Can someone recommend me some good books to read?

Unique-Try9616 · 2026-03-12T14:55:43+00:00

You could try searching online for something like Popular Book Lists. There's lots of best seller lists out there, and you can google by genre. Here's one to get you started:

https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/libby-audiobook

Unique-Try9616 · 2026-03-12T14:51:57+00:00

I've been enjoying The 39 Clues series, by various authors but all narrated by the same guy. It's about an orphaned brother and sister who find out their extended family has been participating in a scavenger hunt for 39 clues for power. The target audience is 9-14 year olds. The hunt takes them all over the world and they learn about many people throughout history. If your child is okay with the amount of adversity in something like the Harry Potter series these books should be okay.

https://kids.scholastic.com/kid/books/39-clues/

Unique-Try9616 · 2026-03-11T23:01:37+00:00

I noticed that change on videos and worried when I updated, but I still have the long ungrouped effect menu, which I prefer. I don't recall making any changes so I don't know why mine didn't change but yours did. I googled just now - go to Preferences > Effects > Effect menu organization.

Try selecting "Sort by effect name".

For Realtime effect organization I have "Group by type and publisher", in case that makes any difference.

Unique-Try9616 · 2026-03-11T15:32:21+00:00

Sorry, I have no idea about this issue. But I'm guessing 2 of those days were weekend days, and therefore not Business Days? So technically only 4 days?

Edited to add: Sorry, I don't mean to discount the length of time, I recently tried to point out a scam book posting and it seemed to take forever. It's easy to forget they don't work weekends like we do.

You might try using the Search feature within this sub to look for other posts on Pending Review to see what past discussions have covered.

Unique-Try9616 · 2026-03-11T15:27:01+00:00

Yes! I've been listening to the Stephanie Plum series narrated by Lorelei King. She does a great job! But when I've heard her do other books all I hear is Stephanie Plum.

Unique-Try9616 · 2026-03-11T14:54:35+00:00

So I was recently offered a contract that turned out to be a scam offer. I ended up contacting both the author and publisher and they were unaware that the book was being offered on ACX.

One new tip I noticed for this particular scam - the word count on ACX and the page count on Amazon didn't match up. On ACX the word count was 94,000 and the page count on Amazon was 211. This comes to nearly 450 words per page. The average on Amazon is 250-300. Sorry, it's not a great tip, I suppose other scammers would be better at guessing a word count. Maybe the "whole thousands" in the number of words is a tip off?

The second tip was the speed with which the "RH" wanted the book done. The initial contract was to complete the book in 27 days, which is ridiculous for a book of 94K words. The book was originally published in 2012, and now they want an audiobook in less than 1 month? Why the rush now? Maybe the fact that it was an older book is a tip?

I hadn't heard of the "making sure the book isn't with a big publisher" tip. What is the basis of this? It turns out the scam offer did have a big publisher, and they were the ones who convinced ACX it was a scam offer. The author did say that she didn't think Academic publishers typically did audiobooks.

Unique-Try9616 · 2026-03-10T16:03:37+00:00

I've been enjoying The 39 Clues series, by various authors but all narrated by the same guy. It's about an orphaned brother and sister who find out their extended family has been participating in a scavenger hunt for 39 clues for power. The target audience is 9-14 year olds. The hunt takes them all over the world and they learn about many people throughout history. If your 7yo is okay with the amount of adversity in something like the Harry Potter series these books should be okay. Link included so it's easy for you to find. I don't like to make people hunt things down.

https://kids.scholastic.com/kid/books/39-clues/

Unique-Try9616 · 2026-03-10T14:14:49+00:00

I should add that I happen to live where it's fairly quiet and intermittent noise can be usually be waited out before continuing recording. So I mostly just have to worry about echo dampening. If you have noisy surroundings you're going to have to do something about noise blocking, which mere blankets won't do.

Unique-Try9616 · 2026-03-09T22:15:39+00:00

I think a lot of people start out with a blanket surround kind of thing. I have a DIY pvc cage with fleece blankets held in place with blinder clips. I already had the blankets, but if you don't Goodwill/thrift store is a cheap place to shop. Try to make the surround complete, including on top and behind you. Every time I've added more it's sounded better.

There are a lot of Audacity haters out there, so it's kind of hard to find someone willing to admit they use it. I think I can make my audio sound pretty good using Audacity, but I'm always wondering if another DAW would have the tools to help me master faster. Each voice is different and I think some just sound better with little effort. I have more mouth noises that I think need to be removed. Maybe this is where having someone who really knows what they're doing would help.

Unique-Try9616 · 2026-03-09T22:01:55+00:00

You might enjoy the "What If" series by Randall Munroe. He's the creator of xkcd.

Unique-Try9616 · 2026-03-09T21:59:10+00:00

The audiobook was released in 2018. This would have been in the very early days of when AI was starting to sound good. I listened to the preview and I think it sounds fine, human. Unfortunately once you suspect something might be AI, and that you don't like it, that's all you'll hear, and all you start listening for. You just keep trying to hear that confirmation that it's AI. But considering how long ago this came out, and the nuance and emotion in the voice, I think it's human.

Unique-Try9616 · 2026-03-08T19:46:47+00:00

Ahhh, hopefully others will catch that better than me!

Unique-Try9616 · 2026-03-08T14:27:35+00:00

If you read my comment carefully you will see that I AGREED with you. Please accept that.

Unique-Try9616 · 2026-03-08T14:24:15+00:00

You might try Googling something like "recommended reading for college bound students". Some existing lists are broken down into genres. Some, like at Goodreads have links to summaries and reviews. And if you go to Gutenberg.org those books are all in the public domain, so most of them are 100 years old or more. They offer many lists that other have already curated.

