Karen Commins

Ongoing Masterclasses and Acting Classes

24 February 2021

I think it’s safe to say that every professional, no matter the occupation, constantly undertakes training to improve their subject matter knowledge and learn new ways of doing things.

When I worked my first career in information technology, I had to stay current on software and hardware releases and understand how each component could affect the overall operation. In addition to taking specialized classes from vendors, I continuously read forums and magazines devoted to technology.

I would also experiment with new software in a lab environment. The worst thing we could do was install unproven software on our live system and then deal with the fallout from unhappy/downright angry system users who were thwarted from completing their tasks, or worse, lost work due to our changes.

While my job as a narrator doesn’t immediately affect other people, I still prefer to get training and experiment with my narration in a safe space.

Deyan Masterclasses

Last fall, I undertook 6 masterclasses from the Deyan Institute. Narrator PJ Ochlan hosted guest casting directors Jesse Bickford (Blackstone Audio), Gabrielle de Cuir (Skyboat Media), Guy Oldfield (Macmillan Audio), Caitlin Garing (Harper Audio), Khai Dattoli (Deyan Audio), and Linda Korn (Penguin Random House Audio) in separate 3-hour sessions in which 20 narrators performed a passage of our choosing.

Prior to 2020, I’d only been able to attend one of these masterclasses because they necessitated a trip to LA. With COVID-19 causing everyone to stay home, I was thrilled when I saw these classes would be offered over Zoom.

In each session, the industry director and PJ would give us guidance about ways to make our read better. We’d try a take 2 and sometimes 1 or more additional takes to incorporate their direction. With the slightest changes, a read can go from serviceable to superb.

They would point out areas in the text that were rich with clues about the underlying subtext that could lead to more nuanced acting choices. I can’t overstate the importance of developing the skill of taking the notes given to you and doing something that expresses you understood and are incorporating the direction into your read.

Each director had a different style, but all tried to help us approach the text more authentically — in other words, to be able to present the scenes as though they were really happening to us. Not only did we improve our performances, but listening to the feedback given to others proved highly valuable.

For instance, when thinking about your listening audience, it’s more helpful to envisage the exact type of person who would want to listen to THIS book instead of a general person close to you.

I’ve signed up for 4 more masterclasses over the next 2 months and am looking forward to the first one this Thursday with Iris McElroy (Harper Audio).

Acting for Audio

Meanwhile, I’m in my 6th week of Joel Froomkin’s Acting for Audio 14-week intensive course. Outside of a 10th grade speech class, I’ve never had an acting course. I’ve heard and read about many of the topics we’re discussing each week and enjoy seeing how they apply to acting in front of a microphone.

Only 10 narrators are in each section of the 3-hour classes to give us time for our performances and Joel’s lecture.

We have to plan and practice a short scene each week to meet certain criteria. Even though we normally work off camera in the booth, doing these tasks on camera helps fire the imagination to better visualize scenes and add physicality as we narrate.

Knowing that I’ll be performing over Zoom means I have to decide what to present, work through the logistics of doing it for an online audience, and practice a number of times before I’m ready to go live for the class.

Many of the exercises have come with a written assignment. In answering the questions, I’ve been surprised at some of the things I’ve never considered and learned about myself.

In both the masterclasses and the acting class, it’s been very interesting to observe the performances. Even without the text in front of us or knowledge of the scene beforehand, we can tell when the narrator wasn’t being true to the emotion of the scene or was otherwise unconvincing, like when an attitude crept into a character voice that didn’t match the author’s intent.

As we immerse ourselves in the characters and story during our narrations, we must allow ourself time to make the discoveries and feel the emotions as the characters would in that moment.

If a director and other colleagues can detect a narrator’s disconnection during these classes, our listeners likely will also hear it in our audiobooks.

I think of the Deyan masterclasses like an appetizer and Joel’s classes like Thanksgiving dinner. I don’t want to give too many specifics about each because doing so wouldn’t be fair to my colleagues who paid for these experiences.

I’m grateful these wonderful instructors have held these classes online and know that my narration skills have improved with each one. I highly recommend both the Deyan Masterclasses and Joel Froomkin’s Acting for Audio course for audiobook narrators who want to take their intepretation and acting skills to a higher level.

