Selecting Titles for Audition on ACX
Since I had yet to narrate and produce my first audiobook, I knew that I couldn’t compete with the known narrators for the high per-finished-hour rates, but as a mother and with so much experience in audio production and voiceovers I didn’t want to work for free. My only chance was to find a best selling author offering royalty share compensation, and hope to make my time investment back over the long term.
The number of ACX approved narrators is actually around 6500.
The number of titles open for audition fluctuates a bit and can be as many as 1900, but 1400 or so is pretty typical in my experience. But given the number of narrators I imagined that authors could get bombarded with auditions. I felt that I’d have to get my audition in very soon after the title was posted to make sure it was one of the first the author listened too. I mean how many auditions is an author willing to listen too? If he/she finds a great voice after 15 auditions he’s not going to listen to 25 more just in case there’s a better one. So the race was on! (In actuality I don’t know the average number of auditions authors receive from narrators.
I would spend a couple hours each day filtering the titles up for audition. I focused on genres that suited my voice style - business, technology, language, arts, health and fitness and children’s books. When I found a title that seemed interesting I researched the author and book. I was looking for an author that was already a best seller, even if it was with a different book. If the author was unknown I would read an excerpt from their book to see if they were actually a good writer. I was surprised that some of the excerpts were poorly written. Some were easy to pass up due to bad grammar and poor thought construction. Audio books take a great deal of time to produce, 3-6 hours of production per finished hour, so you need to be sure it’s going to sell. If the book doesn’t sell, and worse yet has bad reviews, no one is going to buy the audio book no matter how well you try to read it.
On December 29th I submitted my first audition for a very short children’s book which I didn’t get selected for. On January 04, 2019 I finally found two titles in the business genre by authors I believed in. I submitted an audition at 1:30 for one, and at 3:30 I submitted an audition for Startup by Andreas Ramos, the title that would become my first audiobook!
Startup was the one I really wanted, which is why I spent a little more time on the audition. Right away from the “comments from the rights holder” I saw:
The book was #1 Amazon Best Seller when it came out in September. It is the second edition, updated from last year.
There it was, my main filter “Amazon Best Seller”. Then it added:
I teach at INSEEC, a French business school with 22,000 students. I will start teaching in February at California Science and Technology University. I also teach an online course that is promoted in Korea, China, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Singapore.
I could tell from Andreas website that he knew his topic. And seriously - his website is andreas.com! Who has their first name as a website? Someone who’s been doing this since the world wide web was invented(well almost). Next he was singing my song:
I will STRONGLY promote your audio to all of these students. My students are in Europe, Africa, South America, China, and India. Your audio will be heard worldwide. I've been on Twitter since the beginning. @andreas_ramos with 2,600 active followers. I post several times daily, on mostly business/academic topics. See also my websites andreas.com. It has been up since 1995. I will set up a Google Adwords campaign to promote the audio; I will also put it in my monthly email newsletter to 2,300 people.
With my strong background in marketing I knew I had a lot to bring to the table in terms of marketing the audiobook, and this was the kind of marketing partner I wanted in an author. It was reassurance that I wouldn’t be working for free. And the best was the vocal style he was asking for:
Vocal Style: Your voice should be enthusiastic, snarky, quirky, and irreverent.
Alright!!! A business book that is intentionally NOT boring!!!! The corporate and marketing videos that I’ve narrated are all pretty serious, albeit upbeat. But that’s not really my personality. I’m fun loving and easy going in real life, so I saw this book as an opportunity to push my work into a performance that would align more naturally with who I am.
Naturally I was thrilled to receive the offer from Andreas to narrate Startup. When I submitted the audition I was a little worried that I had pushed the vocal style too much so I included a little note about it. When Andreas sent me the offer he included the following message:
“You wrote, "If you find the delivery is too "in your face" I can lighten it up." Oh, no, you can punch it up more. Release your inner Lindsay Lohan. Have fun with the text. Computers and business is so boring anyway, so whatever you do to get people to want to listen, that's fine.”
Lindsay Lohan!!? “Oh no!!!” I thought, “he’s going to be so disappointed in me! I’m a 40 year old mother who has lived a very conservative life.” Then I went to Youtube and listened to Ms. Lohan when she was at the top of her game. Then I was really worried. She had this sultry alluring voice. Then I remembered the other detail in the “comments from the rights holder”:
Audience: People who are setting up a Silicon Valley startup. They are mostly 18-22 years old and well-educated. They are mostly young guys (80%) and will prefer to hear a woman's voice.
I imagined my narration: “Hi guys, this is your mother speaking, you may not listen to this audiobook until after you’ve made your bed and done your homework. Your laundry is on the staircase and the banana bread just came out of the oven.” I emailed him and confessed that there was no way I could successfully pull off Lindsay! He assured me I was the voice he wanted.