I turned down an offer for the first time this week. Major Tonality.

But before I do that, did you notice anything untoward in last week’s post? No? In the message I was sent about the bundled books, the initial offer was suggested as $25 pfh. Even if you could get your work:production way down from the 6:1 ratio we discussed earlier, say all the way to 2:1, is your time worth $12.50 per hour? Well, yes. Sometimes. But, I am not at 2:1 yet (more like 3.5:1), and $8.00 is pretty low. I can make that doing fast food somewhere. So I countered with a whopping $35 pfh, which he did agree to. I don’t think that’s too bad for me still being new to the work. My point? You can negotiate your rate! Who knew?

ACX as you know has ranges for their PFH projects, and I feel it appropriate to use that info to relate specifics to you without being TOO specific regarding certain books, authors, or Rights Holders. So, in the previous paragraph, I could refer to the rate as being in the Low Range on ACX, the $0-$50 PFH segment. Should I ever get consistent work in the $50-$100 PFH segment, I will generally refer to them as the Middle Range. I want to be able to give readers specific information about earnings possibilities, and I feel this gives insight without being too transparent for the business.

So, Major Tonality. This was a nice guy who had written a book on music theory and wanted some simple scales played on an instrument so the listener could hear the structure of different scales and chords. A very good idea. After we exchanged several messages and I did some test recordings for him, he made an offer in line with what I am getting for other books now. I countered that the recording and integrating of the scales was going to require a fair amount of extra effort, and I would entertain a higher pfh rate, or a stipend. He hasn’t even responded to that yet. My point? If you negotiate incorrectly, or if the other party isn’t in the mood for it, you may lose the project. Two-edged sword, eh?

I picked up five more offers this week. Two of them are for a pfh rate in line with others, and three are for Royalty Shares. I have been looking at this Royalty thing a little bit, and basically I have decided it is a measure of the Rights Holders confidence in their book.

I suspect it was intended to assist people in getting a book produced without an initial layout of cash, especially for the self-published books so plenteous on ACX. There are some books where it seems that is the case, but in my opinion, more of them on ACX are Rights Holders looking for an easy way out – getting their audiobook by putting all the risk of loss on the producer. Anything they sell is pure profit, albeit not as much as it might have been without having to split royalties. If no sales occur, the Rights Holder hasn’t lost anything. The Producer, however, pays that in full.

So where does that leave us Producers? Personally, I take two decision points as of now when I consider a Royalty Share:

1. Do I like the book? As with the Immortal Warriors book I mentioned last week, there are some works I consider just because of the nature of the book itself. For this one in particular, if I get to be involved in this book I will be able in a small way to honor the servicemen who served in Afghanistan. This is the kind of book in which I can invest myself.
2. Amazon Sales Rank. I don’t claim to be an expert on this one. I don’t even claim to really understand it even, but for each book on ACX there is the current ranking number that indicates how well that title is selling within its category on Amazon. I did a little legwork to try to understand what this number means, and here is what I was told:
3. 1. If the number is zero, I understand that to mean the book has not sold a single copy.
4. 1. When the first copy sells, the counter which is what the sales rank kind of is, starts to increment up, and continues to increase until another sales takes place. Therefore, this number is sort of an indication of when the last sale took place.
5. 1. There is a complex algorithm Amazon uses to calculate this ranking.
6. 1. Normal people can’t understand this algorithm.

Categories: Voice over Work