You may be thinking, “That’s great, but what does your presentation have to do with AI?”

This article will answer that question.

Background

When I worked for the IRS, I read Cliff Atkinson’s book Beyond Bullet Points, and it changed how I develop presentation slides,

Atkinson instructs you to create a storyboard of your discussion points. Using his process, you’re able to scale your presentation to last from 15 to 45 minutes. You can download his invaluable templates on his site

Due to this system, I don’t make ugly, boring slides consisting of black text bullet points on a white background. Instead, each slide displays a captivating image that has something to do with the idea I will address.

As you might expect, it can take some time to locate images that correlate to your talking points. I can spend weeks creating slides for a presentation.

I often have to pay to license the graphics on my slides. I use Public Domain (PD) images whenever possible, but modern concepts usually call for modern images.

AI Advances

Whether or not we want AI attributes in our software, manufacturers are shoving AI down our throats in all of our applications — often without the capability for the user to opt-out of the AI tools.

We’re increasingly bombarded with overly enthusiastic messages like:

• “Everybody is using AI. You better get on board, or you’ll be left behind!”
• “The AI can create what you need in seconds!”
• “Think of how much time you’ll save!”

In fact, the TV show HACKS included just such a conversation in this week’s episode. I was glad to hear Ava’s character speak about the lack of ethics in AI tools. Most Large Language Models (LLMs) have been trained using copyrighted texts and art without permission from or compensation to the creators. Also, the tremendous power consumption required by the data centers is doing terrible things to the people in their communities and the planet.

Meanwhile, many people have embraced AI as part of their everyday life, seemingly without regard to any privacy concerns. One of our friends told me she asks ChatGPT numerous questions every day. She said it saves her time doing research. She does investigate the options the Chatbot presents her, but I suspect most people don’t.

Other people I know create every new fad meme made with generative AI just because they saw it on social media. They either don’t know or couldn’t care less about the lack of ethics and power consumption used for their little bit of fun.

Ryan Holiday discusses in his 5/7/26 newsletter how AI is destroying our critical thinking skills. By writing our thoughts, we are “focused, patient, and disciplined.” We become different people as we learn how WE think rather than blindly accepting AI suggestions or asking a chatbot to write something for us..

My Initial Forays Into AI

I will say that I have used the AI tools in Evernote and Adobe Acrobat. In both cases, my usage is akin to a semantic search of my material contained in the application.

In Evernote, I often ask the AI Assistant to find an entry among my 20K+ notes that contains a certain quote or describes a situation. I also heavily rely on its transcription tool on newspaper articles, recordings, and even my journals because it recognizes handwriting. The linked article outlines the many corrections I must make to the transcriptions and includes info about Evernote’s data privacy policy.

With Adobe Acrobat, I have interrogated its AI Assistant about the PDF of a Public Domain audiobook as part of my prep for an audiobook I was about to record. (I’d need to fully read the Privacy Policy and related FAQs before I asked the AI Assistant anything about a copyrighted PDF.) I’ve asked it for:

• analysis of media influences in a court case
• character descriptions, accents, and pages where they have dialogue
• page numbers where the author referred to himself in first person
• pronunciation list of proper names
  • In one case, I asked it how it knew that the name should be pronounced the way it suggested and not the other way that name is commonly said. The bot supplied its reasons. I did some research to find a family member and confirmed the pronunciation with them. Adobe’s AI Assistant got it right.

Here’s where my current AI dilemma comes into play.

Experiment

In my June presentation, I’ll teach narrators about using the wealth of Public Domain works, which is material on which the copyright has elapsed. Things in the PD belong to ALL of us. If the corporate overlords who built the LLMs behind generative AI had trained them with PD works, I would eagerly use every AI tool available.

Some people argue that AI advances are no different than the Industrial Revolution. Technology advances inevitably put people out of jobs.

AI is different, though, because of its origins in stolen copyrighted work. I can’t ignore that aspect.

I have to confess, though, that my strong desire to save weeks of time, possibly generating the whole series of slides with a few keystrokes, tempted me to see what AI actually could do for me.

I have a subscription to Microsoft Office 365, which excitedly assures me that its Copilot could:

Generate and edit images, posters, infographics, banners, and more: Turn ideas into pro-grade visuals in minutes. Just describe what you want to create—AI handles the heavy lifting so you can focus on the message, not the mechanics. Then, make precise, targeted edits with our AI visual editor.

It first guided me to choose a template in one of these categories:

• Recommended
• Pitch Deck
• Business and Productivity
• Research Shareout
• Project Report
• Marketing

Templates have been a mainstay of Office for decades. I’m a firm proponent of templates and other ways to be efficient.

However, none of the templates looked like anything I envisioned or want to use.

I started a chat in Copilot. I first asked, “How can I generate a Powerpoint presentation based on a theme without using a template?”

It responded with an in-depth series of steps to manually make a Powerpoint file, starting with a blank presentation, choosing colors and fonts, etc. In other words, I was shown the same process I’ve followed for the last 30 years.

I then asked, “I know how to manually make a presentation. I want to know how to use Copilot to generate a set of images for my slide backgrounds that all visually related to the key word I give it.”

This time, the bot gave me a much better response, saying:

Got it —you’re not asking how to design slides, you want a repeatable Copilot workflow to generate a cohesive set of background images that all “feel like the same collection,” driven by one keyword.

It offered another lengthy set of instructions and pointed to this official reference.

I wrote a very specific prompt to request an image, and the rendered graphic beautifully matched my description. Inserting it in the slide then caused Powerpoint to give me numerous design ideas about the text.

Conclusion

My experiment made me want to see whether I could develop my whole presentation this way. I haven’t decided which way to proceed: the old manual method of finding — and possibly paying for — suitable images, or the new approach of generating them. I could even choose a hybrid plan as I’ve already found some good images on stock photo site.

Hence the title of this article — An AI Dilemma.

What choice would you make if you were me? Please leave a comment!

The post An AI Dilemma appeared first on Karen Commins.

I received this comment on my article Public Domain Narration Headquarters. Since the question involves a book still under copyright, I decided to create a new article, redacting some of the identifiable aspects of the message.

