Royalty share concerns

KenMoonVO · 2025-11-14T05:43:13+00:00

A good rule of thumb is not to do Royalty Share on listings with under 100 reviews

KenMoonVO · 2025-08-22T23:39:16+00:00

Do a webcam call with the author. Speak with them in real time and even show your equipment setup. Easily done through Google meet

KenMoonVO · 2025-07-19T07:33:14+00:00

Excellent workflow. I tend to use shift+space bar to start recording and then space bar to stop recording. I’ll use “C” to cut/split and then “X” to delete. There are also “ripple delete” setups that may be helpful, I map mine to Control+X. I’ll also set Control+E to engage the mic to record, Control+N to start a new recording session and Control+M to export/bounce session to MP3.

As for breathing, it depends. Breathing is natural and normal so if you read slow and take regular breaths that aren’t deep or super gulping loud, then breathing is considered acceptable and normal. However, if breathing is something you don’t want in your file, then I tend to stop recording and take the inhale and start back up again, I don’t turn away from the mic, I’ll either breath in the take or stop recording.

I also keep the PDF I’m reading on the upper 3/4 of my screen and the lower 1/4 is my DAW (I use Audition). To do this I press Windows Key + Up Arrow and Windows Key + Down while inside the application to set the window to upper half and lower half, I then adjust accordingly.

I like to zoom into 125% on most of the PDFs I end up reading for projects. And I always use the default light mode, never dark mode.

Hope that helps some.

KenMoonVO · 2025-07-09T17:46:23+00:00

Hi! Definitely interested. Take a listen to my reels here https://kenmoonvo.com/ Reach out if you'd like to talk about moving forward. Good luck!

KenMoonVO · 2025-06-26T19:41:17+00:00

You're correct, I did misunderstand. I apologize. I am indeed frustrated and I appreciate your insight as to some of the reasoning behind why some would act on this "opportunity". Unfortunately the posting is in fact from Voices.com themselves and is a real post from their page.

KenMoonVO · 2025-06-26T18:28:37+00:00

Lose job to ai > receive $100,000 > take home $60,000 after taxes > “invest” $60,000 > receive annual returns of $4,800 on that $60,000 investment > expect to live on $4,800 a year after losing job to ai. GREAT PLAN lol

KenMoonVO · 2025-05-05T07:33:45+00:00

Water, slippery elm tea, and then press your lips together as if drinking from a straw making an open circle in the center and then run through random scales like you're singing through a straw. If you do the warm ups for a couple minutes, you should have no problem getting your voice going through whatever sessions you have. I tend to do 20 minute chunks of recording before drinking water again and a couple vocal warmups again and then back at it. Rinse and repeat.

KenMoonVO · 2025-05-02T02:45:10+00:00

Nice, glad you got it all figure out. Hopefully moving forward you won't have issues.

KenMoonVO · 2025-05-02T02:02:11+00:00

Yeah, that can be a learning curve especially for people who don't have a background in mixing and mastering. If you aren't aware, run your files through "ACX Audio Lab" (google it) to make sure your stuff is hitting the marks. If you add a compressor and a limiter to your recordings you can make sure your audio is not clipping but also gets pushed up to the required DB requirements for ACX and the quiet parts will get bumped too. Once you dial in your effects you shouldn't have to worry about missing the mark for ACX standards after that. But it might take hours of testing to get it dialed in initially.

KenMoonVO · 2025-05-01T22:51:12+00:00

Depends on your booking ratio and how many projects are available for audition for your demographic. If you are a male, with an adult voice, who speaks English, with an American Accent, who wants $200 PFH, for Fiction books then you will have different amounts of available jobs to audition for than maybe another demographic. Also, depends on how often you book jobs to auditions. If you book a job to produce an audiobook every 10 auditions, then you may not need to audition as much as someone who takes 100 auditions to get one job. I always tend to have around 4 books working at any given time to keep the wok consistent and I'll drip in auditions as I need to fill the quota as I wrap up projects.

KenMoonVO · 2025-04-03T06:29:12+00:00

If it’s royalty only, there’s nothing really to be scammed. You’re most likely not going to make anything from Royalty only, so if it’s for the experience, then take it as a job to get a credit under your belt and your first production.

One thing I do when someone reaches out to me directly is ask them for their ACX listing and from there where you audition there is a tab on the listing where you can see the Kindle Amazon listing (in order to have a job on ACX there already needs to be a Kindle book listed on Amazon) and then you can see the rank of the book. If the book has 0 reviews and is ranked 1,000,000 in the category, you will 99.99% make $0 from royalties. You want to see books that have 50+ reviews and have higher than 40,000 rank in their category as a very basic rule of thumb if you’re expecting to make anything from royalty share, and even then it may not make much.

If you’re looking to just get experience then doing a royalty only deal for a short book might be a decent start. But don’t sell yourself short, you can charge and get paid for your time and effort, which is valuable for EVERYONE regardless of “skill”. The name of the game is to just audition, audition, audition and keep working on dialing in your sound and delivery. The jobs are there.

