Hi, Elizabeth! Thanks for the note. I’m glad to answer your questions.

As I wrote in this NarratorsRoadmap.com article:

You should have experience BEFORE you represent yourself as a professional narrator who can complete the job. About half of the general population has never listened to an audiobook. If their first experience is bad, they may never come back to the medium.

If you need more experience, volunteer for an organization like Learning Ally or your state’s reading service that records material for visually impaired or dyslexic people.

Answers to your questions are below.

1. What is a fair price for an inexperienced narrator. (I have seen $85-$140 for one completed hour).

The audiobook industry doesn’t have a “beginner” rate. The ACX union minimum, which is a professional rate, is $250 per finished hour. If you don’t feel your skills are at a level where you are comfortable charging that rate, you may want to get more training and do more volunteer and royalty share projects to gain experience.

2. What is my gold standard for editing and proofing for the final product. Sound quality..other?

Your finished audiobook should sound as good as any audiobook you’ve heard that was produced by a Big 5 publisher. Listeners expect audio that is free from background noise, gaspy breaths, and other distractions. They expect proper pacing, which includes the pauses between sentences and sections.

The ideal situation is to outsource the editing to an editor. We get paid to NARRATE. We don’t get paid to edit. In addition, if you made a mistake when recording the text, you may not catch the error when editing your own work. A spreadsheet of editors and proofers is linked on the NarratorsRoadmap.com Welcome Center page.

3. I am using Garage Band. Would Audacity be better for ease of editing.

Garage Band is not a suitable DAW for audiobook narration. It is better suited for hobbyist musicians creating short pieces, hence its name. Even Audacity is an improvement over Garage Band, but I would steer you to Studio One, Ocen Audio, Reaper, or Adobe Audition because of their punch-and-roll capabilities.

4. The author commented on my rate of reading as slower than my audio samples.

This one brings up several points:
A) A competent audiobook narration coach could aid your performance choices immeasurably, which will improve your confidence. You’ll find a spreadsheet of coaches linked in the Connections section on the home page of NarratorsRoadmap.com.

B) Non-fiction work often requires substantial pronunciation research. You should either include that time in your rate or negotiate a separate charge for it. Most authors on ACX are not aware of the difficulties in audiobook production and probably would balk at paying a separate charge for research.

C) The author is not the director unless she is paying to direct you in real-time studio hours. That said, the text should dictate the pace. The last question in this AudioFile Magazine interview with Steven Weber has comments about pacing that are relevant here.

I realize some of my answers may sound like “tough love’. Audiobook narration is a very competitive field, and I’d be doing you a disservice to sugar-coat any of my answers.

I hope this info is helpful. Best wishes for your success!

Karen

I am extremely new to narrating audiobooks. So new in fact I have never done one. I have put samples up on my ACX profile and had an author just recently ask me to audition. She is asking my pfh rate. It is a 65,000 word book.

I am completely at a loss for what to expect. I get a bit concerned when you talk about editing and proofing, not just time, but expected quality of finished product. This has stopped me from doing this work in the past. I just don’t want to be blind sided by an expectation after submitting what I think to be a finished product.

My questions are this:
1. What is a fair price for an inexperienced narrator. (I have seen $85-$140 for one completed hour).
2. What is my gold standard for editing and proofing for the final product. Sound quality..other?
3. I am using Garage Band. Would Audacity be better for ease of editing.
4. The author commented on my rate of reading as slower than my audio samples. It is a book on Buddism and she does not want it to come across as somber. The sentence structures are long and there are words that are not in my first language which are very doable with research and pronunciation apps, but they do slow me down. My thought was to narrate at a bit slower pace so that I can smoothly and consistently articulate throughout the entire book. My question here is should I take into consideration the time it might take for me to research and accurately record? It is hard for me to tell how long this will take me and if I should try to pick up my pace. On audible for instance the pace can be increased while listening to a book so recording at a more deliberate pace was my initial thought. Not gonna lie, this is not upbeat material. It is non-fiction and very factual. I think the author is wanting a faster pace so it isn’t slow and boring, which I completely understand and would like to honor.

So many questions here, I realize. Thank you for any advice on this. I appreciate your help.
(Ps I just signed up on https://www.narratorsroadmap.com/ That will keep me busy! Fabulous resources!!)
Many thanks,
Elizabeth

Hi, Jessica! New narrators shouldn’t offer a discount on their work. I gave the ACX union minimum because that’s the floor for a professional narrator.