I would love to record a memoir by a great [person]. Once recorded, I think there would be a market for it. The book was published in 2002, therefore is not public domain. It’s sold by Amazon but there is no audiobook of it.

I know I’ll have to contact the publisher but I don’t know where to go from there. I don’t know how to set up a contract for the job (I’d be willing to do royalty share). I don’t know how to get the audiobook onto Amazon and Audible so people can buy it.

I’ve recorded more than X books, mostly for Learning Ally. I have a good home studio. I got two jobs from [a Big 5 publisher] but have not been having much luck with auditions of late. My work of late has focused on [certain]-themed books. I haven’t figured out Findaway or Spoken Realms. I’m getting my business education from you and APA but there’s a lot I need to learn. Any advice you can give will be appreciated.

Thanks for the note.

First, this article may seem more of a general answer than you’d hoped. It needs to benefit the most people. Obviously, each discussion and negotiation about audio rights and audiobook production will be unique. I can’t anticipate or explain every possible scenario, and the scope of the topic is beyond what I can cover in an article. I can only give you a basic game plan and some resources.

Second, I need to state a few general facts about copyright so we’re all on the same page:

1. The audio rights holder (RH) could be the author, literary agent, or publisher.
2. Every book published in the US after 1963 remains copyrighted. Only the audio rights holder has the legal right to make an audiobook of these titles.
3. Titles published in the US before or during 1930 are in the public domain. Anyone can make an audiobook of these books without obtaining any permission or paying any licensing fees or royalties. A new year of books enters the public domain every 1 January, meaning that books published in 1931 will be public domain on 1/1/27.
4. Books published in the US between 1931 and 1963 may be public domain or could still retain copyright.

You must research the publication and copyright renewal dates to determine a book’s copyright status, and, if it is still copyrighted, the rights holder. If it’s public domain, head over to my Public Domain Narration Headquarters for more info and resources.

This article concerns only those books still in copyright. 

Decide Desired Outcome

Before I continue, let me state that anyone who plans to approach a rights holder about narrating their book needs to already be experienced in recording audio files and having them proofed and mastered.

Your chances of success are further helped if you have completed projects for RHs through a distributor platform (ACX, Findaway, Spoken Realms, Author’s Republic, etc.) or directly with publishers or production companies. You also will want to be knowledgeable about audiobook distribution and have a distribution plan ready for books you wish to license.

You can narrate a copyrighted book in 1 of these 2 ways:

1. License the audio rights
   • usually requires an advance payment against projected royalties — the amount is a negotiation point
   • licensee is responsible for cover art, distribution choices, and marketing
2. Persuade the rights holder to retain their audio rights and hire you to narrate/produce the audiobook
   • This option intuitively seems easier to pursue with authors if you are willing to be paid by royalty share or possibly a royalty share hybrid where you receive an amount less than your PFH rate up front to cover your production costs.

It’s important to know how you plan and expect to create the audiobook BEFORE you contact someone about audiobook production for several reasons:

• A publisher may not license titles to an individual. You might need to partner with a production company.
• If you want to license the title, the rights holder needs to know you have experience producing audiobooks and have created a distribution plan.
• An author may not be interested in managing the process and only wants to license the rights.
• Authors who want to produce the audiobook may need guidance from you about the whole process, particularly distribution options.

I’m not trying to sell you anything, but I hosted a webinar about licensing audio rights with Jessica Kaye. Jessica is an IP attorney and Grammy-winning audiobook director and distributor. If you’re interested, the replay with transcript and sample contract are available on my Shop page.

This article contains some pros and cons of the approaches, as well as some considerations for a licensing offer.

Also, this is a good place to point out that members of my NarratorsRoadmap.com site have access to my exclusive Audiobook Distributors Comparison Chart in which I list over 30 attributes for 9 distributors and share my distributor recommendations.

Discover Rights Holder

In either case, you’d start by determining who owns the audio rights so you can send them a query.

I like to begin my quest with the author or literary agent as I usually receive a faster response.

In this case, the author has passed away. I therefore suggest starting the query with the publisher rather than researching the author’s estate.

I look up the book on Amazon and find the publisher’s name listed in the Product Details section of the page. You might also find it by using the Look Inside feature if that’s available for the book. Be sure to look at the hardback and paperback versions; the Kindle edition may have been published by an entity that isn’t the original book publisher.

If the book isn’t listed on Amazon, you can Google the title

I then Google the publisher’s name to see if they have a web site.

You usually want to connect with someone in the Subsidiary Rights department. You can look through the publisher’s site to find that department.

I don’t like writing messages to general email addresses like info@publishername.com. I use a Google site search on LinkedIn to see if I can find an employee in Subsidiary Rights.

site:LinkedIn.com PublisherName.com subsidiary rights 

If a name pops up, I’ll review their LinkedIn profile to ensure that they currently work with the publisher in the sub-rights department. Many times, a past job matches my search, and I don’t want to waste time writing to the wrong person.

With the particular book mentioned in the message, I couldn’t find anyone on LinkedIn for the publisher’s sub-rights. However, this publisher has an easily-discoverable site with a menu option for Staff. None of the descriptions included the word “rights”, so I’d write to either the Production Manager or the Executive Editor.

Find Contact Info

Once you have a name, you’ll need their email address.

Here are 4 tactics that may help you to discover the email address for a person:

1. Google one or more of these search terms:
   • [name] + email address
   • [name] + contact
   • site:[DomainName.com] + [name] + contact, where DomainName.com is the website URL
2. Enter the website domain name at Hunter.io. It will return a list of verified email addresses at that domain. You can search the results for the person you want to contact. If that person’s name isn’t listed in the results, you can use the “best guess” for the format of the email address.
3. Look on social media for their account and simply ask them for their email address.
4. Facebook users also may list their email address in the About section of their profile.

Send Initial Query

If you’re writing to the author, I suggest you do some additional research before contacting them:

• Read the book, or at least read the Kindle sample.
• Do your homework and look at the author’s site and social media. Follow authors on social media and comment between releases. If they talk about a new project, you might contact them about it.
• Your research will uncover specifics that will appeal to the author and help you make this initial query more personal and effective.

