The Pineapple Girl - Audio Book Now Available!

 



A quick question for you.

What do you think is the longest process of getting an audio book online, is it:

a) conceiving, writing, editing the story?

b) recording, narrating, editing the audio files?

c) getting it to fit the specifications of ACX - digital distributor?

The answer:

C!

a) I wrote/edited The Pineapple Girl in two days.

b) I recorded it in one day, edited in another. Added music, made more edits, so it was a three day process.

c) It took me almost two weeks to get it 'approved' by ACX, aka the company that is taking 60% of my profits, for doing basically nothing, except hosting my book.

So, if you're wondering, I'll never use ACX again. Oh, and by the way, they own the rights to my book for 7 years. Lovely.

Oh, and to get it on ACX, I first had to publish it as an eBook, through KDP, giving them more % of my $. 

You can buy it here: 

https://www.amazon.ca/Pineapple-Girl-Studio-Mike-ebook/dp/B092L4K6DJ/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1619803818&sr=1-1

The worst thing is, I've been planning on doing another audio book this year, but, working with ACX has turned me completely off the idea.

There is an abundance of issues with the way ACX does things, but here's what I don't get:

I record, edit, mix everything to the highest quality standard and master it into a .wav file, for the best sounding mix. ACX wants it in the lowest quality file, mp3, so to fit their specs, I had to degrade my files to a lower standard. Then when I uploaded it to their site, I was told the mp3 needed to be of a better quality. So, they want a shit file, of the highest quality of shit.

Get it?

Once all the files were to their 'standards', I then had to wait to see if errors were found, and let me tell you, they found errors. Useless, time wasting errors, and once corrected, the 30 day clock started over. 30 days is the amount of time they say it takes to get my book onto Audible, iTunes and Amazon.

Every step of the way with ACX, I was ready to just give up. Seriously. And it's not just because ultimately I know no one is really going to give it a listen, it's because I uploaded the book to Youtube in a couple hours. Done. I get no money from Youtube, but, you can upload with a high quality .wav, so if you want to hear the book as originally recorded/edited, you can listen to it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFxGPgovqIE

If you want to support me, and ACX, who gets more of the money than I do, for the work I did 100% of, you can hear it now on Audible:

https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Pineapple-Girl-Audiobook/B093MRT1HY?asin=B093MRT1HY&ipRedirectOverride=true&overrideBaseCountry=true&pf_rd_p=defe5c0a-4d7a-4872-9ca0-c91016147626&pf_rd_r=0JE6WSV7VSHEK276B2DR

So, why does ACX make the process so hard, for a nobody like me?

Answer:

ACX wants to make money from me, by, connecting me with narrators, connecting me with audio engineers and editors, connecting me with promoters, they want their hand in your pie, all along the way and when you don't use their other services, they basically don't want your project, making in near impossible to meet their standards, low quality as they are.

Working with ACX has been an eye-opening and learning experience. Not all learning experiences are good, for example, this one.

But, live and learn.

At the end of the day, I'm happy with the original version of The Pineapple Girl, not the watered down version I had to give to ACX. It's a good story, based on a date I had on New Years 2020. I'm not sorry I went through the hassle of dealing with ACX, at least I've learned what NOT to do in the future.

And do not despair, another announcement is coming soon, so keep your eyes out for that.

As always, thanks for caring. If you do.

Studio Mike, The Hellhound, The Hellcat and Sweet Tito




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