5 Things I Learned From Margaret Mitchell’s Letters

20 February 2021

I always wondered why Margaret Mitchell didn’t write another novel after Gone with the Wind. I thought she could have feared the critics’ comments as they compared a second book to the epic, monumental achievement of her first. Nothing could ever live up to the reputation of her Great American novel.

However, when I narrated Road to Tara: The Life of Margaret Mitchell by Anne Edwards, I learned one big reason for Mitchell’s later absence from the bookshelves of new releases: she was too busy responding to correspondence about her book to write another book!

Embed from Getty Images

I’ve read the 2 books of her letters linked below. I’ve also been collecting the pictures of her letters posted by eBay sellers.

Mitchell published GWTW in June 1936, and it instantly became a runaway bestseller. David O. Selznick then paid the highest price to that date for the movie rights, causing Mitchell’s celebrity to rise even higher.

Suddenly, all the newspapers and magazines wanted to do interviews with the reluctantly-famous author. In numerous letters, she described fans as jumping out of the bushes at her home to get her autograph.

She was so besieged by people who wanted her to sign their books that she stopped signing them after a couple of months. However, she replied to hundreds or maybe thousands of letters requesting an autographed book to explain why she wouldn’t do it — and then signed the letter!

Maybe Mitchell felt compelled to respond to almost everyone due to her inborn sense of graciousness and Southern hospitality. Maybe she secretly thrilled at being a celebrity and sought to keep more recognition coming to her.

Whatever her reasons, she spent all day, every day, immersed in and often overwhelmed by her mail. For instance, she fielded fans’ questions, as well as requests for speaking engagements and material mementos.

Although Mitchell vowed not have any part in making the movie, she answered and wrote a barrage of letters about it. She also kept eagle eyes and a tight rein on the foreign rights and translations of her book, initiating and participating in countless exchanges about those aspects of publishing.

I think of Margaret Mitchell often when I’m reading, replying to, and writing my email and communicating in online forums. I learned a few things from the way she dealt with her voluminous correspondence that I want to share with you.

Use templates, and then liberally copy and paste.

Margaret only had her trusty typewriter and reams of paper at her disposal. What might she have achieved and how productive might she have been with a computer? Rather than re-typing the same info to multiple people like she did, we have the luxury of copying and pasting from one message to another.

If you find yourself sending the same message on a recurring basis, create a template for that type of correspondence. For instance, I have a folder in Evernote containing my templates for numerous situations, including:

prospecting emails to publishers and authors (they ARE different!)
messages to authors who chose a different narrator from an ACX audition
requests for reviews
inquiries about licensing rights
asking permission to add people to my mailing list

I even have a template for newcomers who leave me voice mail asking to talk with me about becoming a narrator! It’s super fast and easy for me to open my Evernote app on my phone, find that template, and copy and paste it to a text message back to the originating phone number. In the time it took for me to write or you to read that sentence, I could have taken those actions, responded to that query, and moved on with my day.

2. Create and use keyboard text shortcuts.

Facebook Messenger, WordPress, and other platforms don’t maintain my email signature. As pictured below, I set my keyboard text replacement to automatically and magically type Cordially, Karen Commins when I type the 3 letters ckc and press space or return.

I have created a number of text shortcuts for things that I type frequently:

my email address
sign-off sentence in email
daily tasks like walking my dog
my web site URLs

MacOS has text replacement as a built-in feature. From my quick Google search, it looks like you have to use a separate text expander utility in Windows to get this functionality. I saw this one recommended on several sites, and its capabilities go beyond simple text replacement.

3. Don’t answer everybody even when you know the answer.

Mitchell prided herself on the depth and accuracy of her historical research for GWTW. She felt compelled to set the record straight whenever anyone questioned the facts in her book. Instead of defending her previous research, she could have spent that time doing new research for a new project.

This tip is becoming one of my mantras! I remind myself of this point when I am reading Facebook forum threads. I’ve decided it’s not my job or even in my best interest to share my knowledge every time the opportunity presents itself.

