LibriVox has been very accepting. The people are polite and helpful, and if you find something that interests you and you wish to record it, you just asked to be signed up for it and you are ready to go. This ACX thing is on a whole nuther level. People actually want to hear my voice and the quality of the recording before they start throwing money at me! This whole thing is turning into quite the reality check.

Here’s how the ACX seems to work for voice over workers:

• Sign up – Of course, you have to create an account as a Producer and enter in your account information, as well as some tax and banking info if you expect to get paid for anything. You also can put in a profile where you list all the great reasons why people should pay you for your recordings, as well as list all the great works you have done in the past! I took the liberty of putting my LibriVox works in the Credits page, clearly marking them as LibriVox efforts.
• Search – There are hundreds, if not thousands, of titles needing recording. Or, in ACX terms, Rights Holders needing Producers. The Rights Holders may or may not be the actual author – I guess the person holding the copyright. You can limit your search by fields that include genre, length, language, accent, payment type/amount, and whether you want to filter out the erotica.
• Investigate – When you see a title that interests you, you can see some details about it such as the author, publisher, Amazon sales rank, Amazon ratings, and information about the type of licensing being offered. There is also a spot for Comments from the Rights Holder, where they might leave info about the book or directions for how to perform the audition.
• Prepare – If you still want to go forward, you can read or download their Audition Script, which is often a section of the book or a sales blurb describing the book.

And I did this. Not yet knowing what most of these pieces of info even meant, I dived in. I found three books that were both of interest to me and seemed like I might have a shot being new to the community:

• • Leader of the Pack – a story about a dad and raising his kids.
• • Intermittent Fasting – eponymous self help book
• • The History of the City of Angels – a short history of Los Angeles

Categories: Voice over Work