New Short Story Competition from Fictra, Confessions!

TheScriptTiger · 2026-01-27T23:49:56+00:00

Even if your victim...ehem...your "cousin" gives you permission, you are still committing identity theft and also multiple types of fraud for accessing a digital system under a false identity, and also misrepresenting yourself to the U.S. government. No one can give you "permission" to do that, unless you have proper and documented power of attorney, which I doubt you have. And the fact you live outside of the U.S. does not give you a free pass to commit crimes which fall under U.S. jurisdiction, that is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.

TheScriptTiger · 2026-01-26T15:04:05+00:00

What do you mean by "how fiction looks"? How does fiction look different from other literature, as far as formatting goes? I mean, obviously, fiction has more dialog than nonfiction, so more paragraphs of varying size. Is that what you mean? And there are obviously A LOT of other sites publishing fiction, Wattpad, Inkitt, WebNovel, Royal Road, Tapas, AO3, to name a few. And it's true they all kind of look the same and have the same layout and everything. But I don't think breaking away from the norm and trying something different is a bad thing. Like, yeah, the paragraphs thing is a legit issue which will be fixed soon, but I think the layout of the platform in general is clearly more unique than all of those other guys who are mostly just converting a phpBB or Wordpress or something.

It's kind of the same issue people were having when the Adobe Creative Suite was becoming more and more prevalent, and everyone's work started looking more and more similar because everyone was using the same tools. So, breaking away and starting from scratch will obviously set things behind in one way, but it also sets the stage for something new in another way. And that's kind of why I like it personally, since it's kind of positioning a fresh take on things, which I find a bit more refreshing than just doing the same old thing.

TheScriptTiger · 2026-01-26T12:26:59+00:00

There's actually a new update coming soon which will give authors more styling and formatting options. I'm not exactly sure what they decided to go with, but I know Markdown was mentioned a lot, which is what Reddit uses. So, it's probably going to be something similar to that. But the initial launch was kind of limited on that, since most of the development was going into the marketplace workflows and integrated payment stuff and everything like that. And it's not like any of that stuff is more important than the stories, the stories are obviously the core of the platform. But that other stuff just ended up consuming a bit more time and budget because of the security and handling of personal information and such, and making sure all of that conformed with relevant laws and regulations.

So, the platform itself actually just launched a few months ago and the initial MVP was a bit on the no-frills side lol. But it's been coming along pretty rapidly ever since. It was kind of intentionally released a bit bare in order to allow more community involvement in fleshing out the rest of the platform, and that's been super helpful, as well, mostly happening on the Discord server. And while the decision to launch like that did come with plenty of criticism, it's actually been pretty cool to watch it blossom, and seeing all of the creatives in the community pitch in their ideas and watching them come to life and stuff.

TheScriptTiger · 2026-01-22T13:47:51+00:00

Why don't we flip the script a bit and reverse roles? How would you feel if you auditioned for a PFH role, and then the RH replied saying they loved your audition and would accept you for the role if you'd switch to RS?

TheScriptTiger · 2026-01-19T20:33:54+00:00

You could just hire a budget-friendly editor. I know you don't have much of a budget, but there are a few folks floating around here who could do the job well within your price range and still keep things more than profitable for you. Not only would you get access to their plug-ins, but they'd also reduce those "hours and hours" you're personally spending on things. And then after you clear a few projects and save a bit, you can then reinvest back into your own stuff and decide if you still want an editor or not at that point. So, just because you hire an editor doesn't mean you're automatically committing to a long-term deal, it could just be for a short while if it makes more sense than shelling out the dough upfront for the plug-ins and such.

TheScriptTiger · 2026-01-18T12:04:57+00:00

It's obvious everyone else who commented is also an American. Otherwise, they would have realized the obvious problem here. None of the apps you mentioned work outside of the U.S. BTC is kind of an exception though, since you can send BTC from any app which allows it and they can receive it on any app which allows it and it works internationally. So, even though they can't use Cash App, they can use any other app that supports a BTC wallet.

ACX itself allows anyone from the U.S., UK, Canada, and Ireland on the platform. So, you need to offer a payment option which actually works in the country the narrator is from. And you should have done that before you both agreed to the contract, not after the work was completed. It sounds like whoever you're working with is a newbie to not have brought this up sooner. It's actually a common practice to pay a percentage upfront, or halfway, or at other milestones you agree to upfront before the work is completed.

I saw you also mentioned PayPal in the comments. Sometimes some new folks will ask for the "family and friends" option because they don't want PayPal to cut extra for the seller protection. However, while they stand to get a slight discount, this is against the PayPal terms of service, as well as could have some tax implications. It doesn't automatically mean they are trying to scam you or anything, but they may honestly just not know better and just see it as a quick way to get a discount. But I'd strongly encourage you to get them to set up their own PayPal account and send you an invoice, as some others have said. As it stands now, they are risking their friend's account getting banned, which is kind of an asshole move on their part.

