I stumbled across a YouTube video the other day that was posted under the title: Is ACX Royalty Share a good deal? Upon clicking play, the first word out of his mouth is "No!" Of course, he is trying to be funny and get people to watch his 20-minute video that is basically complaining about Royalty Share because the chances of voice actors getting enough money out of it are low. In his video, he only devotes 2 minutes to telling authors it is a bad deal for them, too, because only cruddy, new narrators will narrate a book for Royalty Share.
If you've been following me for any time, you know that I have been a freelancer for a long time. I haven't been able to get a job since 2023 because, let's face it, AI-generated material may suck, but it is 100% cheaper than a freelancer at this time. I still occasionally put a bid in on something, but I am mostly focusing on my own books right now. That said, I know how hard it is to make a living as a freelancer--whether you are a writer, translator, or voice actor. I do understand where this guy is coming from as a voice actor, but he does a one-sided, one-argument video that is more of a rant than helpful information that will lead people to make informed decisions. I want to break down the pros and cons of ways to find and pay for narrators.
So, first off, narrating a book well takes a lot of time, effort, and patience. Unlike many freelance jobs, with voice acting, you can overwork your voice and lose it--causing you to be out of work while you rest it for a few days. That said, some of the things this guy was complaining about are universal to any freelancing job. When you are starting out (even if you are good and know what you are doing), you are going to have to take on jobs you are getting paid practically nothing for. The first book I freelanced (and I ended up doing 3 books for this guy), I did for $50. (My family, in the early years, said I was a writing prostitute because I would take so many low-paying jobs just to build my profile.) It took about a month to write because it was non-fiction. When it was still being published on Amazon, it had an average 4-star rating and 36 reviews total. Yeah, it did very well, and I got nothing for it. That said, I also did not have any of the risk or marketing costs. Publishing a book is always a risk. If you are an Indie author, you take on all the risk. The people you hire to edit/write/transform/translate/narrate your book do not have to put one penny of money into it. In most cases, they get paid whether or not you make any money off your adventure.
Indie authors, as a general rule, do not have a big budget. They wrote a book because they were passionate about their project. They put it on Amazon, and now Amazon wants them to use AI to narrate it so Amazon can build its Audible platform--which happens to be trending right now.
In general, taking the easiest and cheapest route by having AI convert your book is not going to give you a satisfactory result. Some people don't mind AI narration, but others do, so you will certainly get some negative comments on the narration because of it. However, if you wrote a really good book and this is basically your only option because you can't or don't want to try to figure out an entirely different platform, then I personally feel in the current book climate that having a book AI-narrated is better than not. The YouTuber proved that by managing to sell a book he wrote that was slapped together with his own bad, novice narration and still managing to make a few bucks off of it. At the same time, his completely cruddy product is now contributing to the market saturation with books that should have never been published and that take away profits from real authors. This guy obliviously doesn't realize he is part of the problem, though and encourages other voice actors to follow in his footsteps--instead of just taking a few Royalty Shares of real books!!! Sorry, but he really is a jerk, and he's so full of himself he has no problems creating a video where he literally coughs/complains about a hairball instead of cutting that? And I am supposed to believe his voice acting/editing is superb? But he has a boatload of followers, so who am I to judge his video-editing skills and scripting choices? Just please, if you are a voice actor, don't make a jank book just to "learn" your skills and then actually publish it. Just have a friend listen to it and delete it. Please.
So, after you make sure you have written a decent book, usually by getting reviews from people who don't know you and who you didn't pay, if AI is the only way you can get it narrated, I say go for it because you will get more sales if you do it.
The next option is to follow the links to ACX and set up a book project that you narrate. WARNING: Once you choose to narrate the book yourself, you will not be able to hire anyone else without extensive discussions with customer service and deleting everything you've uploaded. This is where I am with some of my books, but I currently have 19. Unlike the guy in the video who can, based on his bragging, turn out about 1 hour of recorded work in less than 4 hours, it takes me about 40 hours to edit one hour of my work. I am getting faster, but it is another labor of love. I plan to talk about this experience in a different post, though, so that's all I am going to say beyond the fact that I have currently decided to self-narrate 4 of my books at this time. You will have to learn ACX's rules and follow them. You will have to download Audacity and will probably get Audacity 4 because that's the latest. You will have to learn it and deal with its stupid quirks. You will have to edit out every breath and word spoken too quietly. You will have to redo sections you stumble over, and you will need to make sure your microphone doesn't die. (Tip: Don't switch microphones in the middle of a book.) You will need to record in a relatively quiet place, among hundreds of other things. You might also want to learn more advanced sound editing skills. In short, this method is a pain in the clock, but beyond getting at least a good microphone headset, it shouldn't thin your pocketbook too much since all the software and YouTube training videos are free. (I don't recommend the guy above for advice. I do recommend videos by Gary Terzza and other people, who only post single how-to videos, like this guy who explains how to change a sampling rate correctly.)
Now, if you recognize that AI-generated voices are not the quality you want for your book and you don't have the patience/time/desire/ability (because let's be realistic, not everyone's God-given voice is good for narration), your only option is to hire someone else to do it. For those of you who don't know, I not only write, but I also have a degree in theater and regularly work with and know real professional voice actors. These are not, however, people you can hire because they work for companies like Disney, which pays way more than you would ever be able to and provides them (usually) with full sound studios. If your book is traditionally published, the publishing company will fork over the money for a real, professional voice actor. Those are the only voice actors worth the accolades and money the guy in the video thought he deserved because he wasn't a "novice." They and the teams they work with are completely amazing. That said, if you work with a traditional publishing company, you would be lucky to get any input into an Audible book they produce of your work.
The next tier down from a real, professional voice actor is a professional freelancer. These people are truly doing this (or trying to do this) for a living because they haven't limited themselves to a risky platform like ACX. As usual, I recommend using one through Guru or Upwork and making use of their escrow systems, where you pay the platform upfront and then release to the freelancer at the end of the project or for milestones. On these platforms, you can see samples and feedback about the voice actors. You can also protect yourself and choose just how new of a freelancer you want to work with. However, you must always pay something out-of-pocket. At the same time, these people are professional freelancers working through a professional platform so they should deliver to you a fully completed product that meets ACX standards. (Make sure that information is in your post/contract.) You would still set the ACX book up as one of your own projects, but you will upload the files to ACX that you get from the freelancer. I don't recommend giving the freelancer the final payment until they are completely uploaded and accepted by ACX. You also need to make sure you enter the name of the voice actor as the voice actor wants you to enter it (and do not enter your own name in that box). You can get duds whenever hiring freelancers, but you can also get some amazing work that parallels professional, even with freelancers who have newer profiles (you shouldn't, however, have to pay as much for a person with a newer profile that you are taking a chance on).
Finally, comes the ACX internal options for posting your project and hiring a freelancer. These, personally, suck, which is why they are the last on this post. Although I have pulled some books out of self-production to repost them for other freelance voice actors to comment on, I have not tried to pull it out of getting auditions to self-narrate it, so I do not know if that process is easy or difficult. There are three types of "contracts" you can offer narrators through ACX. (1) Royal Share--this means you don't pay the freelancer anything, but s/he gets 25% of the profits, and you get 25% of the profits. (This is the method the YouTuber doesn't like.) This is the best option for authors who are working with a narrator for the first time. (2) A per-hour-rate where, for every 1 hour of completed audio, you pay an agreed-upon rate. There are a lot of intricacies with this method, but it is what you would expect to get if you were hiring a freelancer from Guru or Upwork. (3) An upfront fee and Royalty Share. So the author not only gets a per-hour-rate (presumably lower than they would normally charge) but also gets a part of your royalties. This is the best deal for voice actors because they are not only guaranteed money up front but are also going to probably get some royalties for the rest of the book's publication run.
