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While a large, floppy straw hat is her favorite, Ane Mulligan has worn many different ones: hairdresser, legislative affairs director (that’s a fancy name for a lobbyist), drama director, playwright, humor columnist, and novelist. Her lifetime experience provides a plethora … Continue reading
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Today, we’re interviewing Linda Yezak, who lives in a forest in east Texas and writes uplifting books about second chances, love, forgiveness, and new beginnings. Jim: Linda, you’ve written books with other authors. Tell us about that experience. Linda: I’ve … Continue reading
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After retiring from her work as a medical coder and bookkeeper, Janet Brown took up writing. Her writing goes from YA to inspirational, to adult mystery. In fact, I am almost finished with her mystery, CATastrophic Connections, and I can … Continue reading
Last month, one of my mysteries, Cleansed by Fire, was released as an audio book. Oh, it had been released as a paperback book and then later as an e-pub. But there was still a bit of excitement when it came out in audio. Maybe it was because the narrator (Jonathan Mumm, an Emmy Award Winning TV journalist) seemed to capture the characters as I had heard them as I was writing the book. Maybe it was a hope to make additional royalties on the same book.
But, I think it’s more than that. A writer wants, most of all, to have his or her work read and enjoyed. I really like the book and this gives the book yet another avenue to reach readers, or listeners in this case.
I had an earlier book of mine turned into an Audio book. While it sold well, reaching number seven on the publishers list, the process was rather impersonal. I had no say in who narrated it. I had no say in what the cover looked like. I had no say – in anything.
That was not the approach at Audiobook Creation Exchange, or ACX. As the name implies, it is an exchange that brings together the rights holders of books and producers/narrators. It is part of Audible.com which is a subsidiary of Amazon.
If you own the rights to a book, ACX will post information about the book and a short selection from the book (something that can be read aloud in less than five minutes). Prospective narrators can then submit their rendition of that short piece, giving you, the rights holder, a chance to hear how they sound reading your work, interpreting your characters.
Please note, I am saying “rights holder,” not author. If you have assigned the audio rights to a publisher, ACX cannot deal with you, even though you are the author.
Having someone narrate a full length novel can be an expensive process. What do I mean by that? Of course, it depends on the length of your book. It might cost $350 to $450 per finished hour of the book. So, a 75,000 word book could cost between $2800 and $3600 for the narrator. Keep in mind that the narrator and producer (could be the same person) will spend a number of hours to produce one hour of the finished product.
ACX offers another path. You can offer to split the royalties with the narrator, 50-50. If ACX pays 40% royalty, then you would get 20% and the narrator would get 20%. It’s a gamble for you and for the narrator. Still, it offers the writer (rights holder) an opportunity to broaden her reach with no outlay of money.
Of course, you may not find a qualified narrator who will go to the work of producing a quality recording (ACX demands high quality) unless you do a good job of selling your book. This is much the same way you have to entice an editor or agent to work on your book for no guarantee of a return.
ACX does offer yet another possibility for you. You can narrate the book yourself. ACX does require a high quality finished recording and can return your effort with instructions of how to improve it. Their site even offers advice on how to set up a home recording studio.
ACX is trying to help authors get their book into audio. Once the product is released, ACX will make it available through Audible, iTunes, and Amazon.
The point here is, in today’s changing publishing world, you have more choices than ever before. One of them is a different route to an audio book. If you have a book on Amazon and you hold the audio rights, it is worth your time to investigate ACX and what they have to offer. Go to www.acx.com and check out how they work to bring your audio book to the marketplace. I did and I’m glad I did. Take a look at: http://bit.ly/1zsb0I0 Mumm, the narrator, also produced a great trailer for the book. You can see it here.
Leave a comment on your thoughts about audio books. And ask for a code for a free download of the audio book Cleansed by Fire.
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Today’s guest post is from Jim Ainsworth, an excellent writer and a true gentleman. He got into writing while he was working as an accountant. A publisher approached him and ask him to write a book on some phase of … Continue reading
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Today’s guest blogger is Lynn Hobbs, an award-winning author. She writes about the importance of setting priorities if you are to achieve anything. She is the author of the powerful faith and family saga the Running Forward Series. The first two books have … Continue reading
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Today, I’m interviewing Marni Graff. She has been a nurse, a TV and movie consultant, a mystery writer and a writing instructor. She’s studied at the Iowa Writing Program and at Oxford University. Here is an interesting woman. Jim: You … Continue reading
Today, I am pleased to have Sharon Srock visiting. She started with science fiction and now concentrated on Christian fiction, with three books in her Women of Valley View series. Here’s how her life has changed since she started the series.
Sharon: Mine is the story of an ever-evolving community. When I first started to write the Valley View series, I had no idea that the characters would become so real. I guess that happens to all writers. How can you eat, sleep, and work with people, twenty-four hours a day, for years, and have it any other way? They’ve each whispered their own story line to me and demanded equal time on paper. I was good with that, they weren’t. These greedy women, once granted the small freedom of the written page, demanded not only stories of their own, but a town to live in, families to raise, jobs to go to, and a church to attend. I live in small town Oklahoma, so I gave them the mythical Garfield, OK to live in and a beautiful little church, Valley View, as a place of worship.