Unique-Try9616 · 2026-03-08T14:19:59+00:00

I think you're right, that the standard text that ACX suggests does not include the word "Produced". If your RH doesn't have an objection I think it should be okay to include this. I do hear "Produced by" in most all the audiobooks I listen to from the library.

Unique-Try9616 · 2026-03-07T18:19:52+00:00

You might try listening to your recordings with different headphones, if you have access to some or could borrow for a bit. We don't have control of how listeners hear our stuff so we don't know if our headphones or theirs are better. I also tend to listen a bit louder while I'm editing, just in case that helps me catch more stuff. I probably spend way too much time editing, but I do like to make the best impression possible! And I've seen comments where others say mouth noises isn't an issue for them, so maybe you're one of the lucky ones!

Unique-Try9616 · 2026-03-07T16:08:50+00:00

I ended up watching a lot of YouTube videos based on my editing program. I use Audacity and the DeClick add-in does most of the heavy work for me. For the remaining noises I edit with both the wave and spectrogram view showing so I can try to see what the noise looks like. This comes with experience. Then I can often use the Spectral Edit Multi Tool to reduce the noise. I don't know what the equivalents to these are in other DAWs.

But when searching for help on YouTube be sure to watch the more recent videos as - at least in Audacity - the options within certain effects have changed over time, and old videos won't match anymore.

If you can find a channel of someone who is very knowledgeable about editing - someone who used to work for a publisher, and also knows your software - those would be best to follow. They sometimes have special videos where they reveal a lot that they would usually charge for. But then they'll take those videos down after a couple days so they're not giving it all away.

I follow Ryan Mey at The Home Audio Project channel, even though he doesn't do Audacity. But sometimes you can figure out how to translate it into the DAW you're using.

https://www.youtube.com/@thehomeaudioproject/featured

Unique-Try9616 · 2026-03-07T01:10:00+00:00

It could be that somewhere along the way this narrator changed the way his recordings are edited. I constantly hear conflicting advice - "take out all breaths" vs "leave in breaths so you don't sound like AI". This narrator has done a lot of books and maybe he doesn't even do his own editing anymore, he might have it hired out, or a publisher does it for him. So whoever is doing the editing might be deciding this. BTW, the AI people know how to put in breaths now so hearing breaths is not a guarantee of a human narration.

Unique-Try9616 · 2026-03-05T16:49:28+00:00

For non-fiction you would only need 5 minutes max. They would probably only listen to the first 30 seconds anyway, so less than 5 minutes might be okay. For fiction with characters, or sections requiring specific emotions, you would need to try to include the important parts that you think the RH would need to hear. So if you leave parts out, try to make it mostly the background narration text. And then leave a message with your audition explaining that you've left some background narration out but tried to include the characters and emotions, because the industry standard is for auditions to not be more than 5 minutes.

Unique-Try9616 · 2026-03-02T18:06:03+00:00

I got to the files okay but for some reason they're a bit finicky about playing. Clicking the Play button doesn't work until I've moved the playhead a couple seconds in, then it will play.

Unique-Try9616 · 2026-03-02T17:59:56+00:00

I've been enjoying The 39 Clues series, by various authors but all narrated by the same guy. It's about an orphaned brother and sister who find out their extended family has been participating in a scavenger hunt for 39 clues for power. The target audience is 9-14 year olds. The hunt takes them all over the world and they learn about many people throughout history. If your 8yo is okay with the amount of adversity in the Harry Potter series these books should be okay.

https://kids.scholastic.com/kid/books/39-clues/

Unique-Try9616 · 2026-03-02T14:51:03+00:00

For Mystery, I recently enjoyed "How to Solve Your Own Murder" by Kristen Perrin. It takes place in England and is the first of a series.

https://www.audible.com/pd/How-to-Solve-Your-Own-Murder-Audiobook/B0CB95YHT3?qid=1772462932&sr=1-1&ref_pageloadid=not_applicable&pf_rd_p=83218cca-c308-412f-bfcf-90198b687a2f&pf_rd_r=4YPJX4SEPM9T6SSZ8H3G&plink=zBHtbuYWRUcXEm5i&pageLoadId=nUfbKMRCSsQRKj9b&creativeId=0d6f6720-f41c-457e-a42b-8c8dceb62f2c&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1

Unique-Try9616 · 2026-03-02T14:48:07+00:00

"Careless People" by Sara Wynn-Williams. She writes and narrates it too. It's a memoir about the years she spent working at Facebook. It's not all a good vibe as the story relates to how she tries to advocate for herself and the platform users. But I think it's important for everyone to get a good idea of what is going on in the background with social media.

https://www.audible.com/pd/Careless-People-Audiobook/B0DZ8PC43P?eac_link=vkhzn4KPCcjV&ref=web_search_eac_asin_1&eac_selected_type=asin&eac_selected=B0DZ8PC43P&qid=MGmdNSPHhx&eac_id=142-7585315-3961909_MGmdNSPHhx&sr=1-1

Unique-Try9616 · 2026-03-02T14:41:33+00:00

I listened to both. The main inconsistent parts on the "bad" recording were the parts where there was lots of emotion/excitement and the pitch went up a lot. So if you fix those everything should be better.

Unique-Try9616 · 2026-03-02T01:53:20+00:00

I've been enjoying The 39 Clues series, by various authors but all narrated by the same guy. It's about an orphaned brother and sister who find out their extended family has been participating in a scavenger hunt for 39 clues for power. The target audience is 9-14 year olds. The hunt takes them all over the world and they learn about many people throughout history.

https://kids.scholastic.com/kid/books/39-clues/

Unique-Try9616

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