I signed up for WattPad, just for fun. I've put up His Lucky Break, which is always free, and I might post story snippets there from time to time. Have a look!
Dreams of Control
The blog of Marc Cabot, author of the Dreams of Control erotic mind control series. Topics: Writing, e-publishing, hypnosis, hypnoerotica, erotic mind control, sex, general geekery.
Friday, September 19, 2014
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
New Erotic Mind Control Book: "In His Kiss"
I'm pleased to announce my latest Erotic Mind Control short story, In His Kiss. Now available for $1.99 at major e-tailers!
Click the links to buy at: Smashwords / Amazon / Barnes and Noble / Kobo
Veronica Washington, gorgeous geek and canny cosplayer, is at MiCon, having a wonderful time. Then she meets Steve, the “Kissing Bandit,” whose simple costume and nerdy but handsome exterior conceal a dark secret. By the time Veronica figures out what’s happening, it’s too late… and the Kissing Bandit has stolen far more than a kiss. He’s stolen her very mind.
The question is, will she ever want it back? Or will she become the Bandit’s new partner in crimes of the heart?
Erotic Mind Control, Maledom, Geek Erotica, Cosplay Erotica
Click the links to buy at: Smashwords / Amazon / Barnes and Noble / Kobo
Veronica Washington, gorgeous geek and canny cosplayer, is at MiCon, having a wonderful time. Then she meets Steve, the “Kissing Bandit,” whose simple costume and nerdy but handsome exterior conceal a dark secret. By the time Veronica figures out what’s happening, it’s too late… and the Kissing Bandit has stolen far more than a kiss. He’s stolen her very mind.
The question is, will she ever want it back? Or will she become the Bandit’s new partner in crimes of the heart?
Erotic Mind Control, Maledom, Geek Erotica, Cosplay Erotica
Saturday, August 23, 2014
New Website!
Inspired by the fact that every time I went to my writer-crush Chuck Wendig's site, I thought, "I wish I had a real website that looked nice and worked well and made people want to buy my books and/or lavish me with money and affection," I have revamped both the Dreams of Control website (my personal site) and the Unspeakable Publications website (which has links to some books by other authors I work with as well.)
They look great, they work well, and there are easy-to-use buy links on all of the book pages. Please check them out!
http://www.unspeakablepublications.com
http://www.dreamsofcontrol.com
Thanks and enjoy!
Marc
They look great, they work well, and there are easy-to-use buy links on all of the book pages. Please check them out!
http://www.unspeakablepublications.com
http://www.dreamsofcontrol.com
Thanks and enjoy!
Marc
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Imagination Steroids
For your Amusement, a comment I made on Terribleminds.com, wherein I invent the concept of Imagination Steroids and detail their advantages over the regular kind.
Original poster "Ed:"
Isn't a key component of writing imagination? You can read a whole variety of novels and types, but if your brain can’t create a world to place the story you are burning to write, you are pretty much stuffed.
Blog Host "Terribleminds:"
It is, indeed. Though that’s a bit separate from instinct, I think. One has to cultivate imagination too — perhaps the focus of a future post! – c.
Me, Marc Cabot:
Just so.
Imagination is something we are all born with. Period fucking dot. All children have it.
It’s just that a lot of them get it beaten out of them or fail to exercise it and they end up like Susan Pevensie from the Narnia books… “Oh, isn’t it funny you still remember those make-believe games we played as silly children now bugger off while I snort heroin off this fashion model’s ass and PRETEND I’M NOT ALREADY DEAD INSIDE."
And, granted, some people have more imagination or some natural gift for letting it flow easier that other people. And that’s fine. It’d be a funny old world if we were all alike, wouldn’t it? But don’t ever think that a) you don’t have it or b) that you can’t make it stronger by exercising it.
And reading, widely, is like Imagination Steroids for writers.
