Audio Dreams

One of my biggest goals is to make my books widely available and widely accessible. It should come as no surprise that audio is high on my list to get done for my books. Right now, I’m signed up with Findaway Voices and am listening to narrator samples to choose who I might want to request auditions from. I’m going through their voices share program where I pay for half of the cost up front and then split royalties with the narrator for the next ten years. Someday, I plan to be able to afford the audio outright (hopefully sooner rather than later–goal is for Book 4 and beyond for that), but for now, sharing royalties is the way to go.

Now if you know something about the various audiobook creation platforms, you might know that ACX has an option where you only split royalties with a narrator, no upfront payment. Been there, tried it, and nearly signed someone a couple years back until they backed out right before I offered her the contract. Somehow, still don’t quite know how, when I returned to my project to look at the auditions I had to begin talks with someone else I had liked, all of them were gone. The project existed, but all 40+ auditions and messages pertaining to the project along with how to contact those narrators just gone. It still kind of guts me to think about, and there are a couple of names I wish I could recall because I’d like to see if they still narrate, and there are a few I do remember and would be interested in again, but they no longer have profiles on ACX for me to reach out to. Anyhow, now a couple years down the road from that, I don’t think I’d go the sole royalty share route again. One, it would lock me into just distributing through ACX (meaning no audiobooks in libraries), and two, I want narrators to at least get something for their work up front.

So Voice Share through Findaway it is. I’ve been accepted into the program, but a narrator still has to accept to work with me. I hope they do. I had to load sales figures and everything, but given all of the transitions my books have gone through over the last year, it’s a little wonky looking in my opinion. So wish me luck! I hope to share more audio news soon!