In addition, I receive LOTS of messages from narrators, authors, and wannabes via email, text messages, and social media. As I’ve previously noted, if I personally assisted everyone who asked for my help, I would never have time to do any work of my own.

I state on my Contact page:

Due to the volume of requests that I receive, I may not personally respond to your message. I prefer to answer publicly so that more than one person benefits from the answer.

If I can quickly point someone to a blog article or other resource, I am very happy to do so. Otherwise, since I have stated my policy, I feel no guilt when I sometimes need to press the delete key. I especially use the delete key when I know someone wants to sell me something or I can tell that writing a suitable answer would take more than 5-10 minutes. I make a note of questions that require more involved answers for subjects to explore here on the blog.

4. Don’t put others’ needs ahead of your own creative output.

I saw a quote recently that speaks to this thought:

“When you say yes to others, make sure you are not saying no to yourself.”
— Paulo Coelho

When I re-read my journals, I’ve noticed that I’ve said on too many occasions that I didn’t even start on my project for the day because I was helping other people.

Helping people gives me joy. I feel it’s a large part of my purpose.

I’m realizing, though, that I can help more people in the long run by prioritizing my creative projects (like writing this article!) ahead of helping a single person in the moment.

5. Get to the point quickly, and don’t bury the lede.

Mitchell’s letters show her immense strength and charm as a loquacious storyteller. She wrote the most chatty, lengthy letters and would wax on for paragraphs assuming that her recipient was devouring her every word with keen interest.

People today are too busy and get far too many sources of info hammering at us every day.

When I worked as the deputy branch manager in my government IT career, my boss complained that he received lengthy emails that left him wondering what the person wanted him to do. He often forwarded such messages to me to decipher and resolve.

At least once a week now, one of those kinds of messages appears in my inbox. If I can’t quickly figure out what the person wants from me, I delete the message.

A while back, I did some research to learn the ideal length for a prospecting email to a potential client. One writer uses a 5-sentence rule.

The sweet spot falls between 50 and 125 words, which is not much longer than a tweet. I use this site to check the length of emails before I send them.

You also may want to compose messages on your phone because more people are now reading and replying to emails on their phones. If you have to scroll your message, it’s time to make some cuts!

If you wonder why your emails go unanswered, one article writer commented that, like my former boss, s/he felt anxious when seeing large blocks of text. Do they have time to read it? Would they get all of the sender’s points? Do they need to read it carefully? Do they have time to write a long response?

When I’m drafting a message, I may write it in linear/chronological fashion about the situation, which naturally causes my call to action to fall near the end. I then move that action to the 1st or 2nd sentence so it’s immediately clear to the recipient why I sent the message and the action I want them to take. I’ll also enter the action as the subject of the message. I’ll edit the message to use a journalism-style of inverted pyramid where the least important info is left to the end.

Applying these 5 guidelines to my own correspondence and forum participation enables me to spend more quality time on my own projects. How do you make time for your creative work? Please leave a comment!

Put Yourself in the ACX Driver’s Seat Webinar

15 January 2021

Last updated 2/23/21

I was reflecting this week about being able to create audiobooks from my studio here in Atlanta for the past 10 years.

To be clear, I’ve recorded all of my audiobooks in my studio. However, when I started narrating early in the millennium, most publishers didn’t want to hire home studio narrators.

I always said I could fly any where; Atlanta is the home of Delta Airlines, after all. The answer was always “Why should we fly you to NY or LA when we have an abundance of talent nearby?”

Everything changed in 2011 when Audible developed ACX.com, its marketplace for narrators and rights holders to get together to produce audiobooks.

