VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

WillMWatt · Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2014 8:20 am Post subject: ACX Producers

Hi there

So I have a question about ACX. I know that you can sign up as a producer. If you do this, are you allowed to audition talent outside of ACX for a project? Are you then allowed to hire non US-based talent for the job?

WMW

Bish · Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2014 8:51 am Post subject:

It is my understanding that if you are acting as the producer, the deals you have with individual narrators is between you and them. There is no deal between ACX and your narrators. All legal, liability and employment issues are between you and ACX... not between ACX and your sub-contractors.
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Jeffrey Kafer · Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2014 9:42 am Post subject:

Yes, you can do this. Understand you have zero ACX protection. Not that ACX offers much in the way of protection anyway, but there ya go.
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Jeff
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Scott Pollak · Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2014 11:21 am Post subject:

Speaking of ACX, did anyone else notice this week they cut the royalty from 50% down to 40%? Great.

And it's getting harder and harder to find anything worth putting your time into there, other than stipend deals, and of course they trimmed that down from $150 pfh to $100 a while back.

If you look for any pay-for-production that is anywhere decent ($300-$400 / hour) good luck. Seems like almost everything on there is royalty only now.
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Scott R. Pollak
Clients include Pandora, NPR Atlanta, Wells Fargo, Cisco, Humana, Publix, UPS, AT&T, HP, Xerox and more.

www.voicebyscott.com

Bish · Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2014 11:55 am Post subject:

Frank F · Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2014 12:31 pm Post subject:

I have said it once and I will say it again: "ACX is not your (narrators) friend".

Until ACX realizes that without a narrator, having tons of books available to produce gains nothing; they will continue to short change the narrator.

Enter the WayBack machine --- Back in my radio days, we created a highly successful radio station and the sales force decided they were responsible for the success. When production and on-air staff stopped working as hard on controlling the quality and timbre of the spots and the sales staff started bringing in outside people (from other radio stations) to do VO for commercials; the ratings fell - very quickly.

Soon after the ratings drop the sales staff made good with the on-air/production staff and the ratings jumped 10 points in three months. And now a return from the WayBack machine...

The question today is: "Will ACX become another quasi-P2P site and go for the lowest price for good talent? Or will they pony up and find a way to get great talent paid properly - and back them up when producers/authors/rights holders try to stiff them?

This is my opinion and my opinion only here. Those who have differing viewpoints can (as Phillip might say...) "bugger off".

Frank F
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Be thankful for the bad things in life. They opened your eyes to the good things you weren't paying attention to before. email: thevoice@usa.com

Bish · Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2014 12:52 pm Post subject:

My personal opinion is that ACX (which is currently F2P - Free to Play) will soon embrace the whole P2P concept. Their desire for income has become clear. This is probably driven by a mandate that they become a stand-alone profit center rather than a part of the whole. This is a guess, but it's usually how these things evolve.

The reduction of royalty rates will provoke an overall diminution of the quality in the talent pool, therefor to increase the quality, they will introduce a subscription service to weed-out the also-rans.

Perfect logic n'est-ce pas?
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Bish a.k.a. Bish
Smoke me a kipper... I'll be back for breakfast.
I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls.

Jeffrey Kafer · Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2014 1:55 pm Post subject:

I will continue to do royalty share deals with authors who I have done previous titles for and know will sell.

Aside from that, I'll be doing pay-for-production deals only. And oftentimes those are above union scale. The problem is, the authors will be less likely to pony up the cash as a result of the bigger risk for them.
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Jeff
http://JeffreyKafer.com
Voice-overload Web comic: http://voice-overload.com

Bruce · Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2014 9:41 am Post subject:

If an author is truly successful with their print edition, they can afford to pay for the audiobook version.... in theory anyway.

B
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Lynn Benson · Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2014 3:19 pm Post subject:

Would it be too optimistic to think acx is trying to weed out some of the people to make it more professional?
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Scott Pollak · Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2014 3:26 pm Post subject:

Well, they certainly NEED to, Lynn. ESPECIALLY on the authors' side. I can not believe some of the stuff that people self-publish. A billion typos and bad grammar, and quite frankly, overall just really poorly written.

The problem with the internet age is now everyone thinks they're a writer or a musician and they can publish or put anything out there. That's okay if it's just for your own self-expression, but when you begin to market it, and it competes against writers and musicians who are truly good at what they do, it really weakens the whole industry.

And this is coming from a guy who put 3 cds of original music on cdbaby.com and iTunes and - in retrospect - realizes how lame most of it was.
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Scott R. Pollak
Clients include Pandora, NPR Atlanta, Wells Fargo, Cisco, Humana, Publix, UPS, AT&T, HP, Xerox and more.

www.voicebyscott.com

Bish · Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2014 3:45 pm Post subject:

... and the unfiltered books attract unfiltered narrators.

Let's be honest... a few years ago the language was far more direct and accurate... it was called "vanity publishing" and the author was required to put some skin in the game (i.e. subsidize the publication). Now, as Scott so rightly points out, the route to market is cheap and easy. To have a book published used to mean something... now, not so much... it doesn't even require any financial investment.

Lots of books on the market, and a lot of naive narrators making the assumption that just because something has been published, it must (on some level) be "worthy".

No. Sorry. Wrong.
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Bish a.k.a. Bish
Smoke me a kipper... I'll be back for breakfast.
I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls.

Lee Gordon · Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2014 7:42 pm Post subject:

WillMWatt · Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2014 2:47 pm Post subject:

Eep!

Thanks for your replies, all. Looks like I inadvertently started a debate! Smile

Bish · Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2014 2:59 pm Post subject:

Nah... if it gets to page three without being thread-jacked... then it's a debate. It's just that ACX has recently goosed all the royalty-share producers with an over-sized pineapple and everyone is still a tad tender.
_________________
Bish a.k.a. Bish
Smoke me a kipper... I'll be back for breakfast.
I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls.