The Author's Guide to AudioBook Creation by Richard Rieman

Author:Richard Rieman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Richard Rieman
Published: 2016-02-19T15:41:08+00:00

How you work with your narrator is one of the most critical decisions you will make.

• You can make an offer to a narrator to produce your audiobook. Do this by making them a cash offer based on the length of the audiobook. You are paying for the entire production—narration, editing, and mastering of the files for upload on ACX.

• You can offer a royalty split. That means the narrator agrees to produce the audiobook without charging you a fee. Instead, the narrator will get 50 percent of your royalty payments for seven years.

• You can negotiate with the narrator for a hybrid deal. This would include paying a fixed amount upfront, plus splitting the royalties.

Author Alert:

This is one of the most critical decisions you will make. It will greatly determine how much money you will make from your audiobook, so here are details for each option.

Pay for Production

You pay a narrator to produce the audiobook for you, and in return you receive all royalties earned from sales of your audiobook. If you choose this option you can enter the amount you are willing to pay per finished hour (PFH). The usual rate is $100 to $400 per finished hour. If you want an experienced narrator, you will probably be in the $200 PFH and above range.

Narrators spend an average of three to four hours to record, edit and master one hour of audio. So if you pay $200 per completed hour, they are earning as little as $50 per work hour.

Narration Rates

• Inexperienced - $100 per finished hour or royalty share

• Moderately experienced - $150 to $200 per finished hour

• Very Experienced - $200 to $400+ per finished hour

• SAG-AFTRA union narrators get a minimum of $225 per finished hour

If you choose to pay up-front for production and place your book on ACX, you will pocket 40 percent of the royalties from each audiobook sold; the other 60 percent goes to ACX. For this deal, if you pay the narrator a great rate up front for really good work, just like the big publishing houses do, you reap a much bigger share of the sale price of each book.

Royalty Share

The narrator covers the entire cost of the production, including recording, editing and mastering the book to ACX standards. When your audiobook is sold, you split your share of the royalties 50/50 with the narrator. ACX still gets 60 percent of the royalties, so you are actually splitting the remaining 40 percent with the narrator. Yes, that’s 20 percent of the book sales price for each of you.

Many experienced narrators will not audition for Royalty Share only deals. Unless you have an established or potential bestselling book on Amazon, narrators may not risk absorbing all the up-front production costs. If a book is ranked as number one million plus in sales on Amazon, it is getting roughly one sale per year. You will get few, if any, auditions.

Stipends

ACX offers to pay the $100 per finished hour bonus called a “stipend” to narrators on titles ACX determines are attractive enough to sell many copies.

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