The Bizarre World of Scam Audiobooks(vice.com)
vice.com
The Bizarre World of Scam Audiobooks
https://www.vice.com/en/article/dyvgaq/bot-gibberish-audio-books-scam
33 comments
There are so many TikToks about doing this kind of voice work.
I'm curious. For your books, do you offer the ACX narrator paid work per finished hour, or as a Royalty Share?
I pay per finished hour (PFH). Never seen a good reason to do a royalty split.
That's great. We narrators are always grateful for the PFH rate!
What's a typical range for PFH?
Prior to the audition phase, the book owner (me) specifies a pay band. Lowest is $50-$100 per finished hour of audio. I think above that is $100-200, and there's one more above that.
I go for $50-100 PFH and get dozens of auditions. My last book had like 50 auditions. Most were horrible. I got around 5 good ones.
I go for $50-100 PFH and get dozens of auditions. My last book had like 50 auditions. Most were horrible. I got around 5 good ones.
>Most were horrible. I got around 5 good ones.
Probably because $50-100 PFH is a pretty low rate. So you're getting entry level narrators. Narrators willing to work at or around minimum wage, and in actuality much less.
Here is why I say that - authors/non-narrators don't consider that the ACX narrator is expected to do all the following: pre-read, script interpretation, direction (i.e. rehearsal), re-reads, editing, quality review, technical compliance / finalization (i.e. mastering) and uploading. There is not less than 4 hours work PFH (per finished hour) of audio, and it's probably closer to 6 to 7 hours PFH for a moderately experienced narrator willing to work for $100pfh, and 12 to 14 hours PFH for the novice narrator. I've been narrating a long time and have tons of automation built into my workflow, and I am still quite often more than 4 hours actual work to create a single hour of final audio.
Probably because $50-100 PFH is a pretty low rate. So you're getting entry level narrators. Narrators willing to work at or around minimum wage, and in actuality much less.
Here is why I say that - authors/non-narrators don't consider that the ACX narrator is expected to do all the following: pre-read, script interpretation, direction (i.e. rehearsal), re-reads, editing, quality review, technical compliance / finalization (i.e. mastering) and uploading. There is not less than 4 hours work PFH (per finished hour) of audio, and it's probably closer to 6 to 7 hours PFH for a moderately experienced narrator willing to work for $100pfh, and 12 to 14 hours PFH for the novice narrator. I've been narrating a long time and have tons of automation built into my workflow, and I am still quite often more than 4 hours actual work to create a single hour of final audio.
I know it's a low rate and I'm surprised I can find pretty good quality at that rate. The books I publish are pretty simple - relatively short, non-fiction. I imagine fiction books requiring voices/emotion would require a higher rate.
> Never seen a good reason to do a royalty split.
Voice artists are just as deserving of 100 years of compensation as authors are.
Thats good enough reason for me.
Voice artists are just as deserving of 100 years of compensation as authors are.
Thats good enough reason for me.
"deserving" is not how compensation works
Well, then lets abolish copyright altogether. It is a legal fiction created because authors "deserve" compensation.
That’s not why copyright exists. It exists explicitly to encourage more writing.
The books I publish are ghost written, so the "authors" don't get royalties either.
Common misconception. In the audiobook narration world the price per finished hour is considerably more revenue than royalty split. It is therefore reserved for the more reliable and more talented ACX narrators.
Source: I was the founding audio production manager for ACX.
Source: I was the founding audio production manager for ACX.
>In the audiobook narration world the price per finished hour is considerably more revenue than royalty split
That's pretty interesting. From your vantage point could you say why that's true?
In my experience, I would agree it's true because it seems that the vast majority of Audiobooks don't actually sell that many copies. A narrator should never expect to earn, say, $1000 or more in Royalties, even over the life of the book. ($1000 dollars represents typical low-moderate PFH pay for a book length of 5-10 finished hours)
My guess is that you'd need to sell probably 300 to 400 copies of an audiobook to make $1000 in narrator Royalties. I don't have hard data, but I would estimate that audiobooks probably sell at a ratio of 20% or less than the paper version. So you'd need to narrate a book that's going to sell at least 1000+ paper copies in a year before you'd have a chance at breaking even in the year you narrated the book.
1000+ sales in a year is a pretty tall sales order. According to Scribe media: [0] "In the book’s lifetime Research suggests that the “average” self-published, digital-only book sells about 250 copies in its lifetime.
"By comparison, the average traditionally published book sells 3,000 copies, but as I mentioned above, only about 250-300 of those sales happen in the first year."
It would appear the odds are not in the narrator's favor.
[0] https://scribemedia.com/book-sales/
That's pretty interesting. From your vantage point could you say why that's true?