You can mainline steroids but if you never get up off the couch you’ll still be a pile of blubber with a couch-shaped ass. And you can exercise without steroids and with hard work you can reach the peak of your body’s potential. But if you exercise AND take steroids you turn into Mark Fucking McGuire and you start hitting shit so hard it flies out of the park and DENTS THE HUBBLE TELESCOPE. And the nice part is, Imagination Steroids are perfectly legal and you won’t have an asterisk next to your name on the bestseller lists for using them. SO GO GET SOME.
Original poster "Ed:"
Isn't a key component of writing imagination? You can read a whole variety of novels and types, but if your brain can’t create a world to place the story you are burning to write, you are pretty much stuffed.
Blog Host "Terribleminds:"
It is, indeed. Though that’s a bit separate from instinct, I think. One has to cultivate imagination too — perhaps the focus of a future post! – c.
Me, Marc Cabot:
Just so.
Imagination is something we are all born with. Period fucking dot. All children have it.
It’s just that a lot of them get it beaten out of them or fail to exercise it and they end up like Susan Pevensie from the Narnia books… “Oh, isn’t it funny you still remember those make-believe games we played as silly children now bugger off while I snort heroin off this fashion model’s ass and PRETEND I’M NOT ALREADY DEAD INSIDE."
And, granted, some people have more imagination or some natural gift for letting it flow easier that other people. And that’s fine. It’d be a funny old world if we were all alike, wouldn’t it? But don’t ever think that a) you don’t have it or b) that you can’t make it stronger by exercising it.
And reading, widely, is like Imagination Steroids for writers.
You can mainline steroids but if you never get up off the couch you’ll still be a pile of blubber with a couch-shaped ass. And you can exercise without steroids and with hard work you can reach the peak of your body’s potential. But if you exercise AND take steroids you turn into Mark Fucking McGuire and you start hitting shit so hard it flies out of the park and DENTS THE HUBBLE TELESCOPE. And the nice part is, Imagination Steroids are perfectly legal and you won’t have an asterisk next to your name on the bestseller lists for using them. SO GO GET SOME.
Sunday, July 6, 2014
Reviewer Incentive Contest - READ ON!
Now that I've released my first audiobook and am well on my way to becoming the new King of All Media (watch your hiney, Howard) I'm offering the following Reviewer Incentive Program and Contest* for all my readers. It's pretty simple:
1) Buy one of my books, including my audiobook version of Dream a Little Dream. You can do that now, or you can already have done it. Or you can write a review of a book you bought from me at a con. (Amazon and Barnes and Noble will allow you to write reviews of books you bought somewhere else. iTunes and Smashwords will not.) Or you can review one of my FREE stories. This program does not require a new purchase or proof of purchase. Purchase links are over on the right there if you need them. Just click on the one corresponding to your favorite e-tailer.
2) Write a review of the book and post it online. This is the new part. Reviews must be dated July 6th, 2014, or later.
3) Email me a link to your review and your email address. It can be a throwaway email address from gmail or whatever, but you must provide a working email address. If you ask me to, I will add the email address to my mailing list. I will not add it unless you ask. Email it to my Reviews at Dreams of Control email address (click here to see it.)
4) For every review you post and email me a link to, I will give you a free copy of the e-book of your choice through Smashwords. (You heard me. Review a free or .99 book and you can choose ANY BOOK YOU WANT, including the more expensive ones. or vice versa.)
You will need to sign into Smashwords with the email address you give me, but you don't have to put in payment information if all you do is download free books. Just put the name of the book you want in the email. Note that you cannot get a copy of the audiobook this way, sorry.
5) On the first of every month, I'll randomly select one review submitter to receive a $10.00 Amazon, Smashwords, B&N, or iTunes e-gift certificate (winner's choice.)
It's that simple. So what are you waiting for? GO WRITE SOME REVIEWS!
This program is subject to change or termination without notice, but any eligible review submitted will receive the incentive listed and be entered to win if submitted before such change or termination occurs. Must have a valid email address to enter. Void where prohibited. Prohibited where void. No purchase necessary, but very much appreciated. Odds of winning do not change based upon products purchased. Once you've reviewed all my books you don't get any more free ones until I write some more. You may give your free books away to others by providing me with their email. Stop reading this like it was a real sweepstakes or something and go read a book!