In addition, if the author already has some books in audio:

• You wouldn’t need to include comments in your query about the booming audiobook business. They already know!
• Check the narrators of the audiobooks. If the author only uses 1 narrator, don’t be a poacher! Find another book and author to contact.

NarratorsRoadmap.com members have additional resources available regarding author prospecting in the Create Your Own Path video course.

You might want to review my points of email marketing advice before firing off a message.

Your query should be brief — 50-125 words seems to be the sweet spot. You might compose the message on your phone to ensure it stays on a single screen. You can use the following elements:

1. Confirm that the person you’ve contacted does indeed control the audio rights for the book.
2. Ask whether they already have plans to create an audiobook.
3. Explain your interest in/connection to the book.
4. Succinctly mention the tremendous and continuous growth in the audiobook market.
5. State your background to give the RH confidence in your ability to produce the audiobook.
6. Request a reply.

Don’t Send a Sample

Many people send a sample from the book with the initial query to authors, and it’s a winning tactic for some.

For me, sending the book sample with the query is putting the cart before the horse. I’d wait to see if the person expresses interest before I spend time creating a sample.

You’re trying to start a relationship. A sample can feel pushy to the author — like you meet someone on a date and tell them you know all about them, want to build a house with them, and have already picked out the wallpaper!

When you include a sample, send it as a link rather than an attachment to the message.

Respond As Appropriate

If you don’t get a response within 2-3 weeks, I’d send another message. Be prepared to follow-up many times before you have a decision, especially if you’re communicating with someone at a large corporation.

You may need to negotiate the licensing terms.

If you want the RH to hire you, you may need to answer their (possibly many) questions about audiobook production, including things like how they can post the book on ACX and choose you as the narrator.

Produce and Distribute the Audiobook

Once you get a YES, you would sign appropriate contracts.

If you need a contract template in a work-for-hire situation, you can download one from ACX on this page. You can modify the Narration Services contract template to suit your circumstances, starting with removing “ACX” from its pages. Licensing the audio rights requires a different contract for which I suggest you consult with an attorney.

With a contract in place, you would record and produce the audiobook as you’ve done for other clients.

The steps to make the audiobook appear on Audible and other sites depends on which distributor(s) are chosen. If the author hired you, they select the distributor(s). If you’re the audio licensee, you would follow the distribution plan you devised earlier.

Basically, each distributor has its own method of intake for audio files and cover art. With many sites, you simply create an account, supply tax info, login, and upload the files. Note that on ACX and Findaway Voices, you as an audio licensee would use a different email address than your narrator address to create a rights holder account. (Your 2 accounts can use the same tax ID.) Other distributors may require a different means to establish an account and transfer files.

Those who license the rights are responsible for marketing the audiobook. My Audiobook Marketing Cheat Sheet has a wide range of ideas and tactics to help you promote your audiobook.

I hope this overview helps. If you have questions about this article or next steps, please leave a comment below. Good luck in obtaining this book, and please keep me posted so I can cheer you on!

Photo: Storyblocks.com

The post How to Narrate Copyrighted Books appeared first on Karen Commins.

I adored David when I was young, and I learned a valuable lesson from him as an adult.

In the 1970s, David Cassidy was one of the biggest stars on the planet. He seemed to have it all: talent, looks, charm, money, opportunities as a singer and actor, and legions of fans, including me.

Somewhere during the years, he decided his outsized life wasn’t enough, and things went horribly wrong for him.

In June 2018, we watched the documentary David Cassidy: The Last Session. I was sad to see him looking so bad, as much of it was filmed 2 months before he passed on 21 November 2017.

The clips of him in his 70s heyday were incredible because of the 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of screaming fans.

However, rather than feeling grateful for the adoration of so many people and enjoying that life, he seemed dismissive of it. He said he never wanted to be a teen idol, and he felt frustrated that he couldn’t play the type of hard rock music that he wanted to.

David couldn’t accept that the ROCK market didn’t want him to sing, but the POP market did. Or perhaps he would have found an audience who liked him as a rocker. I don’t know that he tried. This article has a good sampling of David’s comments.

I’m sure it was very difficult to be in the “hurricane of success”, as Barry Manilow calls it, especially for someone so young.

The documentary included a phone call from him where he admitted that he had lied about his drinking and really had no sign of dementia. He said his liver disease was from alcohol poisoning, and he “did it all to myself”. He said he drank to fill the emptiness.

I remembered reading David’s memoir years ago and thinking that he was very bitter.

I could relate to David’s feeling unfulfilled by his work. I spent YEARS working at the IRS feeling extremely frustrated and wishing that I wasn’t there and was instead doing voiceover work full-time. However, I did appreciate that my IRS career gave me financial security and healthcare options I wouldn’t have had as a freelancer.

When I acted like David and bemoaned what I thought I lacked, that lack continued to show up for me. It caused me to feel very unhappy in the present moment. I didn’t realize back then that such thoughts are an act of self-negation.

Acceptance Is Key

I wish I could somehow convey what a difference ACCEPTANCE made to me!!

It started with me saying out loud and with true feeling “I ACCEPT MY LIFE!” It seems like such a small thing to say and do, but it made such a tremendous difference. EVERYTHING changed at that point. The desperation I felt for my situation to change vanished and was replaced by enthusiasm for the work I was doing.

I wrote in my journal on 12 August 2008:

I ACCEPT MY LIFE!

I realize at long last that I have been blocking things from coming to me with my resistance to my day job. I read about these things in books, yet I never saw myself or my actions mirrored there. Today, p.43 of Secrets of Success has much more meaning to me:

Your emotional broadcast must align with your specific goals if you want to achieve real results…The irony is that attaching our joy to something in the future actually sabotages our ability to be content now. And according to the laws of intention, it greatly reduces our potential to attract the very things we’re pinning our hopes on. The solution comes from choosing to live now in the happy energy that we want to create.

Accepting my life is a huge relief. I no longer have to pretend to be something else. I can feel happier in the present moment knowing that I am where I am supposed to be. I have said the words many times, but I had feelings of doubt. I always felt like I should be doing something else. If I had free time at work, I felt like I needed to be working on voiceover goals, but doing so made me feel guilty.

[My best friend] said she could see for years that my resistance to my reality was blocking me from receiving. She said I had put up walls and was only looking for things to come to me a certain way.

