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ACX audiobook production questions

562 views 2 replies 2 participants last post by  Nev 
#1 ·
I'm in the midst of producing my first audiobook through ACX and I have a couple questions for ACX veterans who chose to pay for their production costs rather than go the royalty route.

Background: the producer/narrator has loaded the audio files onto ACX. I've listened to them, communicated revisions as necessary to the narrator, and he's uploaded revised files. So, as far as I'm concerned, the audio portion is done. However, I'm not ready with cover art yet, and even if I was, I don't want to release the title right now. I want to wait until the producer/narrator finishes producing all three titles in the series. So, I don't want to press the "Approve Audiobook" link because I assume this kicks off the audiobook QA process that eventually ends in either the title being released, or the title being rejected for QA issues. On the other hand, I don't want to hold up payment to the producer/narrator.

Question 1: can I pay the producer/narrator now, prior to approving the audiobook? Will doing so mess up anything with the ACX review/release process? From what I read in the ACX FAQ, payment to the producer/narrator occurs outside of ACX anyway, and both parties have to confirm payment was made to ACX before they kick off their QA process, so it doesn't look to me like it should be a problem to pay him now, even though I might not choose to approve the audiobook until 30-45 days from now.

Separately, as I said above, I don't have cover art ready yet, so even I wanted to approve the title now, I couldn't. Yet, when I hover my cursor above the Approve Audiobook link on ACX, I see an error message that reads: cannot submit production because there are issues with the uploaded audio. Question 2: is this a generic error message related to the fact I haven't loaded cover art? I ask because I shared the error message with the producer/narrator and he reviewed all the files he loaded and said he sees no problem with the audio files.

Appreciate any insight you can offer. I reviewed other threads on the forum and didn't find any relevant answers to my questions. Thanks!
 
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#2 ·
Yes, you can pay the narrator independently of clicking the button. As you note, there is stuff that happens for approval on both your & narrator's ends. You hit "Payment submitted," and the narrator hits, "Payment received." The narrator is the one who actually releases the audio to ACX. You can pay them now and do that other stuff once you are ready to release (and have the cover done).

Realize that involves trust on both your parts, since you don't have the "audit" function of both of you confirming via ACX that you've paid & narrator has received payment. In theory, one of you could operate in bad faith I guess. But my main narrator & I do this in reverse--as soon as I say files are OK & hit "Approve," she hits, "Payment Received," and then invoices me, so we don't hold up the process while they payment gets there. (Since we're always in a hurry!) But we've done a lot of books together. :)

I don't know about the "error" message, but since the audio won't have gone through the QA process yet (which is a real process by the way), I don't see how they'd "know" your files had issues. I would assume that's the lack of a cover.
 
#3 ·
Thanks very much for the feedback/insight! Good to know I can pay the narrator ahead of approving the audiobook without messing up the review process. Also, I loaded a placeholder cover and the error message went away so that was the issue causing the error message. Again, thanks for your help!
 
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