*With that many capital letters, It Has To Be Good.
1) Buy one of my books, including my audiobook version of Dream a Little Dream. You can do that now, or you can already have done it. Or you can write a review of a book you bought from me at a con. (Amazon and Barnes and Noble will allow you to write reviews of books you bought somewhere else. iTunes and Smashwords will not.) Or you can review one of my FREE stories. This program does not require a new purchase or proof of purchase. Purchase links are over on the right there if you need them. Just click on the one corresponding to your favorite e-tailer.
2) Write a review of the book and post it online. This is the new part. Reviews must be dated July 6th, 2014, or later.
3) Email me a link to your review and your email address. It can be a throwaway email address from gmail or whatever, but you must provide a working email address. If you ask me to, I will add the email address to my mailing list. I will not add it unless you ask. Email it to my Reviews at Dreams of Control email address (click here to see it.)
4) For every review you post and email me a link to, I will give you a free copy of the e-book of your choice through Smashwords. (You heard me. Review a free or .99 book and you can choose ANY BOOK YOU WANT, including the more expensive ones. or vice versa.)
You will need to sign into Smashwords with the email address you give me, but you don't have to put in payment information if all you do is download free books. Just put the name of the book you want in the email. Note that you cannot get a copy of the audiobook this way, sorry.
5) On the first of every month, I'll randomly select one review submitter to receive a $10.00 Amazon, Smashwords, B&N, or iTunes e-gift certificate (winner's choice.)
It's that simple. So what are you waiting for? GO WRITE SOME REVIEWS!
This program is subject to change or termination without notice, but any eligible review submitted will receive the incentive listed and be entered to win if submitted before such change or termination occurs. Must have a valid email address to enter. Void where prohibited. Prohibited where void. No purchase necessary, but very much appreciated. Odds of winning do not change based upon products purchased. Once you've reviewed all my books you don't get any more free ones until I write some more. You may give your free books away to others by providing me with their email. Stop reading this like it was a real sweepstakes or something and go read a book!
*With that many capital letters, It Has To Be Good.
Friday, July 4, 2014
"Dream A Little Dream" tonight on Descent Hypnosis Radio!
UPDATE: the book will also be performed tonight (7/5) at 11PM EDT!
Starting in a few minutes you can listen to the full audiobook version of "Dream A Little Dream" on Descent Hypnosis Radio, the Internet's most awesome hypnosis radio station!
Tune in at http://www.descenthypnosis.com !
Thanks and enjoy!
Starting in a few minutes you can listen to the full audiobook version of "Dream A Little Dream" on Descent Hypnosis Radio, the Internet's most awesome hypnosis radio station!
Tune in at http://www.descenthypnosis.com !
Thanks and enjoy!
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Audiobooketizing Your Prosebook: A Brief Guide
So. I submitted my first audiobook to ACX, aka Audible
Creation Exchange (an Amazon company – basically KDP for audiobooks) last
night. It took, like everything else in this fallen world, a lot more time and
effort than it seemed like it should. But I love you (No, really, I do.) and
I’m here to help you avoid some of the pitfalls, pratfalls and wrong turns I
encountered. Herein, Unka Marc’s Guide To Audiobooketizing Your Prosebook.
###
Where to begin?
Well, there are neither beginnings nor endings to the
turning of the Wheel of Indiepub. But this is a beginning.
I signed up with ACX (http://www.acx.com if
you hadn’t guessed) which is free, and will link you directly into your KDP
account if you sign up with the same email. This also automatically makes all
your Author Page books available for instant integration as rights-available or
DIY projects, which is VERY cool. If you do things in the right order, your
audiobook should appear as a format choice on the book’s page when it goes
live, which is SUPER cool. If you want to do it some other way, knock yourself
out. You might still find some of the technical stuff below helpful, but
obviously the ACX specifics, not so much.