I know that acceptance of my very wonderful life is not dependent on getting a particular job, either at the IRS or in voiceover. Accepting my life means I can be like water, flowing smoothly and easily on my life’s path.

As soon as I accepted my life AS IT WAS, things started to flow better in both the thrival job at the IRS and in my voiceover business.

Declaring that you accept your life is not saying you’re accepting that your dream won’t happen. Instead, you’re telling the Universe that you accept how things are RIGHT NOW and that you know your dream (or something better!) will materialize in its own good time without your need to stress, push, and force the result you want into being.

All of the metaphysical teachers stress that we can focus on what we want with the calm assurance that we free the Universe to provide it or SOMETHING BETTER to us at the right time. Otherwise, you may find yourself feeling increasingly desperate for your desired outcome, which activates the Law of Paradoxical Intent and pushes your hoped-for outcome further away.

Acceptance led me to embrace my work, both at the IRS and since then.

David Cassidy’s story continues to be a powerful reminder to me to be grateful for my life and not spend my time and energy discounting it and desperately wishing it were the exact way I envisioned it. However, we can do things that make our lives even more rewarding and meaningful.

Redefining Work

In 2018, as I was starting to develop NarratorsRoadmap.com, I wrote in my journal about reading the article How to Do the Work Only You Can Do by Jeff Goins. Goins interviewed former astronaut Alan Bean, who later documented his space flights by painting what he had seen. I tweeted the article on 6/20/18, commenting “I love this inspirational story! I’m realizing more and more that work I feel called to do and things that I want to create aren’t necessarily what I and other people would think of as my career.”

I hope you’ll read the article, but I wanted to highlight some important passages from it:

Your life’s work is rarely what you expect it to be….Alan had to paint the moon because no one else could — at least not like him.

…we all have something like that, something only we can do. You may call it a purpose or a calling or your life’s work, but you are here to do important work. And sometimes, you have to leave your comfort zone to do it.

[Bean] began experimenting with ways to make money off his art. But how could he earn enough to provide for himself and his family when he kept comparing himself to the likes of Monet and Picasso?

We all do this: we question the work we do and compare it to what someone else is doing. But that’s their duty, not ours. And they have the authority and advantage over us because that’s THEIR work.

…to do your duty, the work that only you can do. You can’t compare yourself to others and keep trying to measure up to someone else’s standard. To do what no one else can do, you have to use what no one else has.

Which is to say, the tools and skills and experiences that make you uniquely you are incredible advantages over the competition.

As an audiobook narrator, I’ve often been snared in the trap of comparison-itis and have done the inner work needed to usually be free of it. (If you’re interested, NarratorsRoadmap.com members can watch a video where I shared my “Antidotes for Comparison-itis and Bad Review Fever”.)

For years, I waited for certain things to happen through my work as a narrator, yet they’ve appeared for me as a result of creating my site. While they didn’t look like I envisioned or come from the direction I expected, I’ve learned to count all my blessings regardless of how and when they show up for me.

As we start a new year, my goals are simply to continue accepting my life and embracing the work that is mine to do.

To that end, I am excited to announce I’m starting something new on 18 January:  the Narrators Roadmap Club on Clubhouse! Every other Wednesday, I’ll host the Pit Stop room, which is your fortnightly mid-week rest area to refuel your drive. My friend and co-host Anne Flosnik and I will talk with narrators who have careers beyond narrating. I invite you to join the Narrators Roadmap club to be notified about upcoming discussions, and I hope I’ll see you in the Pit Stop!

The post Embracing Life and Work appeared first on Karen Commins.

When the obstacle in your way seems to have stopped you in your tracks,
it’s not a failure.
It’s part of what’s calling forth the necessary change
so you can move through, around, over, or under whatever is on your path to success.

— Christian Sørensen

This quote applies to my relationship to public domain books.

Although I started narrating audiobooks in 2002, it wasn’t until ACX launched in 2011 that I really got a foothold in the industry. Prior to that point, the market didn’t exist for a narrator who lived in Atlanta. You either had to be in New York or LA; otherwise, producers didn’t want to talk to you. With ACX, all of the rest of us could have a voice in audiobooks, too.

I soon burned out doing ACX projects since most of them were royalty share books where the rights holder was not promoting the audiobook. (Shameless plug: If you’re interested, I explain how to pick good ACX titles in my webinar Put Yourself in the ACX Drivers Seat, available on my Shop page.)

At the same time, I wasn’t getting traction with publishers. I decided to start recording more public domain books.

Public domain (PD) books are those where the copyright has expired. They belong to all of us, and anybody can do anything they want to with a book that’s in the public domain.

Over time, I’ve kind of become what I think of as the Public Domain Whisperer. I regularly search HathiTrust.org for interesting PD books. HathiTrust is a consortium of academic and research libraries with over 17 million digitized items, I often find a book that I think would be a good one for another narrator to do, so I send the link and the suggestion to them.

I’ve been gratified by the enthusiastic and excited responses to my finds. One experienced and award-winning narrator told me I had set them on a new path, and they’ve won a number of awards for their PD productions!

This article will be my Public Domain Narration Headquarters. I’ll start with ten reasons why I love, love, LOVE recording and publishing public domain books. Plus, check out the resources list below as well as the comments, where I answer your questions!

10. You’ll find an abundance of books that are ready for you to do.

Every year, new books come into the public domain!

On 1 January 2026, everything published in the United States in 1930 became public domain because the copyrights expired. What does that include? This page will give you a few ideas. Every book published in the US before 1930 is also in the public domain.

Books published in the US from 1931 to 1963 inclusive could be in the public domain, and the majority of them are. The copyrights had to be renewed during those years, and most people didn’t renew them. You must research a book’s copyright status to determine if the copyright was renewed. You’ll find info about research in the Resources section below.

If a book was published in 1931, you can start recording it today and be ready to publish it on New Year’s Day next year. You may find the early bird gets the worm!

9. You have complete creative control and freedom.

You can change words, including the way I did in a memoir. You can add or remove words. You can combine texts. In short, you can do anything you want to with a public domain book and are only limited by your creativity and imagination. I know people who have combined fairy tales or short stories (by theme or author) together to create a new compilation.