I’ve been there since day 1 when the site was in beta test:

1/12/11 — Audible invited me to a super secret, hush hush conference call.
- On 1/12/21, I tweeted my journal page from that day.
1/14/11 — I was on the call and learned about ACX. Audible asked me to be a beta tester, and I immediately said YES!
- On 1/14/21, I tweeted a 1:30 video reading from my journal entry that day.
5/12/11 — Audible launches ACX to the world.
- I announced it that day in this blog post.
9/18/11 — After submitting 23 auditions on ACX, I won one from a publisher. The book was Dixie Divas, which was the first in a series of 5 books and a bunch more I did for Belle Books, the publisher. Dixie Divas was a royalty share book that has paid several times what my PFH rate would have been and continues to make money for me every month!
1/22/14 — The Heart of the New Thought, my first book as a RH, went live.
- I wrote about it in this blog post.
5/15/14 — Part 1 of my article about audiobook marketing appeared on the ACX blog.
5/20/14 — Part 2 of my article about audiobook marketing appeared on the ACX blog.
4/7/16 — My article How to Act Like an Audiobook Narrator appeared on the ACX blog.
11/2/18 — I was the featured guest on ACX University.
- I wrote about the video and added links in this blog article.

Of course, I’ve written MUCH more about ACX here on my blog! I’m also a frequent contributor in narrator Facebook groups, particularly the Indie (ACX and Others) Narrators and Producers Group, where I developed and maintain the extensive group FAQ.

I’ve been delighted each time John Florian at VoiceOverXtra has shared one of my articles with his audience. After republishing one of them recently, John asked me if I’d be interested in doing a webinar about ACX.

I responded to him the same way I did to Audible about beta testing ACX 10 years ago: YES!

I’m thrilled to announce VoiceOverXtra hosted my webinar Put Yourself in the ACX Driver’s Seat on 11 February 2021!

You can download the 3-hour recording, my 90+ slides, and my extensive list of resources at on my Shop page.

Commit to Creativity Workshop

11 January 2021

Yesterday I attended the Commit to Creativity workshop hosted by Krista Vernoff, show runner for the Grey’s Anatomy TV show and others. After doing 2 writing exercises during the workshop, I feel inspired and energized to write more articles here on my blog.

I’ll discuss the workshop and share those 2 powerful writing prompts in a minute. First, I want to discuss my plans for this blog going forward.

I want to write more frequently, and I want to write shorter pieces sometimes.

I also give myself permission to write more about my own journey as a recording artist, writer, and owner of a membership site. While I’m changing my format and focus somewhat from more substantive content that I’d call “teachable moments” — I will still write those, of course! — I think the lessons I learn and observations I have along the way will still be relevant to other narrators and authors who are publishing their work in audiobooks.

With that said, let me tell you now about the workshop yesterday.

I could say that I only learned about this workshop through accident.

On 29 December 2020, I saw a post in a Facebook group where someone referenced this Twitter thread that Krista Vernoff wrote about having a life in the arts. I confess that I did not know who she was when I clicked the link.

I connected to what she wrote and saw that she was hosting this workshop. Her guests were actress/director/dancer/choreographer Debbie Allen, actress/writer Nia Vardalos, and author Cheryl Strayed.

I knew the phenomenal accomplishments of these ladies and thought the afternoon would be entertaining, if nothing else. I signed up.

When the event started, I felt excited to be in the presence of these creative powerhouses! Within a few minutes, their genuine natures had crossed the ether in the casual Zoom atmosphere and made me feel like they were mentors and friends I had known for years.

Of course, I took a loooong page of notes in Evernote! Almost every utterance from each of these accomplished women was a golden nugget of wisdom. Listed below are a few of the gems I heard:

The most important thing is to learn how to take a note even if you don’t like it. — Krista Vernoff
If the phone doesn’t ring with a job offer, call yourself and do your own project. — Nia Vardalos
Don’t reject yourself. Don’t let someone else’s opinion or criticism come for you. — Debbie Allen
Part of creating art is letting it go. — Cheryl Strayed

A Compelling Case Study

One part of the conversation was particularly thrilling to anyone in a creative field as we all can follow similar steps to our own destiny!

Early in her career, Cheryl wrote a series of essays as if she were an advice columnist named Sugar. She wrote them for free to create content for a friend’s web site.

At some point, she repackaged and repurposed those essays into a book named Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar.

Some time later, a director urged Nia to read Tiny Beautiful Things. Nia had a highly emotional experience in reading the book; she used the phrase “it unzipped me” to describe it.

Nia decided she wanted to adapt it for a stage play — not that she had any experience in stage adaptations.

She laughed as she said she had the AUDACITY to ask Cheryl Strayed for the permission to develop that adaptation.

Not only did Cheryl say “yes” to the adaptation, but she asked Nia to play Sugar in the stage production! Although Nia hadn’t even given herself permission to ask that question, she had no hesitation in her answer: “Yes, please!”

She and Cheryl lived on opposite coasts, so it cost Nia money to fly back and forth for meetings with Cheryl and later the Broadway production.

In its review of the play, the New York Times awarded a Critics Pick designation.

Nia commented that she’d made the least money on that play than any other professional pursuit, but it gave her the most professional satisfaction.

Now, the play has been done in numerous other cities and theatres. I’m sure when Cheryl wrote all of the columns originally way back when, she never would have dreamed that her creative output would take on the life that it did.

By the way, Nia did an incredible reading from the libretto that had us all in tears. Cheryl’s words and Nia’s interpretation left me breathless and further motivated me to continue improving my acting ability in order to bring even more nuance to my narration.

The Writing Prompts

At the workshop’s conclusion, I no longer thought of this workshop as an “accidental” find. It was more a case of “when the student is ready, the teacher appears.”

You’ll remember that I said Cheryl gave us 2 writing prompts. In writing the second one, I found marching orders to guide my path going forward!

She explained we must trust the clarity of our deepest inner truth. Every day, she has to face down the inner critic and start new. Cheryl said, “Every time you do it, you evolve. You hand yourself the key to your next becoming.”

The writing prompt she gave us was:

Dear [your name here],

This is your deepest inner truth, and here is what I know.

In her prelude to the second prompt, Cheryl stated that your power/strength/love is at the root of your desire. She encouraged us to not think about the obstacles we face, but to instead think how it feels when you have stepped into your power and are creating your art. “Who are you when you are doing what you are most deeply, divinely called to do?”

Here’s the writing prompt:

Dear [your name here],

This is your power, and this is who you are when you own me.

In both cases, you should set a timer for 10 minutes and then write everything that comes to you as fast as you can. Don’t stop to edit or fix mistakes. Just keep writing.

For me, the last 3 sentences I wrote about my power contained truths I knew but had tried to ignore.

I won’t ignore them any more.

If you do these 2 exercises, did you learn something about yourself? I hope you’ll share your comments below!

When the Author is 6 Feet Under

12 September 2020

I’ve recently helped a number of narrators research the audio rights holder in cases where the author has passed away. I decided to share my process as it might be helpful to other people.

Focus on the Copyright Date

I start by examining the book’s copyright date. Books published in the US before 1925 are already in the public domain. If it falls between 1925 and 1963, I first check to see if the title is in the public domain using the links in this article. (Note: While some of the info below is summarized in the last bullet point on that page, I want to offer more explanation and show the successive steps in this post.)

If I find that the book is in the public domain, I stop my research. The narrator can perform and publish the book on their own without contacting anyone or paying any licensing fees or royalties.

A large percentage of texts from those years appear to be copyrighted but are actually in the public domain due to a key technical requirement of the copyright law at that time. Copyright owners — usually the author, but it could be the publisher — had to renew the copyright by the end of the 28th year following publication in order to maintain their copyrighted status.

These books can be categorized into one of these ways:

Between 1925 and 1977, if the book wasn’t published with a copyright notice — in other words, if it didn’t include the C in the circle © or say the word copyright with a date — it’s in the public domain.
If the book was published between 1925 and 1963 and was published properly with the copyright notice, but the copyright owner didn’t actually renew the copyright, it’s in the public domain.
If they published it with all the correct formalities and renewed it by the end of the 28th year following publication, the copyright was extended for an additional 67 years, or a total of 95 years under copyright. Its copyright runs through the end of the 95th year after the publication date. You would need to continue your research as indicated in the next section.

As an aside, be aware that everything that was published in 1925 is going to be in the public domain on 1 January 2021. Enterprising narrators may want to pay attention to that point because you could start looking for an upcoming public domain book that you want to do! If this topic interests you, I’m creating a course for members of NarratorsRoadmap.com that includes a discussion about how to find some of these public domain gems.

