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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 t
by Causality1 5y ago
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.
- pitspotter 5y agoYes, 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.
- delgaudm 5y agoIt'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 https://help.acx.com/s/article/what-royalty-is-paid-on-acx [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27106055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27106055