So you sign up and you put in your information (bank stuff
to get paid, tax information, legal status, stuff like that.) It’s very similar
to signing up for KDP or any other self-publishing platform. Then you go
through all the help pages and try to figure out what the Hell to do.
Note: ACX’s “How To” pages are monumentally badly
organized. It’s not that hard to find any given thing you
might want to know about, especially since Google has them thoroughly mapped.
But trying to develop a workflow just from reading them is nigh-impossible.
Even watching all the tutorial videos all the way through, in order, which you
should do, will not help much with the nuts-and-bolts of the process. Read
through this ALL THE WAY TO THE END and you should have a grip on the thing. A
tenuous, three-finger grip on the side of some Godforsaken alp, but a grip
never-the-less. Also here are some useful web pages:
The ACX tutorial videos: https://www.acx.com/help/video-lessons-resources/200672590 (You
have to watch each one and then the next will appear for viewing.)
The ACX “Do It Yourself Author/Narrator” page: https://www.acx.com/help/authors-as-narrators/200626860
The ACX page that actually tells you what your submitted
file has to look like: https://www.acx.com/help/acx-audio-submission-requirements/201456300 (Spoiler:
it should be a 44Khz 192Kb constant sample rate mono/NOT joint stereo MP3. The
specs are near the bottom.)
So once I was sure I was all set up, I had to decide which
of my books to audiobooketize, and how I was going to do it. I started with one
of my short stories, Dream a Little Dream, which is about 6700
words long, and which the rough math said should be about 45 minutes of audio.
(It came in at 44 minutes. Damn, I’m good at rough math.) Please note that
“being too short” is grounds for rejection, but “too short” is not defined.
There are approved books online which are less than half an hour long: I don’t
know if there’s a bright-line rule or not. I picked this one because it a) is
reasonably short so I wouldn’t invest too much time if there was some problem
with my books, B) is one of my tamer books (the protagonist is married to the
only person he has sex with, everything that happens is arguably consensual,)
and C) contains a realistic hypnotic induction scene. This last is a bit of a
gamble: that might turn some people off, but OTOH people who are into
hypno-erotica might be really into this. Time will tell.
Okay, I was all set to sell audiobooks. I just needed a, you
know, audiobook. To sell.
I decided to record my book myself. I’m a trained
hypnotherapist and I REALLY like to talk so I was confident that I could manage
the recording. I have a reasonably acceptable voice, very clear diction and
boundless ego, so I wasn’t worried it wouldn’t sound good enough. If you don’t
have any of these properties, or just want a “real” narrator, you have a couple
of options.
1) Put your book in as
“OPEN FOR AUDITION.” This will let ACX show your proposed book to the narrators
who are signed up to receive such offers, and let them make offers to record
it. You can either pay a flat fee, or split the royalties with the narrator.
The latter requires less money up front but of course if your book sells well
means less money in your pocket. Which to choose is an individual business
decision. I didn’t do this, so I can’t comment on it, but it seems simple
enough.
2) Hire a narrator to
record your book for you outside ACX. You could do this any way you’d find any
other kind of talent, including Craigslist. If you do this, be sure to have a
good solid work-for-hire agreement, vetted by a lawyer licensed in your
jurisdiction, so that the rights you have and the obligations you have to the
narrator are clear to all parties up front. If you do this, you’ll probably get
a “finished audio” file from the narrator, and then you can proceed like I did
with it as if you had recorded it yourself. GET A WAV FILE OR OTHER UNCOMPRESSED
MASTER FILE. Do not just take an MP3. If you ever need to edit it you’ll be a
lot better off with a real audio master file format. If you don’t want to do
any audio editing, be sure they put the opening credits, closing credits,
content file(s) and sample file in separate MP3 files (see the “Upload” section
below.) But get BOTH the uncompressed masters and the MP3 conversion, or
you’ll have to do it yourself or find somebody else to do it.
