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Can You Make Money With ACX?

ACX.com

ACX (Audio Creation Exchange) is one of the best if not the best ways to make money by narrating books and it’s completely free. It’s a legitimate platform available through ACX.com that works as an intermediator between a book owner and a narrator and ensures the payments are received for both parties. ACX is a part of Audible, a subsidiary of Amazon which adds a lot in terms of trustworthiness.

ACX offers either fixed, royalty share or royalty share plus types of payments and they also take a cut for distributing the product.

ACX is a mediator between the book author and the narrator to make it easier for both. Once finished the audiobook goes for sale on Audible, Amazon and iTunes. On ACX you’ll find hundreds of titles to audition for at different rates. Most of the offerings will be on the lower end but you can find some more luxurious gigs as well.

The great thing about ACX is that you can find an offer that’s appropriate for the level of skill you have even if you’re just starting as a voice-over narrator.

In this article, we’ll further review how you can earn using ACX to narrate audiobooks.

How long does it take to record one hour of audiobook?

Usually, it takes at least 8 hours to make 1 hour of finished recording but it could take even longer than that. Consider that’ll you’ll have to read the whole book before beginning to record it. Certainly, you won’t record it in one go without any failures and you’ll have to listen through the whole recording, remove the retakes and make sure it’s clean and consistent. Then some mastering will have to take place.

Hence, make sure you know how much you’re getting paid per hour before agreeing to work. If it’s $100 per finished hour, that’s only $12.5 per hour if it takes you 8 hours to make 1 hour of the finished product. And if you’re new to voice over it’ll probably take even more than 8 hours.

How much can you make with ACX?

With royalty shares, it’s hard to tell how much you’re going to make as it depends a lot on the book. Audible subscription currently goes for $12.45 per book of which you’re getting 20%, that’s $2.50 per audiobook, meaning you’ll have to sell 40 audiobooks to earn $100.

With fixed pricing, it’s much more straightforward as you know how much you’re getting paid per finished hour (PFH) before auditioning.

At the moment, there’re 286 titles accepting auditions and offering fixed pricing on ACX:

  • 176 paying $50-$100 PFH
  • 81 paying $100-$200 PFH
  • 25 paying $200-$400 PFH
  • 4 paying $400-$1000 PFH

An average fixed price audiobook will offer $82-$167 PFH (per finished hour), if we assume that it takes 8 hours to make 1 hour of a finished product and consider $125 to be an average PFH, then an average audiobook narrator can earn about $15 per hour on ACX. On the other hand, aspiring voice actors probably won’t compete well against professional voice actors and will earn around $9 per hour while experienced high-end voice actors can earn as much as $90 per hour on ACX.

What’s Royalty share plus?

Royalty shares plus is quite compelling, as it offers both fixed payment and royalty shares giving you a chance to immediately earn the money and have some payments come in the future through royalty shares. At the moment there’re 263 titles that offer the Royalty shares plus compensation method.

They don’t disclose the exact fixed amount of money you’ll receive on top of royalty shares, therefore, it’s hard to tell what the average pay would be with Royalty share plus.

Should you audition for Royalty share books?

Royalty shares will give 20% of the revenue from each sale, Amazon will take 60% and the book owner will receive 20% as well. If an audiobook sells for $12.45, you’ll be earning $2.5 per sale.

Currently, there’re 1111 books available to audition for with the Royalty share compensation method.

With Royalty share, it’s nice when the audiobook is selling well, however, the opposite is more possible – most of the audiobooks don’t sell that well and it takes a lot of sales to earn a significant amount of money, while the work it takes to produce an audiobook is hard and long.

With royalty share aim for the books that have decent popularity on Amazon. I would not go for any books over 50,000 rank unless you’re willing to work for free just for the sake of practice.

When choosing a book to audition for look for Amazon reviews. If it’s not doing good as a book and there are no reviews it probably won’t do good as an audiobook either.

Figure out whether the author has a way to promote the book if there’s no mention of promotion it probably won’t be promoted and it’ll be rough. Also, check if the author has any following on social media which might be helpful when promoting the book. If possible you may want to contact the author to get some details about the promotion of the audiobook and if you have the means to promote the audiobook yourself, that’s great.