Each January 1st, another year’s books enter the public domain. On 1 January 2022, books published in 1926 enter the public domain, and so on.

Find The Person

For works still under copyright that were traditionally published, you can contact the subsidiary rights department of the publisher. An inestimable number of books were published before commercial audiobooks became a mainstream form of entertainment. Depending on the contract, the publisher may have acquired all or only limited rights to the text, and those rights may revert to the author after a certain period of time.

I prefer to find someone representing the author since publishers can take a long time to respond, if they respond at all. You would also need to do this research for books independently published.

I perform a number of Google searches that will seem like word association.

This first search is best for prolific authors or those who wrote 1 or more books that are considered to be classic literature. If you’re lucky, the results will lead you directly to the door of the person who manages the rights.

[author name] literary estate or [author name] literary rights

As an example, doing this search for reclusive author J. D. Salinger will readily show in the results that his work is zealously controlled by his son Matthew. The estate waited until 2019 to allow ebook productions of Salinger’s works and still hasn’t permitted audiobooks to be made.

I usually then search for the author’s obituary.

[author name] obituary

Once I find the obituary, I look for the names of the author’s agent, the publisher, and survivors. If the survivors live in a different city from the author, their city is usually listed in the obituary.

[survivor’s name] [city name]

Sometimes I need to search for a survivor’s name with the author’s name.

[survivor’s name] [author name]

I’ll usually get some hits, possibly including the survivor’s obituary if the book was published decades ago. I once wound up creating a family tree for one famous, early 20th century author!

Sometimes the survivor’s name will pop up on a site with some contact info, or I might see other tidbits that I can add to my search terms, like a business name or organization they are associated with.

If I don’t find those names in the obituary, I will do satellite searches with the author’s name, like

[author name] agent

[author name] manager

The author may have left their papers with a museum or university. If the archivist has created a finding aid for the papers, you may see contact info for the estate, especially if the material is restricted. I’ve also paid an on-site researcher to look through the contracts. I search for finding aids with this format:

[author name] papers finding aid

Find Their Contact Info

Once you’ve determined a promising contact name, you’ll need to find their contact information. If you’re living a charmed life, you might see an email address, web site, and/or phone number listed on one of the pages you’ve already reviewed.

Without that serendipity, you can do some more searches to look for those pieces to the puzzle.

My favorite Google search uses the site: modifier. Adding site: tells Google to only look at the pages of the specified site.

site:[sitename.domain] [search term]

As an example, LinkedIn.com becomes my personal rolodex with a search like

site:LinkedIn.com Macmillan subsidiary rights.

With LinkedIn, you can learn a person’s city and company name.

In this Tuesday Tip, I offer 3 ways to find the person’s email address.

Formulate Your Query

Now that you’ve located a person who could respond about the audio rights for your book, your query to them starts a conversation about the audiobook. You could present yourself as the sub-contractor to whom they can hand off the audiobook production process, but don’t overwhelm them with a proposal, audio sample, or contract in the initial query.

We have to think of our queries from the point of view of the people who receive them. What would make you want to stop what you’re doing and get you excited about working with a random person who sent you an email? This Tuesday Tip gives you pointers for creating short and concise emails.

If you’re contacting a family member, I’d ask if that person manages the author’s literary rights or could direct you to the correct person. You might have a better chance of convincing them to let you produce it.

Be mindful that lawyers, agents, and publishers are less apt to hire a narrator they’ve never heard of to make an audiobook of unknown quality from a (probably backlist) book they weren’t even thinking about. Hiring a narrator means they have to make time in their already overloaded schedule to manage the audiobook production process, where they usually have no expertise and lack the time and/or inclination to learn.

Especially in the case of a well-known author, these folks are much more interested in licensing the rights — note that it’s not a purchase, but a license for a specified period of time.

If you want to learn about licensing rights, head to my Shop page, where you can purchase the fantastic webinar I did with Grammy-winning director, long-time audiobook distributor, and IP attorney Jessica Kaye on this very topic.