3) Have your dulcet-toned
significant other, Cousin Pat, or bored friend record it for you. I’m not
saying this is a bad idea per se, but see all the stuff in #2.
I already had a nice computer and was familiar with the
basics of digital recording from experience as a systems administrator at a
design studio, but it isn’t hard. I’ll hit the highlights of my preparation and
setup.
1) I have a basement
office where I do my writing and work at home for my day job. It already had a
nice curtain backdrop set up for my video conferences. I just extended it a bit
so that I was surrounded by free-hanging fabric on three sides, which dampened
ambient echo very well. I put up a fuzzy blanket on the one large flat surface
still present (the door) and I was all set.
2) I only recorded late
at night or when nobody was home. A microphone good enough to get good audio
will pick up a lot of background noise, even a cardioid or supercardioid. (Ask
me about how the dog laid down on the floor above my head and chewed on her
bone for forty-five minutes straight when I wanted to record that one time. I
DARE YOU.) Also, I turned off all my external hard drives and made sure I had
no fan noise from my computer picked up by the mike. I bought a small solid
state external drive to record onto, they’re very fast and make no sound at
all. That minimized the chance that my internal HD would spin up. It’s not very
loud, but every little bit helps.
3) I got a nice USB
microphone (a Blue Snowball iCE) from TigerDirect and an inexpensive pop filter
(those embroidery-hoop-with-pantyhose looking things) from Guitar Center. The
pop filter not only lowers the chances of plosives making your recording, well,
pop, but it gives you a fixed reference point so when you do more than one
session, you know how far to put your face from the mike.
4) I already had some
nice headphones. You don’t need umpty-hundred dollar ones, but do get ones
which are “closed back,” i.e. they completely seal off your ears. It makes
reviewing a lot easier.
5) I downloaded the free
Open Source program “Audacity” from the internet. I’d used it before, many
years ago, and it’s gotten even better since. And you can’t beat the price or
the availability of plugins for it, including a free MP3 converter. If you have
a Mac, you could use GarageBand, which has a voice-recording channel, and there
are lots of other audio programs out there. The fanciest consumer-grade one is
probably Adobe Audition, and then you go up into the pro-level stuff. I know
nothing about any of them. J
Here’s a link to download Audacity: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Here’s a link to the MP3 converter, which you have to
install separately (it’s easy:) http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/faq_installation_and_plug_ins.html#lame
Here’s a link to a page for a compressor plugin that a lot
of people find very useful for making audiobook MP3’s: http://theaudacitytopodcast.com/chriss-dynamic-compressor-plugin-for-audacity/
6) I got a nicer
microphone stand than the one the mike came with, too, and a flexible gooseneck
adapter for it, at Sam Ash. I also bought a few sheets of soft closed-cell
craft foam at Joann’s, and set that on my desk and then the microphone stand on
that. That was a lot cheaper than a shock mount, and it provides quite a bit of
acoustical decoupling of the microphone from the desk I sat it on. I kinda want
a shock mount (which is basically a web of bungee cords you suspend the
microphone from to dampen external vibration) but a) my office isn’t that noisy
and my equipment doesn’t vibrate much and b) I am a notorious gearhead and I
have to draw lines somewhere. If you want one, especially if you have a
noisier/vibrate-ier environment, by all means get one.
Once I had all my stuff, I set up my chair and the
stand so I was on-axis (my mouth was lined up with the mike) and I could stop
and start recording with a minimum of noise. One nice feature of Audacity is
that Shift-R will append to your existing track, so if you get into the whole
stop-and-start thing, it’s really simple to do. I did some sampling of “room
tone,” which is just the noise when nothing is apparently making noise, and
found it was pretty quiet, so I was all set. Protip: if you want to insert
pauses in your recording, copy/paste room tone. DON’T insert silence with the
program’s Generate Silence feature. Dead silence sounds different from room
tone and is disconcerting for listeners.