ACX quality requirements

ACX has certain audio quality requirements. Don’t expect to be an ACX audiobook narrator using a smartphone or laptop microphone. And make your environment suited for professional recordings.

You don’t need the most expensive microphone in the world but I would suggest getting at least an entry-level XLR microphone with a cheaper audio interface. All of which will probably cost around $300 including all the other smaller purchases such as shock mount, XLR cable, pop filter and boom arm. You can find some good recommendations for budget microphones here.

Alternatively, you may buy a USB microphone. USB microphones don’t require an audio interface, nor XLR cable which makes them much cheaper compared to XLR cables. However, the caveat with USB microphones is the quality. USB connection is inferior to XLR connection and won’t provide the same audio quality, which will make it harder to get the gig.

If you’re unwilling to invest in an XLR microphone, you can try getting a hybrid of USB/XLR microphone that has both connections and will allow you to purchase an audio interface and upgrade to XLR later in the future, while in the meantime, you can use it with USB connection.

In addition, you’ll be required to meet certain ACX technical requirements such as RMS in between -23dB and -18dB, -3dB peak values and noise floor no higher than -60dB. All of which can be checked through ACX check plugin.

You can read more about ACX here and if you plan to set up your own home recording studio here’s a complete guide.

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How to Reduce Reverb When Recording?

Reverb is a repeated sound that bounces off the surfaces and comes back and forth multiple times. It’s very prevalent in places with hard surfaces that don’t absorb the sound, making it bounce back and reach the ear or microphone multiple times causing a distorted, muddy audio quality.

Reverb has its use and sometimes is preferable in music production but normally is quite unpleasant for the ear and therefore unwanted when recording voice overs. For professional voice over recordings, reverb should be completely removed or at least contained to minimal.

To reduce reverb the best method is preventing it altogether by choosing your recording space wisely, getting into a vocal booth or using some acoustic gadgets. However, software can also help to mitigate reverb significantly. In this article, we’ll go through many multiple methods that can be combined together to get the best sounding audio quality with less reverb.

Choose a room with soft surfaces

If you’re planning to record at home choosing the correct room is vital. Aim for the one with lots of soft surfaces.

Usually, the best recording room is a walking closet full of clothes. Clothes absorb a lot of the reverb and the relatively small space of a walking closet makes it easy to add additional acoustic treatments.

Another great option is a bedroom. Usually, bedrooms have a lot of soft surfaces such as a bed, thick curtains, closets with clothes and bedding which all help to reduce the reverb by absorbing sound waves.

Living room could also work but larger spaces are hard to treat acoustically as you have to cover more surface area. However, living rooms with lots of soft furniture such as sofas, soft chairs, carpeting and thick curtains might be suitable for recording.

The worst space for recording is probably gonna be a kitchen as it rarely has any soft furniture and there’s a lot of hard surfaces such as dining table, kitchen counter and shelves that are hard to cover with acoustic treatment.

Add carpeting

Adding soft carpeting is one of the better ways to improve your room’s acoustics. Choose the softest carpet or a rug and it’ll absorb static waves bouncing back forth from the ceiling to the floor.

If possible place the carpet strategically closer to the microphone, it’ll help to absorb sound waves faster before it bounces all around the room. Otherwise, cover the whole floor with thick carpet for the best results.

Acoustic treatment panels

Acoustic foam can significantly reduce reverb in most rooms. Usually, it’s quite cheap but some more premium options can be pricy. There are a lot of options to choose from, including different colors that will suit different rooms and various thicknesses for adequate reverb reduction.

At least 2-inch acoustic foam should be used for significant reverb reduction, however, 4-inch acoustic foam is usually required to achieve a professional reverb-free audio quality.

Alternatively, thinner, less noticeable acoustic absorption panels can be used to preserve a room’s design or to even improve it, as conventional acoustic foam may not always fit the look. Absorption panels are usually much thinner available in lighter colors but they come at a higher price.

