sounds like their are plenty of narrators and producers who are as pissed as I am.
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Audiobook Creation Exchange ACX.com is the first online platform that connects rights holders with established producers to enable any professionally published book to become an audiobook.
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