Some publishers and agents don’t want to license rights to an independent narrator. If they do indicate interest in getting an audiobook done, they might ask your license terms. You need to show everything you can to give them confidence in your ability to produce a quality product and promote it to increase sales. I’d be ready to offer the distributor name I’d plan to use and any other facts they’d need to trust me.

All of the research you’ve done may make you feel more emotionally attached to the book. You have to be prepared to let it go. Once someone expresses interest in creating an audiobook, the RH may shop the rights around to maximize their deal.

The good news is that millions of other books still need audio editions, so you can easily get interested in a different book!

Cure For The ACX 7-Year Itch

28 August 2020

Last updated 2/20/21

If you own the audio rights to your book, you are referred to as the rights holder (RH). The RH has many choices when starting an audiobook project. Two of the most important decisions you’ll make are the narrator’s payment and the audiobook’s distribution.

Make these decisions very carefully and INDEPENDENTLY because their long-term repercussions could be harmful to you in ways you don’t expect!

Payment Options

You basically have 3 ways to pay your narrator:

Per Finished Hour (PFH) — You pay $X times each finished hour of audio up-front to the narrator. For instance, a $300 PFH rate on an 8-hour audiobook would cost $2400 at the time the audiobook is completed.
Royalty Share (RS) — Rather than you paying anything up-front to the narrator, you agree to share your royalties with the narrator. The narrator gambles that her narrator fee and production expenses for team members (director, editor, proofer) will earn out over time through the royalties. This contract can be structured so that the narrator receives ALL royalties until her fee is paid or, more typically, the royalties are split equally between the RH and narrator for the course of the contract.
Hybrid/Royalty Share Plus (RS+) — You pay the narrator some up-front fee to cover their hard expenses and also have a royalty share contract.

Recommendation: By using a PFH payment, you could contract with a narrator completely outside of ACX or any other distribution platform and upload your completed audiobook to the distributors of your choice as a DIY project.

You may want to download and modify one of the contracts on this page if you go this route.

ACX as Distributor

This article focuses on using ACX as your distributor since it is the most widely known and utilized site.

Many RHs find a Royalty Share (RS) contract with the narrator on ACX.com to be very attractive because they can get an audiobook made without incurring up-front costs. They often don’t consider that this kind of contract marries the narrator’s payment to the distribution agreement.

Narrators are reluctant to accept an RS contract because the narrator shoulders ALL of the risk for low or no sales. Narrators look for several conditions to mitigate their risk.

A narrator is much more willing to accept the ACX hybrid contract known as Royalty Share Plus (RS+). In addition to the equal royalty split, the RH pays the narrator an amount up-front to help offset the narrator’s immediate expenses. The amount is negotiated between the RH and narrator and can be a set fee but is usually priced per finished hour (PFH).

With either an RS or RS+ contract, you are forced to accept exclusive distribution, meaning your audiobook will only be sold on Audible, Amazon, and Apple Books for the initial distribution term of 7 years. You have no option to upload your audiobook to other sites for wide distribution or sell it on CD or from your web site.

As I’ve previously written, indie authors get frustrated with the RS option for a number of reasons, especially when they itch to be relieved of the 7-year distribution term.

Contract Language

You have 2 contracts in place: the Book Posting Agreement between you and Audible, and the Production Standard Terms between you, Audible, and the narrator.

The distribution language is contained in the ACX Book Posting Agreement.

Sections 5A and 5B on exclusive or non-exclusive distribution set the initial distribution term at 7 years and include this auto-renewal clause:

After the Initial Term [7 years], this Agreement will renew automatically for additional 1 year terms (each, a “Renewal Term”) unless either party provides written notice of termination to the other party at least 60 days prior to the end of the Initial Term or the then-current Renewal Term.

Section 13B about changing the distribution to non-exclusive states:

If you elect to pay the Producer who produces an Audiobook using the ACX royalty share option, you must grant Audible exclusive distribution rights to the Audiobook and you cannot change your grant to non-exclusive.

In Section 14, the RH agrees that Audible will pay the royalties to producers on an RS contract.

Section 5-1 of the Production Standard Terms discusses the royalty payments.