The biggest problem with using voice actors on ACX is that there are no guarantees, really or protections. There is no feedback system that allows you to rate voice narrators, so you choose one relying only on the information they have fed to you about themselves and their past work. Don't just look at their ACX profile and think any information you see on it is 100% fact-checked true. You can listen to their samples, and I encourage you to do so, but you really have no idea if those are theirs unless you can get them to submit an "audition" where they are reading your work. There are two different ways to get freelancers to apply--you can post your book and search for auditions from anyone or you can post your book and send it to a specific person (that person does not necessarily need to submit an audition then.) I have done both, and I plan to make a post about that process.
Now, the guy in the video, when "researching" authors who had listed their books for Royalty Share auditions made a lot of misassumptions. First, print and e-books are really a completely different market from audiobooks, which can reach people with disabilities better than print versions. A sales rank on Amazon can be variable from day-to-day. You can also have a book that is a #1 seller in its category, but that doesn't translate into sales because the authors chose an obscure category just to hit number 1. The big thing is that book sales don't translate into audiobook sales. Book reviews are hard to get--I have documented giving away hundreds of books and only getting a couple of reviews. Some authors also have to print their books through Amazon and then spend time selling them in person or through IngramSpark or other platforms because of Amazon's limited distribution ability. What a voice actor needs to know is (1) is this author easy to work with and (2) is this author actively involved in marketing his/her books? Again, ACX makes this difficult because it doesn't have a rating system where voice actors can rate authors either. So how does a voice actor decide whether to take a chance with Royalty Share? The only real way to research an author is to look for his/her online presence. Authors who are actively promoting their books will have a recent, relatively public online presence that you should be able to find by typing in their name. (Unfortunately, authors cannot check voice actors this way because they could be good and still not have an online presence.)
Even riskier for authors, though, is ACX doesn't have any sort of payment or escrow system. Here is where Royalty Share not only benefits authors in that they don't have to fork over upfront money for a voice actor, but also there aren't any direct, offsite financial transactions that the authors have to be extremely careful about performing. Will you get a newer voice actor if you only find someone who will accept Royalty Share? Most likely. However, a newer voice actor is not necessarily a bad one. Experienced voice actors who want to make this option work for them will help promote the books they are working on--this means reading a little bit of the book before auditioning for it, so you can see if you think it is marketable and then marketing it a bit yourself on your social media.
Per-hour book deals have to have the financials conducted off-site. Please only use known, secure methods of paying the voice actors if you choose to go this route. Make sure you have clearly outlined what they need to give you in exchange for what exact amount of money and how many payments you will make and when. Never give a freelancer all the money up front for a project. You should see results equal to the amount paid. I, however, am okay with an initial up front partial payment simply because the freelancer may have to purchase something or take some time off a paying job or whatever to get started. Plus, the freelancer must take a risk on you--that you will pay the rest of the money when it's time. If you don't, a first payment gives them something, at least for their work.
As an author, a freelancer, and a theater insider, I would absolutely never do the Royalty Share Plus--which is a Royalty Share plus a per-hour rate. This is completely ridiculous for a no-name narrator who doesn't have to invest anything into the marketing of your book. This is the sort of contract that Bloomsbury Publishing would give Daniel Radcliffe to do the voice for the main character. It happens when you have a really famous voice actor, and you absolutely must have him/her to do the narration for your book. The only way I can see this working on ACX is if you have a book that you know will have a niche market, so you know it won't do very well sales-wise, and if the author gives you an extremely reduced rate (i.e. $50 per hour instead of $100 per hour). In this case, the book might do well in its niche, but you might not be able to find the niche to market an audiobook to, so both of you take on some of the risk. This method, however, runs the same risk as the regular pay-per-hour because you have to pay off platform. If you are going to do this method, try to arrange it so that, since you are doing Royalty Share, you don't make the payment until the end.