Then, I actually prepared the prose book for recording. I
did this by turning it into a script I could scroll through. Lots of people
like to read from paper but I live in the 21st Century and
besides, my desk is cluttered enough, so I scrolled through it on my second
monitor while watching the recording on the first monitor. (Oh, did I mention I
have two monitors? This probably wouldn’t be so handy if you only had one and
the paper thing would probably be much more efficient at that point.) I put in
some stage direction (e.g., when the protagonist snaps his fingers, I actually
snapped mine, and I put a big SNAP in the script where the
snap was to happen) and I also added a few “he thought,” “a little voice in his
head whispered,” etc. I write in third person limited omniscient and I often
reveal a character’s thoughts. These are always in italics in my books, so it’s
easy to see when it’s happening, but in an audiobook you have to make sure the
context is clear. You don’t have to overdo it, but if it’s not instantly
apparent who’s talking, identify them. I also added the required opening and
closing credits (they’re listed on the submission requirements page I linked
above) and a disclaimer about hypnosis because paranoid hypnotherapist lawyer.
Once I was happy with the script, it was time to *gulp*
record.
This took several sessions: the rule of thumb is that you
will spend five to ten minutes recording for each minute of recorded audio. I
found I did a little better than this but it was still more than I could do in
one sitting. Before each recording session, I drank a lot of water or some nice
tea, starting a while before I was ready to record. (Then I went potty so I
wouldn’t have to stop while I was in the groove.) I turned off my hard drives,
got everything set, and spent a few minutes reading lines or just talking
randomly into the mike while watching the signal meter to get warmed up and my
voice profile back where it had been previously. Then I started recording.
I did this via a method called “roll and punch.” Google it
for specifics, but basically, you hit record, wait a beat, and start reading.
You read for several sentences or until you screw up, then stop the recording.
If you screwed up, delete the screwup and then start recording again with the
screwed-up line. In either event, go back and look at what you did. If anything
looks iffy, rerecord it. You can record onto a new track by hitting R instead
of Shift-R, and then copy-paste repaired phrases. You can also spot amplify
words which are too soft or too loud (if you put a negative number in the
amplification box, it will make the selection quieter.) And if any pauses are
too long or too short, delete some interval or paste in a little room tone
until it flows.
If you’ve set up your space right, the only ambient noise
should be noises YOU make – breathing, clothing rustle, keyclicks, mouth
noises, the occasional keen of existential despair. It’s easier if you edit
that stuff out as you go, and try not to get it in the first place if you can.
Adjust your clothing between rolls. :) As far as breathing, you can
take that out (either with editing or by deleting it after the fact) or leave
it in. There is a lot of debate about this. I usually didn’t have it in – I
took my breaths between rolls. If I did, I didn’t worry about it unless it was
obvious and distracting. Even if you take out the breaths, DON’T make the
reading “breathless.” People expect pauses in speech. Making the whole book one
long run-on sentence will not contribute to a quality listening experience.
Leave yourself little gaps between sentences (or linked sentences) and you can
edit them to fit until you get your tempo just right.
For another example, I have a habit of moistening my lips
when I start talking, which is fine – it reduces lip-smacking noise. But it
makes a very distinctive poppy-click sort of sound which I soon learned to
recognize on the histogram. When I saw it, I deleted it. They only last about
.07 seconds so it didn’t affect my inter-word or inter-sentences pauses or
anything. If you have a similar habit of some kind, edit out the noise as you
go, so you don’t have to take out hundreds of them when you review your
mastering file. The mike will probably pick up your clicking “stop,” so get
those as you go too.
Note also that you will probably want to slow down your
speech a bit from conversational tempo: although it doesn’t really mean much,
the usual figure one sees is to read “about 10%” slower than you talk. ACX says
the optimum speed is about 9600 words per hour. Don’t feel like you have to
check a stopwatch, but give the listener time to enjoy the story and don’t
rush. Stop your roll often, rinse your mouth with a little water, take a few
breaths, and keep your speed and tone nice and even when you start recording
again.