Suppose you decide to use an RS or RS+ contract. Can you cancel distribution before the end of the initial 7 years?

If you want to cancel the distribution before the end of the 7 years, you must obtain the narrator’s permission to dissolve an RS or RS+ contract. Almost certainly, the narrator rightfully will demand a termination fee at that point. While section 8B of the Book Posting Agreement specifies termination fees prior to the completion of production, the contracts are silent about the termination fee once the book is on sale.

You and the narrator therefore will need to negotiate the kill fee. Remember, the narrator is expecting to earn at least their PFH rate through the royalties. If the audiobook’s sales have surpassed the total of what the PFH rate would have been, the narrator may reasonably propose a kill fee that also includes the loss of expected royalties.

The ACX blog states:

Effective February 1, ACX Rights Holders of DIY or Pay-for-Production titles that have been on sale for 90 or more days can convert their distribution type from exclusive to non-exclusive. In addition, all ACX Rights Holders will have the option to terminate after 90 days of distribution, but Rights Holders with Royalty Share or Royalty Share Plus deals must provide Producer consent when making their request.

The contract language has not been updated to reflect this policy change.

What happens after the contract finishes its initial 7-year distribution term?

As you saw above, Audible’s contract language says exclusive RS agreements can’t be changed. The only way the RH can remove the narrator from the RS agreement is for them to terminate distribution with Audible, as confirmed in this section of the Contracts and Agreements Qs and As page:

Can I change my contract from Exclusive to Non-exclusive?

Changing the distribution rights to your audiobook depends on the payment option you have chosen. If the audiobook was completed as a pay-for-production deal, the distribution rights can be changed from exclusive to non-exclusive after it has been live in the store for one year. If this audiobook is in a royalty share deal, then the agreement can never be changed. For more information, please reference section 12.a. of the Book Posting Agreement.”

I’ve had a number of RS books I narrated pulled by the RH after the 7-year initial distribution term because they wanted to terminate the RS contract. The big downside to this approach is that the RH not only loses the income and visibility of the book being on Audible, but all of the ratings and reviews the book earned during the 7 years are gone, too.

At the point the RH terminates the RS contract, he then may republish the audiobook since he owns the copyright to the recording, and the producer has assigned all interest in the book to the RH, as explicitly stated in Section 10 of the Production Standard Terms:

Ownership. Subject to the restriction on audiobook production rights above and the distribution rights granted by Rights Holder to Audible, Rights Holder will retain all right, title, and interest in and to the Book and the Audiobook, including the copyright in the Book and the sound recording copyright in the Audiobook. Producer agrees that the Audiobook is a “work made for hire” to the full extent permitted by law, with all copyrights in the Audiobook owned by Rights Holder. To the extent that the Audiobook does not qualify as a work made for hire under applicable law, Producer assigns to Rights Holder all right, title and interest Producer may have in and to the Audiobook, including, but not limited to, all copyright or rights of authorship in the Audiobook. Producer will ensure that its agreements with any third parties Producer engages to assist in the production of the Audiobook establish Rights Holder’s sole ownership in the Audiobook. Producer will use the form agreements referenced in Section 2 above. At Rights Holder’s request, Producer will provide Rights Holder with copies of the agreements.

Be aware that ACX and Audible will not send the audio files to you. You would need to download them from your ACX Dashboard. Go to Completed Projects, select the book, choose Produce Audiobook tab, and download each file by pressing Download on the right side.

The cure for the ACX 7-year itch is available to you at the BEGINNING of the project: decide to pay the narrator per finished hour (PFH) instead of using an RS or RS+ contract.

When you pay a PFH rate at the outset, you can select non-exclusive distribution on ACX and then immediately distribute your audiobook to other platforms, including those that offer your audiobook to libraries. You also have the option of exclusive distribution for the first year and then changing to non-exclusive distribution as early as year two.

As you can see on my RH info page, I ask new clients to pay a 50% deposit after approving the 15-minute sample. I invoice for the final 50% after uploading the completed audiobook. In cases where the RH and I contract independently of ACX or another platform, I withhold at least the end credits and retail sample until the invoice is paid. I encourage other narrators to adopt a similar policy.