I updated the article to clarify that any expenses for an editor and proofer would come out of the finished hour rate on ACX. As you gain experience, you could bump up the rate above the minimum.

A new narrator may be lacking experience and/or confidence. However — and this is the key take-away — if s/he is producing quality work that compares to that from more established narrators, s/he should be paid at the same rate.

Being competitive with other narrators means investing in yourself and your business with good equipment, a well-treated recording space, and audiobook-specific coaching. It’s best to hire someone to edit and proof your book.

EVERY BOOK YOU DO remains part of your portfolio. You need to choose your projects wisely and do them well. It takes time to build this business the right way.

Maybe all these factors mean you only get one GOOD book done in a year. One GOOD book is better for your long-term career than 10 mediocre books.

I hope these thoughts are helpful. Best wishes for your success!

Karen

Hi, Laura! Thanks for the good questions. I will answer you frankly and honestly. Please know that I write with the best intentions and mean no disrespect by anything I am about to say. I may not tell you what you want to hear, but I will tell you what you need to know.

Your number of books narrated and sold along with your statement “it has never been about the money for me because I am 70 years old and retired” tells me that you look upon your narration as a hobby that maybe brings in a little extra income.

In contrast, professional audiobook narrators view our work as a BUSINESS. Most professional narrators rely on the income to meet the necessities of life. They continue to invest money in themselves and their business with ongoing training and studio upgrades. Their experience level makes them more in demand, which results in higher rates.

The SAG/AFTRA minimum rate on ACX of $250PFH should be the least any professional narrator will accept.

The industry rule of thumb is that it takes 6.2 hours in real time to produce a single finished hour of an audiobook. A rate of $50PFH for a fully-produced audio would equate to $8.33 per real-time hour. Such a rate is barely above the poverty level for a full-time job and is equivalent to what an unskilled teenager might earn at a fast food restaurant. Audiobook narration requires many more complex skills.

If you accepted $100PFH, the actual payment realized doubles to $16.12 per real hour. If your production ratio is higher and/or you paid an editor/proofer, you sink back toward the poverty level.

It’s fine to be a hobbyist. However, you’re in a commercial marketplace competing against professional narrators. When you accept a lowball PFH rate, you are saying that you don’t put a high value on your work. If you don’t value it, no one else will, either.

What’s more, you teach the price-shopping rights holder not to value the skills of ANY professional narrator. They probably will brag to their friends about the cheap price they paid you. Those RHs will then have lower expectations, making it more difficult for professional narrators to achieve the rate they need to be paid.

RS projects are not inherently bad. You can have multiple valid reasons to take an RS contract. However, you need to research these titles well before accepting one. I’ve just launched a new site called NarratorsRoadmap.com. I encourage you to look through that site, especially the Knowledge Base article titled ACX projects to avoid.

While every freelancer must run their business as they see fit, the goal of any business should be to make money.

I hope these thoughts are useful to you.

Karen

Hi, Robert! Thanks for the note.

In answer to your questions:

1) Finished time refers to the run-time of the completed, retail ready product.

2) Most experienced professional narrators outsource our editing to an editor so we can concentrate on narrating. The editor will adjust pacing, eliminate most mouth and external noises, and proof-listen to the text to note mistakes that must be re-recorded.

3) Music and sound effects are not the responsibility of the narrator. Most audiobooks only have music in the opening and closing credits, if that much. Unless an audiobook is being produced as an audio drama or full cast recording, it usually does not have sound effects.

4) Mastering is the process of making adjustments to the overall recording ensure that the entire book is at a consistent level and is pleasing to the ear.

I’ve started a new site called NarratorsRoadmap.com that will soon have a Knowledge Base with articles on most of these topics. Please check it out and sign up for updates!

Best wishes for your success!

Karen

Hi, Alice! Thanks for the note.

ACX will automatically add the finished time of all the files to calculate the final run time. If you have a Per Finished Hour (PFH) agreement with the rights holder (RH), the screen also shows the amount due based on your PFH rate times the finished run time shown for the project. Note that the RH pays you outside of ACX, and you need to receive payment before you release the title for QA.

The estimated run time almost always varies from the finished time, sometimes rather dramatically by an hour or more. The estimated time can only account for the number of words. It doesn’t accommodate the complexity of the words or the pauses and pacing needed to performing the text.

I hope this info helps. Best wishes for your success!

Karen