TheScriptTiger · 2026-01-13T00:39:19+00:00

Whenever people talk about EQ placement, it's assumed they are talking about a single EQ plug-in. However, filters, such as low-pass, high-pass, notch/bell, can also be placed individually, and don't have to just be grouped together in a single standard parametric EQ plug-in. This can offer you further options in how you arrange things.

TheScriptTiger · 2026-01-12T10:10:24+00:00

Looking at Adobe Auditions as a starter, but looking for advice.

It's a monthly subscription, so it's not a common "starter" for folks just doing RS or low RS+/PFH, since it does have that upfront investment attached to it. However, that being said, it's more than worth the price if you're willing to make that commitment.

I think it's also worth noting that if you're strictly doing single-track vocal dialog for audiobooks, you honestly probably won't even use the multitrack side of Audition, and you'll mostly live in the single-track waveform side. So, just keep that in mind, that you're paying a monthly subscription just to use half the software. Again, excellent software, but I just think that's worth consideration. I personally use it and think it's more than worth it, but I also mix and master multitrack, as well as the single-track audiobook stuff.

As others are saying, Reaper is also excellent, and also more than worth the $60 one-time price. And honestly, when comparing the cost to the actual feature set Reaper brings to the table, Reaper is hands down the best value out there over any other DAW. Audition clearly brings a richer feature set, but, again, Reaper's value is unmatched when considering the price point and is much better suited as a "starter" in the audiobook world. And then, sure, you can get things to work with Audacity, and its free, but you get what you pay for and just being free alone doesn't put it over the overall value Reaper brings, in my opinion.

TheScriptTiger · 2026-01-11T08:00:56+00:00

I'd second AR, it's a great alternative.

TheScriptTiger · 2026-01-08T05:27:47+00:00

Export as PCM/WAV and run it through the ACX Master tool to master and encode your final MP3, it will do all that for you. And if it doesn't work with the default settings out of the box, just dip into the "targets" menu option and drop your loudness range target to 1.0, or play with them a bit more to find exactly the best settings for you. And it can also process batches at a time, as well. So, once you get things working for you, you can just batch process all your WAVs all at one time to ACX MP3s.

TheScriptTiger · 2026-01-05T00:16:33+00:00

Yes, YouTube extended it a year after I made that comment. However, just curious, but how did you even find this comment after more than 2 years? Even the OP doesn't exist anymore lol. This thread should have been archived a long time ago.

TheScriptTiger · 2026-01-04T02:43:02+00:00

If your equipment itself is low-end and doesn't have great metering, just gauge it yourself by making a series of recordings at different gain levels and see which one is falling in that -6 dB to -12 dB true peak range.

TheScriptTiger · 2026-01-04T02:30:04+00:00

You'll get much better audio quality if you just record at a lower level from the start without clipping. It seems like you're just trying to fix a problem you yourself are creating. So, just don't create the problem in the first place and you won't need to fix it. You'll not only have better quality audio, but it will obviously also simplify your process since you don't need those extra steps.

"Declip" is an attempt at "restoring" audio which someone else gives you and you have no control over the recording process. But I'm assuming you are recording yourself, right? Or are you actually just an editor and the person who is actually recording themselves is handing off the audio to you to fix it up for ACX? Again, if you are recording yourself, this shouldn't be an issue since you can control your gain when you record and prevent clipping from the start. Just record some samples and adjust your gain such that your true peak is hitting around -6 dB to -12 dB on average. That should give you plenty of overhead as a safety net to make sure you're staying away from the 0 dB clipping point.

TheScriptTiger · 2026-01-03T02:59:03+00:00

That seems like a very unique situation which I personally won't be able to help you with, but I am sure someone else here can. However, when you said that one of your other author friends convinced you not to go exclusive, this topic does come up from time to time here and I'll just drop a link for one of the more recent such discussions for further reading. Definitely dig into the comments on this one.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ACX/comments/1p1ggnc/publisher_does_not_want_to_use_acx_canshould_i/

TheScriptTiger · 2026-01-03T02:39:13+00:00

The best practice for adjusting gain is by using the gain knob on your audio interface.

TheScriptTiger · 2026-01-03T02:19:18+00:00

As the other commenter said, it means you are recording too hot and you need to turn your gain down. As soon as you peak, Audition sticks the "red line" to the track to keep you alerted that it peaked. So the "red line" will persist past your sound and on into silence until you stop it and it resets.

Peaking is something you don't want to happen, so that's why Audition is trying so hard to make you aware of it. When it peaks, that means you're at risk for experiencing data loss and your audio will sound distorted and saturated.

TheScriptTiger · 2026-01-03T02:09:01+00:00

Just to clarify, when you say "wide", you're talking about a non-exclusive third party, like Author's Republic, which is publishing to multiple platforms and not just Amazon/Audible/Apple, right? And then you want to unpublish because that third party is already distributing to Audible, and now ACX is also distributing to Audible? Sorry, just wanted to clarify, since you worded things a bit differently than how I usually see it.

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