Every time I had to stop a session, I marked the script with
where I left off, and my warmup the next time was to read the paragraph or so
before that a few times. I hit save on the script only when I made a change or
stopped for the day, but I hit save on my Audacity project every other punch or
so. I mean, constantly. It took four sessions (some longer than
others, one cut very short by the aforementioned dog going for the North
American Bone-Chewing Noise Record) to finish the book, roughly four to five
hours in all.
Once I was done, I saved the file, then saved a copy of it
for mastering. NEVER MUCK WITH YOUR RAW AUDIO FILE. Save it and back it up,
preferably immediately. I have Time Machine so my file got backed up
automatically, but if you don’t have a similar automatic backup, copy it onto
another disk or something every so often. I went through the mastering file and
decided that I wasn’t going to use a compressor/gate/etc on it because it
looked fairly clean, and I wanted to see what ACX thought of it. Had I been
going to use such a filter, I would have done it to the mastering file.
I waited a day and then did a final quality pass through the
mastering file. I found one session join which I hadn’t fixed (embarrassing)
and some pauses I decided in hindsight were too long. I also did a little (I
never went above +2dB or below -2db relative amplification) work in amplifying
words I thought were still a bit faint or a smidge too loud. Then I got ready
to upload that mamma-jamma.
I knew that ACX requires you to submit a separate sample
file between one and five minutes in length: I selected a portion of the
recording which I thought captured the flavor of it without providing any
spoilers (and wasn’t graphic) and copy-pasted it into a separate Audacity
project file. After a little tweaking and making sure I had 1.5 seconds of room
tone on either end of the sample, I converted it to an MP3 file with the
correct settings (see above) and listened to it with iTunes. It sounded fine so
I went back to the main project file, did the conversion, and spot checked it
as well. Again, fine. To the ACX upload page, me hearties!
I hadn’t actually created the project yet, so I did a New
Project and it showed me a list of my KDP books. I selected the right one, and
it filled in the blanks on the book information page. I did some tweaking, and
then went on to the “upload data” portion. The part before uploading your data
is very similar to uploading KDP – it asks about rights, territories and so
forth, nothing complicated. It does NOT ask about pricing. (Why in a minute.)
Upon arrival to the upload page, it wanted the following:
1) Cover art. Which must
be SQUARE. Not book-shaped. Square. They will make you a text-on-colored
background cover if you want, but I had a nice cover from the book, so I just
made it square in Photoshop.
2) Opening credits file.
*record scratch noise*
Say what, now? The opening credits are in the project file,
like I thought I was supposeta!
Uh-uh. They go in a separate file. As do the closing
credits. Fortunately, I had left a nice space between the credits and the book
content, so I just copy/pasted both the opening credits and the closing credits
into their own separate projects, converted, and resaved the master without
them. To be honest, I’ll probably do this EVERY time, as I put the credits in
the script anyway. Leave a nice pause, lead in and lead out, and you can do
this just like I did it here. (Do NOT leave them in the master. That’s just
tacky and would probably get you rejected for unprofessional conduct or
roughing the kicker or something.)
3) Closing credits file
(see #2.)
4) Content file(s.) No
file can be larger than 170 MB, which at the settings they prefer is about two
hours of recording más-o-ménos - my 45 minute book came in at
about 63 MB. You can break the files up any way you want if your chapters are
shorter than 2 hours: you should break each file into chapters, as that makes
it easier for the listener to skip to where they want to go if they’re not
starting at the beginning. My book is only one chapter (it has a few scene
breaks, but I just left a slightly longer pause between them as they’re pretty
clear from context.) So I uploaded it in a single file.
5) Sample file – 1
to five minutes, should not include credits, SHOULD be a mostly complete scene
or at least a complete sequence of event or dialogue which interests the
reader. I picked the part where my protagonist comes up with his Evil Plan. Be
sure to leave a little room tone on each end so it doesn’t pop in. POPS ARE
BAD. Also, note that iTunes (of COURSE you’ll be in iTunes, this isn’t the
STONE AGE) just uses the first five minutes of the main content as the sample,
so make sure that if you have any disclaimers or anything, they’re in the main
content file, and that somewhere in the first five minutes there’s at least a
sentence or two that is actually, you know, entertaining.