I recommend using double-sided mounting tape to mount the acoustic foam or absorption panels. On most surfaces, it won’t leave any residue and is strong enough to hold any of them.

To remove some of the bassy reverb, use bass traps at the corners of the room. A lot of the waves get stuck in corners bouncing and mudding the audio, bass traps will significantly reduce this effect.

Use a closet

A good alternative to any room is using a regular closet full of soft clothes or bedding for recording. If you place the microphone inside the closet most of the reverb will be absorbed by clothes within the closet and won’t have a chance to bounce back.

For this to work make sure you are placing the microphone very close to the clothes and you also should be speaking not too far away from it to avoid any reverb escaping.

The caveat is that you’ll need a portable microphone stand and a portable recorder with phantom power to record, which is more expensive than buying an entry-level audio interface such as Behringer U-Phoria or Focusrite Scarlett 2i2.

Acoustic shield

Acoustic shields can help to significantly reduce reverb within the recording space. They work by covering the microphone which absorbs a lot of the sound waves before it goes past the microphone and then it also prevents sound waves from coming back into it.

The biggest appeal with acoustic shields is that they can be applied as a complementary piece when avoiding reverb to any other solution and they are cheap. For example, you can treat your room with acoustic panels or use a closet and then on top of that have an acoustic shield on the microphone to further reduce the remaining reverb.

Also, if you are planning to use the closet method or blankets method (which we’ll talk about soon) acoustic shield is good at protecting your microphone from getting in contact with anything around it, which could potentially cause unwanted noise.

The drawback of acoustic shields is that they alone can’t provide professional audio quality.

The most renowned acoustic shield is a Kaotica Eyeball, however, since its creation, there’re plenty of much cheaper options available that give almost identical results. You can check out the acoustic foam shield created by Melon or read about some of the other great cheap alternatives here.

Blanket booth

A blanket booth or a PVC booth is a makeshift recording space created using PVC pipes, PVC connectors and moving blankets, you can also use blankets you already have, the thicker the better.

Use PVC pipes and connectors to create a frame for your booth and then cover it with moving or regular blankets. Set your recording gear in the booth and you’re good to go. I love everything about this recording solution, it’s cheap, you can get away with less than $150 and it’ll give you high-quality reverb-free audio.

Throw in an acoustic shield and you have a professional set up free of reverb for around $200 or less. The booth is easy to set up and if needed can be easily dismantled. I think it’s the best solution for aspiring voice over artists.

For those that are less crafty or don’t want the hassle of acquiring all the parts and assembling PVC booth, you can buy a set of requisite materials for around $500-$600. It’s a little bit less hassle but essentially the same PVC booth for a higher price.

Vocal booth

Vocal booths are a much more sophisticated and professional solution to the reverb problem than your makeshift blanket booth but they are much more expensive as well. You can get the cheapest vocal booth at the price of $1,500 but more premium options sell at as high as $20,000.

Vocalbooth.com sells these booths with various customizable features available, including windows, HEPA filters, ventilation, cable ports, fans, lighting, different color acoustic foam, sizes and forms.

It’s the ultimate solution, however, not cheap, I would only suggest it for professional voice over artists.

Remove reverb using software

Once you’ve finally done recording if there’s still some reverb left after you applied previously mentioned methods you can still get rid of it using software.

I would recommend using software only as a last resort, usually getting rid of noise or reverb in post production comes at a cost of losing some frequencies or introducing audio artifacts and you’ll do better by preventing reverb than trying to deal with it in post. Still, sometimes it needs to be done.

You can remove reverb by using DeReverb tool in Adobe Audition. Other professional DAWs will probably have similarly named tools.

DeReverb settings in Adobe Audition.

To apply DeReverb in Adobe Audition:

  • Select your audio recording
  • Go to Effects->Noise reduction / Restoration -> DeReverb
  • Set a desired amount of processing. I like to leave it at 40% or below
  • Click apply

You want to use as little of DeReverb as possible. I recommend sticking with 40% of processing or below that. I would apply 40% for audio recording with heavy reverb and for something with slightly less noticeable reverb I would tune it down to 10-20%.

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