In a similar vein, one of my favorite projects of all time was one where I actually mashed up two public domain texts. Let me tell you the story to give you an idea of something you can do.

In 1889, Elizabeth Cochrane was a journalist for the NY World paper owned by Joseph Pulitzer. Her byline was Nellie Bly. As a publicity stunt for the paper, Nellie Bly challenged the feat set by fictional character Phileas Fogg to go around the world in 80 days. She was in New York and traveled east to London. She boarded a ship in mid-November, when the northern hemisphere was growing colder and losing daylight each day.

Meanwhile, Cosmopolitan, a rival magazine, didn’t want Nellie to get all the attention. So Cosmopolitan sent their reporter Elizabeth Bisland on a train that same day going west to San Francisco.

Nellie was trying to beat Phileas Fogg’s time, and Elizabeth wanted to beat Nellie! Nellie didn’t even know about Elizabeth’s trip.

They each wrote stories for their publication during their trips and later compiled their adventures in a book. Nellie’s book was published in 1890, and Elizabeth’s book appeared in 1891.

I mashed up their texts and put both women on the same timeline, which was so thrilling and exciting that I could barely stop to eat or sleep! I hired Melissa Reizian Frank to do a dual narration with me. In 2015, I published Bly vs Bisland: Beating Phileas Fogg in a Race Around the World in conjunction with the 125th anniversary of the end of the race. I love that whole project and still get chills thinking about it!

8. Public domain books don’t have any kind of external production deadlines.

If an idea sparks for you but you can’t work on it now, it will still be available when you have time for it. Be aware, though, why ideas love speed. Also, as another side note to that article, the Bly vs Bisland mash-up was an idea that woke me up!

Last year, another mash-up idea came to me. I’m slowly developing it in between narrating for publishers and continuing my self-publishing with ready-made PD books, as well as my continuous work on NarratorsRoadmap.com. A good PD book perfectly fills holes in my schedule!

7. Public domain books are usually extremely well edited, and they have very few typos.

I particularly appreciated this aspect after narrating some contemporary manuscripts that weren’t quite up to that standard.

6. With PD books, I can record in genres that I love or in those where I’d like to work, all in a low-pressure setting.

Nobody’s waiting on this recording or looking to see what I’m doing. I can try something new, which in turn gives me something else to share with people on social media and in my marketing.

I devour biographies for pleasure reading, so you can imagine my excitement to find Diane Disney Miller’s The Story of Walt Disney from 1957. The copyright was not renewed, and she later said she didn’t really write it. It’s Walt’s story as written by Pete Martin. It’s as close to Walt’s memoir as there ever was. I recorded it and was thrilled to publish it on the 110th anniversary of Walt Disney’s birthday.

5. When I’m self publishing, I’m always working and improving my narration skills.

Language styles change over time. I seem to pick PD books with very complex sentence structures. With every book I do, I look for ways to present the material naturally in a way that aids listener understanding.

As part of APAC this year, I was able to have a short meeting with a producer. Their first question was, “Tell me what you’ve been doing lately.” I replied that I had recently completed a true crime book and a couple of biographies. I didn’t distinguish that the true crime book was for a publisher and the 2 biographies were self-published public domain books. It all counts!

4. You can still record a PD book even if there are other audio editions of the book available.

The beauty of public domain texts is that they belong to all of us! If it’s a popular book like The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, you may discover other audio editions available, sometimes MANY other productions. Nothing can stop you from recording another one! Your interpretation is going to be different than anyone else, and you’re making art that you’re proud of.

Current events can generate interest in an audiobook, for instance the news story behind this vague tweet where I went looking for a PD book. In 1915, explorer Ernest Shackleton sailed his ship Endurance to Antarctica. It got stuck in the ice and sunk. Over a century later, the ship was discovered. The History Channel showed a fascinating documentary about it in March.

My search for related books revealed Shackleton wrote about it in South. Several audio versions of it had been done, but I would happily record that book if I were a British man. He wrote another book about a different exploration that’s not on Audible. I also found a fabulous biography about him that’s not in audio.

An upcoming movie tie-in could be a great reason to publish a new edition of a book! The movie company’s marketing machine could put the wind in your sails and help your audiobook gain visibility.

3. I can submit my work for review.

AudioFile Magazine reviewed one of my public domain books and those from other narrators. Audiobook reviewers and sites are becoming more prevalent, giving us more opportunity for reviews.

2. I can submit my work for awards.

I entered So Big by Edna Ferber in the Independent Audiobook Awards and was thrilled when it became a finalist in the Classics category. I know narrators who have been awarded Earphones, SOVAS, and Audies Awards for their public domain audiobooks.

1. I keep all of the royalties.

I have to tell you, asynchronous (passive) income from public domain audiobooks every month is the gift that keeps on giving!

Like a royalty share book, you’re not guaranteed a book will sell, much less be a hit. It may take a while for it to earn out. It may never earn out. It’s always a risk.

But one PD book that does really well can make up for all the ones that aren’t selling as well! The more public domain books I record and publish, the more I want to do, and the more excited I am about my work.

Other resources on this topic:

As I continue to create content related to public domain books, I’ll update the list below.

Starting Point

I wrote the article Planning Your Trip to Public Domain World to give you a comprehensive guide through the 9 steps to follow to produce and publish your Public Domain audiobook.

Additional Info

• I include the most detail about public domain books in my Create Your Own Path video course and my webinar Public Domain Audiobooks and Self-Publishing, which are available to all paid members of NarratorsRoadmap.com.
  • In addition to talking about finding sources of books or even inspiration for your search, I also:
    • discuss how to research copyrights to determine whether the book is in the public domain
    • detail how and why I edit and update a public domain text
    • explain publishing considerations and distributor options
    • demonstrate the rights holder process of claiming a book on ACX
    • include 2 long lists of relevant resources not found here. Beyond linking to other sites with PD books, I’ve hand-curated and shared over 30 specialized collections of books on HathiTrust.org that narrators might choose to perform in the categories of:
      • Authors (16)
      • Subjects (11)
      • Years (6: 1925-1930)
      • More collections coming soon!
  • Members also can access my Audiobook Distributors Comparison Chart. I compare 9 distributors across 30+ points so you can decide the best distributor(s) for your audiobook.
    • Note that if you already have a narrator account on a marketplace site like ACX, you’ll need to create a rights holder account using a different email address. Both your narrator and rights holder accounts can share the same tax ID.
  • As a special enticement to join, you’ll find a discount on my Shop page in the “Rent My Brain” section.
• I participated in this June 2022 Clubhouse chat about PD books.
• I’ve long advocated creating your own work. In addition to my 10 points above in this article, you might read my articles Reasons to Create Your Own Stuff part 1 and part 2. The profound Eckhart Tolle quote that I highlighted in part 2 has proven true for me.
• Since public domain books have much in common with royalty share books, the 5 reasons I listed in this article to do royalty share books apply to public domain books. When I wrote I’d do a royalty share over a public domain title, I wasn’t commercially publishing PD books. Now, I’d publish a PD book before I’d narrate and produce an RS book!
• If you’re looking for shorter pieces to record, check out Finding Newspapers and Short Stories in the Public Domain.
• I wrote this article to help narrators understand some copyright basics.
• These 2 articles are overflowing with links you’ll use to research rights holders and copyright status:
  • Links to Help Narrators Research Rights Holders to Books
  • When the Author is 6 Feet Under

Amazon Edition

• If you distribute your audiobook through ACX or John Marshall Media, which uses ACX to distribute to Audible, you must start the production process with an Amazon edition. Keep in mind that ACX is owned by Audible, which is owned by Amazon; as a  result, everything in ACX is part of the Amazon ecosystem. For this reason, you always have to claim an edition on Amazon in order to start the audiobook process on ACX. You can choose hardback, paperback, or Kindle. It doesn’t matter which edition you claim.
• This requirement for an Amazon edition is ONLY true when you distribute to Audible via ACX or John Marshall Media. As of July 2026, InAudio is no longer accepting Public Domain titles.
• Other distributors like Big Happy Family Audio, Blackstone, and Spoken Realms do not have this stipulation. My Audiobook Distributors Comparison Chart for members of NarratorsRoadmap.com has much more info about distributors’ requirements and offerings.
• This article describes what I did to publish a Kindle edition. Be sure to read all of the extensive comments to get the workaround to publishing your own Kindle edition, along with more tips and info!

Cover Art, Supplemental PDF of Images, and More

• I detailed my experiences in finding and selecting art for the Kindle version of Fanny Herself: A Passionate Instinct in this article. At the time, I had change the title to differentiate it per Kindle Publishing rules. If I were publishing it today, I’d leave the original title as is so that it would get displayed with the other editions on Amazon.
• This article examines whether you can legally re-use the images in a public domain book for your cover art or supplemental PDF.
• When using art depicting a real person, you not only have to research the copyright for the image but also whether you would violate their Right of Publicity as detailed in this article.
• You can use public domain art for your cover. My article Tour of Sites with Public Domain Art links to a bunch of repositories with comments about the images available in each.
• This site shows the most popular font by year. I love using a font that is authentic to the period of the book!
• I share a few ideas to help you promote your public domain audiobooks with interesting pull quotes from critics’ reviews, publisher marketing text in your descriptive blurbs, and authentic cover art in this article.

Marketing

• Since you’d be publishing your audiobook, you’d also be in charge of marketing and promoting it. You’ll find an abundance of ideas and tactics on my Audiobook Marketing Cheat Sheet.
• In this article, you’ll see how I promoted a public domain book based on something in it.
• You might find inspiring ideas in my articles Creating promo videos with public domain components part 1 and part 2.

Q&A

The comments section below is my Q&A about PD books. Got a question about public domain books? Leave me a comment!

Copyright:

• Can a 2nd publisher legally republish an audiobook I recorded for a different publisher?
• Can I change the title or text in a public domain book?
• Can I repackage a published anthology of short stories into a new book and record it?
• Could I run into issues if I use an edition that includes editing I’m not aware of?
  • Also includes comments about copyrights in other countries.
• Does your Audible listing state that it is a public domain book?
• How do you determine if a mid 1900’s book is in the PD?
• How is the copyright for new material different than the copyright on the book?
• If a book published in the US in 1930 is listed on Amazon, does that mean it isn’t Public Domain?
• If I don’t find a renewal for a book published in 1889, am I safe to record the book?
• When I see multiple versions of the same book, how do I know which one(s) are public domain?

Disclaimers:

• Do I need to include an explanatory note if I remove references to casual racism and problematic sections in the book?
• Would you ever write and record an introduction to a public domain book, for example as a way to address problematic language that you want/need to keep in? Or would you just put the disclaimer in the written description?

Distribution:

• On ACX, do you create a Rights Holder’s Profile as well as a Narrator Profile? And do you have to make a Direct Offer to yourself?
• Once you produce a PD book, how then do you distribute it?

Financial:

• ACX is withholding my payments. Do I need to copyright my audiobook with the US Copyright Office?
• Can you expect better royalties from a public domain novel than from the average royalty share book on ACX? In other words, do these books actually sell?
• If you work with a person who has already released the e-book on Amazon, how do you handle the royalty share percentage on Audible?
• Is it possible to make extra money from my narrations of public domain books?
• Would you create an LLC for your publishing empire?

General:

• Can you take a public domain book and make it more of a modern story?
• Is there any point to recording a classic book that already has audio editions?
• Should a newcomer do a public domain book as their first book?

Kindle Books / eBooks:

• Can I claim the free Kindle edition of a public domain book when I distribute through ACX?
• Do you make an e-book of a public domain book you’re making an audiobook of?
• How do I find contact info for the RH of the Amazon book?
• If a Kindle book includes a study guide, could I just narrate the PD portion of the book?
• If it says it’s “Annotated”, does that mean it’s no longer in the public domain?
• May I republish a Kindle edition from a PDF of a Public Domain text that was digitized by Google?
• What do I need to do to my Public Domain text so that I can publish a Kindle edition on Amazon (KDP) that I could then claim on ACX?
• What should I do if the Kindle rights holder doesn’t respond to my pairing request? How do I publish my audiobook in that case?