So I uploaded all that, after going through the rigmarole
described in #1 and #2. When everything was uploaded, the “I’m Done” button on
the upper right corner of the screen lit up. I pressed it, and got an “Are you
sure?” dialog. I clicked on “You’re Damn Skippy,” and was put back out into the
“Projects” page, with “Dream a Little Dream” now showing as a completed project
with a status of “Awaiting Audio Review.”
Now, if you recall, I said I’d talk about pricing in a
minute. You probably don’t read that fast, you slacker, but here we are anyway.
Here is how pricing for ACX audiobooks works:
1) Audible decides what
the book’s price will be.
2) Audible sells the book
at that price.
Yeah. I was surprised too. But that’s how it works. There is
a little list of “typical prices” on one of the help pages that ties price
roughly to length, but the bottom line is, Audible decides how much to charge
for the book, and if you don’t like it, door’s to your left. You get a royalty
rate based on whether the audiobook is exclusive to Audible and whether you
hired a narrator (ACX calls narrators “producers,” but that’s who they mean)
and agreed to give them part of the take. The most you will get is 40% for an
Audible exclusive with no shared royalty. Note, however, that “Audible
Exclusive” means that no other audiobook publisher can sell
the book – it’ll be available on Amazon, iTunes, and Audible.com, at the very least, even if you go
“exclusive.”
Anyway, once it’s uploaded, you just wait for review and
go-live, just like a KDP e-book. So at that point it’s out of your hands. I
read a lot of forum posts about problems trying to learn what not to do and I
found that ACX’s initial rejection message, if you get one, can be sketchy, but
they will provide specifics (“It’s too quiet,” “The volume
level is too inconsistent,” “There’s too much background noise,” “You sound
like somebody trying to simulate English speech using only tones generated by gently
caressing amorous bullfrogs,” etc.) if you ask.
Probably THE single most common complaint I heard others say
they’d gotten was uneven volume. You MUST keep your volume levels consistent:
if the listener has to keep adjusting the volume to hear you/avoid being
deafened, they will not enjoy the experience, sayeth ACX. (And I think they
have a point.)
So you want to watch for things like your P’s and T’s being
really loud (those are what are called “plosives,”) your S’s being too drawn
out, or the beginning of your sentences being a lot louder than the ends. (You
could be running out of breath, you could be overemphasizing the first words,
you could be moving toward/away from the mike as you speak.) Watch the
histogram (that funky graph that looks like something out of an
earthquake-based disaster movie.) It should stay relatively consistent.
There shouldn’t be huge spikes (unless at some point you yelled, on purpose,
and even then don’t get carried away some of us have sensitive hearing you
scene-chewing hack.) There shouldn’t be places where there’s speech
but the graph is really small (unless you whispered, and even then don’t make
people strain to understand what was said.) If you have issues like that, look
into that Craig’s Compressor program I linked to way up above yonder. It can
help smooth stuff out if you don’t want to re-record it.
So there you have it. I was going to end this blog post
here, but while I was writing it, the status of my audiobook went from
“Awaiting Audio Review” to “Headed for Retail.”
HOLY CRAP YOU GUYS IT WENT THROUGH IN ONE PASS. ONE. PASS.
It took just over fourteen hours to go from upload to
“Headed for Retail.” Wow, that was fast. Granted, it’s short, but I’ve had KDP
books take more time than that! So now I guess I just wait for it to hit the
(virtual) shelves. Once it does, or if there are more steps in between, I’ll
blog about that too.
Because, like I said, I love you.
Thanks for reading: if you have questions, please post them
in the comments! Keep coming back, because I’ll have free copies to give away
when the audiobook goes live!
MC
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