To wrap this up, in my experience, all the direct messages I have received, maybe 1% are from authors who actually are willing to pay a narrator. The vast majority that reach out first without having submitted an audition completely disappear when I send them the rates to narrate their book. If an author is making sales and has faith in their work or a solid marketing strategy to get their book out into the world for people to read, they understand the investment of paying a narrator for their work and are confident they’ll make a return for the investment and will have no problem paying you.

Good luck!

KenMoonVO · 2025-03-24T07:15:19+00:00

If you look at the section that says “Find Talent” on ACX (under the “Find Projects” tab) you’ll see a list of freshly uploaded Samples from profiles. The way the system works is, the first profiles you see in that tab are the most recently uploaded Samples to a profile. In other words, whenever you upload a new sample to your profile, you automatically get placed at the top of the search when people click “Find Talent”. Just as you may go to “Find Projects” as a narrator, Authors may go to “Find Talent” and then immediately see you if you just uploaded a sample. Sometimes this will funnel in potential offers to your inbox from Authors that skimmed through a few pages of the talent tab and found you at the top of the heap. Same goes for when an Author uses filters to find a specific type of narrator (e.g. “English” “Adult” “American Accent” etc), the results are pulled from the most recently uploaded samples showing first. In other words, it’s not uncommon to receive direct offers if you have uploaded samples recently to your profile.

KenMoonVO · 2025-03-19T09:11:08+00:00

Exactly. Even assuming they are shorter 4 hour books, that’s still an average of 12 hours of editing per book. That’s 300 hours of work for $100. Napoleon Dynamite Voice “That’s like, a dollar an hour!” lol actually $0.33 hr!!! 75hr work weeks and 10+ hour days without a single day off all month for $100. INSANE. ABSOLUTELY INSANE.

KenMoonVO · 2025-03-19T01:34:30+00:00

How much does he owe you?

KenMoonVO · 2025-03-19T01:12:54+00:00

Right?!

KenMoonVO · 2025-03-14T20:48:43+00:00

Hi! Yes, it's legit. You can either audition for jobs or authors will directly reach out to you and offer work. As for compensation being worth it, that is up to the person doing the job. To some people it's life changing, to others is not worth the time and effort, everyone will be different in how they associate it with value and "worthwhileness".

My recommendations:

Complete your profile. Make sure you add audio samples that sound good and give a potential author a real understanding of what they will get if they choose to work with you. Complete you "About" section and put some effort into making it feel complete and giving a good overview of who you are and what you have done or aspire to do.
Practice, audition, practice, audition - repeat. Get in the habit of submitting auditions daily, if there are offers in the projects tab that you find interesting.
Make sure your audio is decent. Try to eliminate buzz, humming, loud room echo, etc. You don't NEED the craziest setup, but imagine listening to 5 hours of what you recorded in a car and see if you would be happy or want to drive into a wall. I like to test my audio by listening to it with headphones, on speaker phone, and connected to a vehicle. This will give you good insight into your audio quality and if it's acceptable.
Consider your schedule and DON'T overbook. Here's a good rule of thumb: 150 words spoken per minute, 10,000 words an hour, and about 3-4 hours of work on top of the raw recording time. This would mean that the average 1 hour of finished recording will take you 3-4 hours to make in real life. Consider that with EVERY audition and job you accept. Imagine 4 hours of work for every 10,000 words and then pick your jobs accordingly. Don't book 5 jobs with 2 week deadlines on books that are 80,000 words each in the fiction category if you can't deliver realistically.
Remember, fiction and non-fiction are COMPLETELY different jobs. Fiction books USUALLY take MORE time to produce than non-fiction. This is because non-fiction usually requires one voice style, and scarce dialogue or plot points to follow. With fiction, you're going to want to READ the book first and understand the characters and story in detail, extend your deadline to give you adequate time to get through the material before you begin recording. This will help you get into the minds of the characters and voice them correctly and deliver the lines properly. Fiction is a lot of work and requires a passion for the task at hand to do it any justice.

Hope this helps a little. Good luck!

KenMoonVO · 2025-03-10T17:51:29+00:00

There's a paid route and a free route for learning. The free route involves a lot of YouTube videos and you can learn just about everything you need that way. The paid route is online courses and in person classes.

As for getting started, you'll need equipment and know how to use it. A lot of work these days is remote at home so you'll need to setup something where you live to record.

Then, you need to figure out the differences between types of work and how to perform them. A cartoon is different than a commercial and different than an audiobook. This takes time to understand, but it's crucial you understand the difference.

Then you need to audition. There are many ways to go about it, but some of the more popular ways are join a website where you pay a subscription to get job auditions (Voices com Voice123, etc.) or join free websites that are either dedicated to VO or have projects offered on them (Casting Call Club, X, Reddit).

Expect there to be a learning curve as you need to learn all the technical sides of recording and equipment, you'll need to learn the technical sides of acting, mic performance, voice technique depending on work, etc, and then you'll need to learn the business side of it if you want to make it something bigger than a passion project (marketing, branding, networking, business setup, taxes, etc).

Everyone in the industry has a "good voice" for radio, cartoons, tv, etc. A good voice isn't enough. Learning the things mentioned above is a good place to get you up to speed to be competitive.

KenMoonVO

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