SAG/AFTRA:

• Do you have info about producing a PD project under a SAG/AFTRA contract?
  • This respondent offered his approach.
  • Since I’m non-union, SAG/AFTRA would only tell me that union members cannot self-contribute and that union members should ask their reps for any details.

Song Lyrics:

• If song lyrics are included in a public domain book, does that mean the song is also in the public domain?

Text Sources:

• Can I legally Project Gutenberg ebooks and sell the audiobook on commercial sites?
• How to search on HathiTrust
• How to download on HathiTrust  
  • If you’re a member of NarratorsRoadmap.com, I will download your book for you!
• The HathiTrust document says it’s “Google Digitized.” Can I still use this text?

The post Public Domain Narration Headquarters appeared first on Karen Commins.

I narrated, produced, and published the public domain book The Story of Walt Disney by Diane Disney Miller and Pete Martin. I was thrilled that it released on 5 December in celebration of the 120th anniversary of Disney’s birth.

While I’m excited to announce this audiobook, I’m writing this post to talk about its cover art, and more specifically, information about image usage that may help you if you publish your audiobooks.

I’ve previously written about Copyrighted Images in a Public Domain Book.

That article discussed the images inside the book. Of course, the copyright laws also apply to the cover art, so I encourage you to read it.

Today, I want to talk about the laws concerning right of publicity. (Insert my usual disclaimer about not being a lawyer though I have voiced many in audiobooks.)

Original Artwork

Since I published the Disney audiobook, it was up to me to acquire appropriate cover art for it.

If you license the audio rights to a book still protected by copyright, you may be able to negotiate the usage of the cover art as part of the deal, depending on who owns the image. Even though a book may have entered the public domain, you can’t assume that you can use the original cover on your audiobook.

When the hardback book was published in 1957, it had this illustration on the book jacket. The design was carried over to the later paperback edition.

I learned in my research that Al Dempster was a Disney artist who worked on backgrounds in numerous movies and the illustrations for Golden Books. Walt thought Al was a wonderful artist and even owned and displayed some of Al’s paintings in his home.

I felt sure that Walt owned the copyright to this image in part because I saw a Disney work-for-hire contract.

It really wouldn’t matter, though, because all of those drawings of his copyrighted characters could land me in trouble with his company, which I believe is one of the most litigious companies on the planet.

Search For New Image

Although I couldn’t use the original art, I wanted to keep the illustrated look of the cover. I found great drawings of Walt in these First Day Covers (FDCs) sold on eBay.

I spent time researching the companies that produced these FDCs but kept running into dead ends. Many companies have merged or dissolved. I tracked one to the last owner but never got a response to my voice message or email.

“Fine”, I thought. “I’ll just find a great public domain photograph of Walt Disney and use it on my audiobook cover.”

Using my article Tour of Sites With Public Domain Art as my guide, I looked on various sites. I loved this picture of Walt in 1946 that I discovered on Wikimedia Commons.

The page notes that this image was a publicity shot from the Boy Scouts of America and not copyrighted.

Before I made a final decision, I wanted to check the motherlode of Disney pictures at Getty Images.

Several pictures including this one immediately stood out, and for more reasons than the aesthetic appeal.

You see that commercial use is restricted. In addition, it states “Not released.” These 2 words caused me to do more research and are the foundation for this post.

The Getty site explains that you need a release to:

ensure that the people and owners of property in the image or video gave permission for the image or video to be used for commercial purposes.

Right of Publicity

The right of publicity is the underlying reason why a release is needed. The Cornell Law site defines the right of publicity this way:

The right of publicity prevents the unauthorized commercial use of an individual’s name, likeness, or other recognizable aspects of one’s persona. It gives an individual the exclusive right to license the use of their identity for commercial promotion.

In the United States, the right of publicity is largely protected by state common or statutory law. Only about half the states have distinctly recognized a right of publicity.

If the right of publicity seems familiar, you may have heard about the recent case where voice actor Beverly Standing sued TikTok in federal court for using her voice without her permission. (The case was settled out of court.) The first line in the legal complaint asserted

The post Right of Publicity appeared first on Karen Commins.

However, good ole MS Word — even my 2004 copy for Mac — has that option under Find and Replace. This article has instructions.

In addition to or instead of highlighting the text, the Find and Replace formatting box lets you make font changes like underline and bold to the search results. You can even change the font, its size, and color on each search result.

Of course, you also can change the font type and size for the entire document in Word, which you can’t do in iAnnotate. PDF means “portable document format” and was devised as a method to present the text in the same way to all users regardless of their software or hardware. As long as a document is a PDF, you have no ability to change the size, color, or type of the font.

If Word can’t open your PDF, you can cheaply and easily convert it to a Word file using Adobe Export PDF.

Once you’ve made all the global changes you want in Word, iAnnotate automatically opens Word files and converts them back to PDF.

By the way, you can pretty quickly manually highlight your iAnnotate search results if you don’t want to transfer the doc to Word and back. With the search results showing on the right side of your iAnnotate screen, tap the Highlighter tool on the left side with your document. Then, tap on each search result to go to the next instance, and highlight the word.

Members of my NarratorsRoadmap.com site can watch my 12-module video course on iAnnotate to learn how to use this software to its fullest advantage in prepping audiobooks.

The post How to highlight text of iAnnotate search results appeared first on Karen Commins.

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!

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.

1. 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.

I have multiple Gmail accounts, and I noticed that text replacement only worked in some of them. I Googled the problem and learned that you have set the Gmail Spelling setting to Spelling suggestions off.

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!

The post 5 Things I Learned From Margaret Mitchell’s Letters appeared first on Karen Commins.

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.

Each January 1st, another year’s books enter the public domain. On 1 January 2026, US books published in 1930 entered the public domain, and so on.

Books published in the US before or in 1930 are already in the public domain. If the copyright date falls between 1931 and 1963 inclusive, 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 1931 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 include the word copyright with a date — it’s in the public domain.
• If the book was published between and including 1931 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.

I first check to see if the title is in the public domain using the links in this article, primarily the 4 sites specifically for copyright renewals. (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.