I started with a single character who looked a lot like me. Callie is in her mid fifties, married with kids and grandkids, she teaches a Sunday school class at the church she’s attended nearly forever, and works at an OB/GYN clinic. I could identify with this person, I knew who she was (me), I could hear her voice in my head, and I was comfortable in her skin. It was easy to write from her point of view. Callie and I were one in the same, and we coexisted quite nicely together. Then a strange thing happened. Callie developed her own personality. She outgrew me. Callie is bold where I’m shy, she’s wise where I struggle. It wasn’t long before Callie wasn’t just a character on a piece of paper, she was the person I wanted to be when I grew up.
From that one person, a community was born. Callie needed a husband. Enter Benton who resembles my own hubby in appearance if not in deed. Callie needed a best friend so Karla received breath along with her husband Mitch. I wanted to appeal to more than the over fifty crowd, so forty something Pam and almost thirty Terri stepped onto my page. Who knew things could get so out of hand? Pam needed a husband and kids. The church needed pastors. No one wants to read about a group of church women sitting around, talking and eating cheese cake. Where’s the conflict? Enter Samantha, Iris, and their estranged father, Steve. Who knew Steve and Terri would fall in love and generate a second story? Who knew that Pam’s vicious ex-husband would get saved, move back to Garfield, and spawn a story worth telling in a third book? Who knew that Samantha…Well, you get the picture. Pushy, pushy women!
Sigh…With Callie and Terri both a reality, Pam releasing in April , Samantha’s story under consideration, and Kate’s tale in progress, I have no idea how far these very determined ladies will take me, but I’m looking forward to the journey.
JIM: Thanks, Sharon for a very interesting look at how our characters become real. Here’s a short blurb on Sharon’s new novel, Pam.
Pam’s divorce broke her heart. The cruelty of her ex-husband broke her spirit. A bottle of sleeping pills almost took her life. Four years later the scars of Alan Archer’s emotional abuse are beginning to fade under the love of her new husband. When Alan returns to Garfield, Pam must learn that buried secrets and carefully cultivated indifference do not equal forgiveness.
Alan Archer has returned to Garfield with a new wife and a terminal heart condition. His mission? To leave a Christian legacy for his children and to gain Pam’s forgiveness for the sins of his past.
Please visit her AMAZON page to find current info on her books: http://www.amazon.com/Sharon-Srock/e/B009OB2HSO/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1
Connect with her at www.sharonsrock.com..
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SharonSrock#!/SharonSrock
POV Demystified Let’s talk a little about point of view. In conversation, we talk about somebody’s point of view. “That’s his point of view.” By this we mean, that’s the way he sees things. In a book, when we talk … Continue reading
A Glimpse at the Future
A new library opened up recently in San Antonio, Texas.
It has no shelves and no books.
It is an all digital library.
It has 10,000 free e-books and each can be checked out for 14 days. The 3M Cloud Library app, which can be linked to a person’s library card, includes a counter which shows the number of days left before the e-book is “returned” to the library, that is, it is no longer available to the person who checked it out two weeks earlier.
This is not to say that the library has only a large computer. It occupies about five thousand square feet of space. This houses, among other things, six hundred e-readers and forty-eight computer stations. So, if you do not have an e-reader; you can go to the library and read books on one of the library’s e-readers. They do have some e-readers that can be checked out along with the book.
The library also has comic books and graphic novels, magazines, audio books, movies, and music. Through a program called Mango, one can take classes in over sixty foreign languages.
The library also gives various programs,
such as a kid’s story time, hands-on computer classes, and other programs. You can even reserve a room for a meeting, making it a great place to have writers’ groups. Just no paper books.
This is not actually a new concept. Arizona’s Santa Rosa Branch Library tried this as far back as 2002. But after a few years, residents demanded to have paper books back – and they got them.
There are some who feel the San Antonio experiment is still premature. There are still many people who prefer the paper books. Others are simply not technologically literate enough to benefit from such a library.
Then there’s the cost. Training enough people to run the library and instruct patrons might become too expensive. And some feel there is not enough digital material available yet to warrant such a move. Many best sellers do not go to digital for a year or more, thus making them unavailable at this library for an extended period of time.
One library expert predicts that, on average, perhaps only one percent of libraries per year will go all digital for the next ten years.
However, academic libraries are moving in this direction at a faster rate. The engineering and technology library at the University of Texas moved to e-books and e-journals in 2010. These have the advantage of being available 24/7.
But, all arguments aside, San Antonio is making a library for the future. Judge Nelson Wolff, of Bexar County said, “A technological evolution is taking place. And I think we’re stepping in at the right time.”
It’s what our great-grandchildren will believe is the norm. Paper books? Antiques.
I’ll be writing more on digital libraries in the future. They are coming. I’m Ready. All my mysteries novels and suspense novels are in paper and e-book format. Two of my latest are:
A Ton of Gold on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/12PeHJb and
Nook at: http://bit.ly/1kM7p1M
and Cleansed by Fire — on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/XwCIgs