In my experience, I would agree it's true because it seems that the vast majority of Audiobooks don't actually sell that many copies. A narrator should never expect to earn, say, $1000 or more in Royalties, even over the life of the book. ($1000 dollars represents typical low-moderate PFH pay for a book length of 5-10 finished hours)
My guess is that you'd need to sell probably 300 to 400 copies of an audiobook to make $1000 in narrator Royalties. I don't have hard data, but I would estimate that audiobooks probably sell at a ratio of 20% or less than the paper version. So you'd need to narrate a book that's going to sell at least 1000+ paper copies in a year before you'd have a chance at breaking even in the year you narrated the book.
1000+ sales in a year is a pretty tall sales order. According to Scribe media: [0] "In the book’s lifetime Research suggests that the “average” self-published, digital-only book sells about 250 copies in its lifetime.
"By comparison, the average traditionally published book sells 3,000 copies, but as I mentioned above, only about 250-300 of those sales happen in the first year."
It would appear the odds are not in the narrator's favor.
[0] https://scribemedia.com/book-sales/
No, narrators are not taking any book writing and publishing risks, authors do.
This sounds like something I can get really hooked-on merely for the cringe factor... My previous fix was to watch small, regional tv channels, I used to spend hours trying to migrate my expectations to tv shows about art exhibits in the middle of nowhere or news reports about missing cows.
I get such an odd feeling with stuff like that, like my brain buzzes in a very relaxing way for some reason... bah!
I get such an odd feeling with stuff like that, like my brain buzzes in a very relaxing way for some reason... bah!
> My previous fix was to watch small, regional tv channels
Where do you find access to those?
Where do you find access to those?
All I do is to check relatively small cities in outer regions of the country. Large enough to have at least a TV channel... Then I google for media sources. Most of them have some form of live streaming...
If you have any favorites, I'd love recommendations!
Sounds a bit like ASMR
Meanwhile Vice puts random unrelated links and even videos all over the article.
The ACX system is a mixed bag even without the scams. Sure, you get audiobooks that might not have been produced otherwise but the quality is noticeably lower than professional narration, particularly the editing. Mispronunciations, double takes, and coughing tends to show up. Before I learned ACX existed I was getting worried that Audible's quality had taken a serious dive.
It's a mixed bag because the ACX Royalty Share[0] system is a horrible, horrible business case for narrators. The math just doesn't work. My guess that all those poor narrations are royalty share gigs. Most novice narrators have no idea how bad the proposition is, and by the end just don't care if it's good or not, because it was so much work just to get to the end and pass the technical checks. So once the mp3s pass the technical checks, they're done. I think many times the narrator realizes by the end that they'll never get paid for the effort.
And it's clear the authors rarely check the work.
We saw on HN this week that the numbers don't work for authors [1], and considering that audiobook sales are a fraction of print sales, the business case for narrators is far worse.
[0] https://help.acx.com/s/article/what-royalty-is-paid-on-acx
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27106055
And it's clear the authors rarely check the work.
We saw on HN this week that the numbers don't work for authors [1], and considering that audiobook sales are a fraction of print sales, the business case for narrators is far worse.
[0] https://help.acx.com/s/article/what-royalty-is-paid-on-acx
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27106055
Yes, only today I noticed a fine free domain recording of a work by Rudyard Kipling has been appropriated by audible with the Librivox blurb removed and the narrator misattributed.
tl;dr - Audible incentivized author/narrator collaboration by only paying narrators when audiobooks sold, but instantly "paying" authors with 200 promo codes for any book successfully narrated. Those promo codes could then be sold to anyone.
So...
So...
1. baddies write programs to randomly generate content
2. baddies post it to Audible's ACX (Audiobook Creation Exchange) platform
3. Some bored guy with no standards on what he's reading narrates the gibberish for free
4. baddie gets 200 promo codes
5. and... baddie presumably sells the codes somehow.It's not like that anymore though. You get 25 US and 25 UK codes, and they only work on your book.
So why do people still get weird random text narrated? There weren't really any conclusions from the article. Very incomplete.
Don't know. Some kind of new scam? Maybe they just want to sell books on amazon & audible and if they produce enough random garbage they'll get some sales?
"Audible would pay out a royalty whenever a code was redeemed."
From the article, this is what the step 5 should be. They would just redeem the codes for free and then get paid.
From the article, this is what the step 5 should be. They would just redeem the codes for free and then get paid.
Great summary, thanks!
Many of these new narrators seem to have seen a Youtube video, or something, about how to make easy money narrating books. I'm guessing that, due to Covid, the ability to make money from home has been very attractive. I can usually tell within 10 seconds of listening to their audition that they're new - really low volume and lots of background noise. Just a non-professional setup.
There's also people who apply for my narration jobs using bots. As in they feed the narration script to a bot and have it read it. On their page they advertise how they can do male voices, female voices, and basically any kind of accent - which to them is just tweak a setting on the bot.
ACX must be way underfunded. Especially during Christmas time they get several months behind on approving fully narrated books. Seems like Amazon just isn't investing much in the platform.