Taking my licks …
“And so it goes that I faceplanted during my first year as a narrator. My only saving grace is that now I know how important that advance really is. In this case, it saved my ass.”
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Now that I have several audiobooks on Amazon sporting my name and one that will be added to it soon, I have begun experiencing some of “the good, the bad, and the ugly” of this business. Okay. Maybe I just like movie titles.
You see, I don’t audition for just anything on ACX — the website where authors put their books up for narration grabs. I try to select only those that truly interest me, look like a good fit for my voice, and don’t violate any of my decency rules. Okay. so I could use a fake name for the ugly stuff and still get paid, but I choose not to. I came into this business to have fun and I’m sticking to it. Discomfort is not fun.
Occasionally, however, I run into a book that LOOKS interesting, whose audition is engaging, and I’ll throw my hat into the ring. Such was the case for a book I began to take on back in November. I auditioned, negotiated with the author a tad on the hourly finished rate, got the “part,” sent her my list of producer rules, and then did what is called the ACX “15-minute checkpoint.” It is at that juncture that the rights holder/author can bow out of the deal. But that went fine too. Then, I began trying to narrate the book.
Damn. I had made a terrible mistake. The book was not narratable as written and there was no part of this book I wanted to put my name on. So I contacted the author to hand it back to her and give her a refund of her advance, but not before offering to completely edit it for her for a fee. I was, after all, a writer before I was ever a narrator. But now I’m almost considering it a curse. More on that later. She agreed. No — she BEGGED me to do it. So as I laboriously whittled her book down to its good parts, I kept her fully informed during, asking her questions along the way. I proceeded to work tirelessly on making her book “listenable.” That was my first mistake.
The result: I took a 130,000-word book and in about 10 days, after taking all the superfluous chapters, tedious descriptions, bad grammar, and redundant content out of it, I turned out a 60,000-word masterpiece that was readable, listenable, engaging, and entertaining without removing her “voice” from the narrative. I contacted the author to say it was ready. She was already familiar with the quality of my editing skills by that point. Then I invoiced her. I explained that she would not be sent my version and work with me on edits until I received payment. I was exhausted but happy with what I did with her book.
The next morning I got an email from her. It was like a 2 by 4 hitting me between the eyes. The first thing she did was insult me. She said she only hired me because I was cheaper than the other narrators she tried to make deals with — not because I was the best choice for the book or because we had already established a lovely rapport. I responded how insulting that was to me, but instead of realizing just how bad it was, she complained about having to pay for the edits, saying she had never agreed to the price. Then she began citing some kind of “retiree on a budget” excuse, told me she only shopped at discount stores, and that I should take pity on her. She wanted to renegotiate it all. Red flags abounded and I felt like a fool.
Rather than go into more details, suffice it to say that I kept her original advance (much less an amount than the editing fee we had agreed on), sent her the new manuscript, and called it a day. I couldn’t begin to narrate it at this point because my heart was truly broken. I know. It’s business. But it’s also who I am. I had taken great pride in my audition, my checkpoint, and especially in what I did to her book. To experience any more underhandedness from this author would have made me want to leave the business almost before I got fully started, and I realized working with her would have been a nightmare.
What did I learn? (1) I need to read the entire book before taking it on. (2) I should not negotiate my worth. And (3) I should never consider an author my friend just because I like the nature of their book. I was blindsided. When I told my very entrepreneurial daughter about the fiasco, all she said was that I had made myself a lot of future money by doing what I did. What? She said, “Mom. Now you know you need to charge what you’re really worth, and you’ll never take on a deal like this again.” Damn. when you’re kid is ten times smarter than you, you tend to pay attention.
And so it goes that I faceplanted during my first year as a narrator. My only saving grace is that now I know how important that advance really is. In this case, it saved my ass.