Audio Books: A Personal Journey via Amazon & ACX

This is more of a personal tale than anything.  You see, what started as a neat idea to fill some time turned into a pretty cool passion of mine.  That's right, I am an audiobook producer and voice over actor.  At least, this is what nice people tell me.

 

My name, as some of you know, is Brian Daniel Young.  A few years ago I grew tired of people telling me I had a great voice, or I sounded like so and so.  It got me to thinking - I might be able to make a viable side business in this whole voice over actor thing.  So, I did.


At first, I will readily admit, I had no idea what I was doing.  Sure, my past is filled with all sorts of online and ecommerce projects, but what did I know about recording audio?  As it turns out, not much at that time.  But like anything I put my brain around I started researching endlessly until I felt comfortable jumping into the world of being a broke voice actor.

Actually, let me clarify that I was never exactly broke in that I wasn't even thinking of taking on this little hobby for an income.  My thinking was it would be fun to see my name and hear my voice on the radio, on television, or voicing a book.  

So that's what I did.  

I learned what was needed to get a few really low paying gigs turning class lectures into audio, turning entrepreneur's dreams into online gold, and eventually I stumbled upon a little thing called ACX.

ACX.com is a company owned by Amazon.com and has quickly become the go to place to match up people with voices, like me, with authors of books looking for audiobook fortune.  I thought it would be kind of cool to have my name up there in the Amazon lights and low and behold I recorded my very first full length book.  

I'll give you a hint if you aren't into global economics or local and state convention planning, the audiobook linked in the last paragraph probably isn't for you.  Now, I'm not going to bash the author himself as I am certain he is very well regarded in his field, but man was it boring recording 9 1/2 hours of audio on the aforementioned subjects.

Enough about that.  

While you can make a decent amount of money as a producer (usually the voice over artist) or the author (you know, the person who put the work in), don't think twice about quitting your day job thinking those Amazon.com royalty checks are gonna flow like the Nile.  I mean, they do, just more like a little mountain stream.

By the way, if you have a book you have written that needs a producer please let me know - Email me here

Brian Daniel Young is (among other things) an audiobook producer, voice over actor, and businessman.  Feel free to contact him at his blog or via his profile on ACX.com - you can also just Google his name and you will find more than you ever wanted to know about him.

 

Check out my tutorial:

Audiobooks: A Personal Journey via Amazon and ACX

Written by: Brian Daniel Young Published by: Cerilene.com Copyright holder: Brian Daniel Young on 2013

About Brian Daniel Young