As an aside, be aware that everything that was published in the US in 1931 is going to be in the public domain on 1 January 2027. 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’ve created a video course for members of NarratorsRoadmap.com that includes a discussion about how to find some of these public domain gems.

If you discover the book is still copyrighted, you would need to continue your research as indicated in the next section.

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.

Jessica Kaye suggested during an APA webinar about audio rights that you might find the author’s agent or family by reading the book’s Acknowledgements and Dedication pages.

You might find the author’s literary agent on QueryTracker.net (free) or in the PublishersMarketplace.com Deals section (paid).

If those sites don’t reveal an agent, I conduct 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!

The post When the Author is 6 Feet Under appeared first on Karen Commins.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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 the 91st day.

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.

The post Cure For The ACX 7-Year Itch appeared first on Karen Commins.

[I want share] a recent experience about breaking an ACX contract in the hopes it helps someone else.

The 2 lessons to the story:

1) If you hear warning bells before you audition, either request the book or forget about auditioning.
2) Life’s too short to deal with bad text and a non-responsive rights holder!

The abridged version:

• I broke a royalty share (RS) contract on ACX before recording the first 15 minutes. The manuscript was terrible, and the rights holder became unresponsive.
• I sent her 2 messages through the ACX message system before requesting project termination.
• You have to send the reasons for termination to INFO@acx.com. I first wrote to support@acx.com but was told I had to send the request to INFO@acx.com.
• ACX dissolved the project and deleted it from my dashboard the next day.
• If you ever need to dissolve a contract, feel free to copy any of the language from my messages.

The unabridged version, complete with my messages to the RH:

I saw a book titled “Keeping A Journal”. I’ve been keeping a journal for years and know the many benefits of this practice. It was a short royalty share book of an hour or less. Even though I couldn’t find anything about the author, I auditioned because I wanted to share the message about journaling. I’d say now that if you can’t find any info about the author, don’t even bother auditioning.

The audition script seemed a bit repetitive. The word choices seemed like someone who was trying to sound more educated than she is.

I heard the warning bells and almost didn’t audition. Whenever I hear warning bells now, I listen to them! I thought about asking for the complete book before the audition. However, since it was so short, I decided to go ahead with it. Anyone who has been burned by doing a short ACX book probably thought the same thing!

The rights holder (RH) selected me and sent the manuscript right away. She said she teaches journaling classes. “Great!”, I thought, “She obviously knows what people commonly ask when they start journaling and will get right to the heart of it.”

I thought the book would get better than the audition copy. I was wrong. It got worse….much, MUCH worse.

My first message to the RH explains some of the book’s problems:

Hi, [RH]! I hope you are enjoying a relaxing holiday weekend.

I had planned to record, edit, and submit the first 15 minutes of Keeping a Journal today. However, I wonder if I have the final version of the manuscript.

Before I continue, let me assure you that I view my narrations as a collaboration with the author. We want the same end result — happy listeners who leave great reviews/ratings and who want to refer their friends to the audiobook.

I was excited to see your book on ACX because I am a firm believer in the power of journaling. I auditioned and agreed to a royalty share contract only because I want to promote the value of journaling, not because I need the work.

After reading the entire book, I feel I must tell you the version of the manuscript that I have is not ready to be made into an audiobook. Here are a few issues that might be remedied with some strong editing:

1) Much of the content is overly repetitive and makes starting a journal seem more difficult than it actually is. The prolonged and redundant discussion about preparation alone is enough to dissuade anyone from keeping a journal. The actual ideas expressed in the book could be more simply stated in about 2 pages.

2) Some of the word choices are incorrect (“once you INHERIT these various tactics…”), and the overall language is formal and highfalutin rather than conversational.

3) The book doesn’t fulfill the promise of the title about self-discovery and finding joy. The book mentions benefits of journaling, but none are listed or explored. I think most people are concerned about what to write or how the journal will help them over time. Those topics also are not addressed. A listener who hears the journaling “rules” will be inclined to give up the practice before even starting.

When I auditioned, I thought that this book would offer concrete tips similar to Jim Rohn’s excellent advice in his program How to Keep A Journal.

I’m afraid that if I record the version of the manuscript that I have, listeners will rate the content as 1-star and automatically make my performance a 1-star rating as well. I further predict that any reviews would be very negative and highlight the points I have made in this message. With many other books available on this subject, 1 bad review would cause this one to fade to obscurity.

My intent is to help you produce the best product possible. I apologize if my candor angers or hurts you. I am direct, concise, and honest in my communications because no one ever solved a problem by beating around the bush.

Do you want to send me a revised manuscript? ACX doesn’t care if we change the due dates on the contract.

If not, I must ask you to terminate the contract.

Thank you for your time and understanding. I look forward to your response.

Cordially,
Karen Commins

Today, I’d simply ask the RH if I have the final version of the manuscript and then skip to end where I ask for a revised edition. I wouldn’t list any of the various problems I found in the text as it’s not my job to tell the author how to write. I also don’t enjoy spending my time trying to educate a RH who may not value my help.

She didn’t respond. Ten days and both deadlines passed. I wrote to her a second time:

Hi, [RH]! I hope your week is off to a good start.

I wrote to you on 30 August about problems in the manuscript for Keeping a Journal but haven’t heard from you.

Are you revising the manuscript? Both deadlines for this book have already passed. I need to know if you plan to send an updated manuscript or terminate the contract.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Cordially,
Karen Commins

Six days later, I sent my third and final message to her:

Hi, [RH]. I hope you are well.

I’ve written 2 messages to you about the manuscript for Keeping a Journal (30 Aug. and 10 Sept.) but have not received a response. I’m assuming that you don’t want to go forward with creating an audiobook of Keeping a Journal at this time.

Therefore, I’m going to ask ACX to terminate the contract and remove it from my project list.

Perhaps we can work together in the future. Best wishes for your success!

Cordially,
Karen Commins

I then wrote to ACX to request project termination. I gave my reasons and outlined my dates of communication.

As a reminder, the ACX message system is the official documentation. While you may communicate with RHs outside of the system, all messages affecting production dates should be sent through the ACX system. Furthermore, contract dissolution is more easily accomplished when it occurs before the first 15 minute checkpoint file is recorded or uploaded.

Photo: Andriano.cz/Shutterstock

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