Tag Archives: diysuccess

Josh Kaufman’s The Personal MBA is one of the best selling titles to come through our DIY pathway (meaning it was uploaded via ACX, yet was not recorded and produced by a producer using the ACX marketplace). But it wasn’t all smooth sailing for Josh and company. Today, Josh recounts for us the process of bringing his words to your ears.

I’m new to recording audiobooks, so I did a ton of research in order to create a great-sounding (and budget-friendly) mini-recording studio. After consulting the recording equipment guides on ACX.com, reading Dan Benjamin’s excellent podcasting equipment guide and many gear reviews on B & H’s website and Amazon, I settled on some great-sounding and not too expensive equipment. Everything fits on a basic Ikea Frederik desk, which I have set up as a standing desk.

I set up my recording gear in a spare room in my home office. My initial setup was pretty ugly: the room wasn’t huge, but it wasn’t tiny, and I was getting very distracting reflections off the high slanted ceiling. After doing some research on recording forums, I ended up treating the room by hanging about 5 yards of acoustic fabric off of a few large metal stands, then placing a three-sided portable recording booth manufactured by RealTraps behind the mic. I also purchased a large rug and a fabric wall hanging to absorb more sound, since the office had hardwood floors. It wasn’t pretty, but it did the trick.

The “Video Lessons and Resources” page on ACX was very helpful in that I learned basic recording techniques, and how to use SoundStudio myself. It’s a simple piece of software, and not difficult to learn. In terms of narration technique, I learned a lot from my wife, Kelsey, who trained as a professional actress and has done a lot of voiceover work over the years. She taught me a lot of little professional voiceover tricks, like ending sentences in the middle of paragraphs with an “up” inflection to make it easier for the listener to follow, and drinking apple juice while recording: the PH of apple juice noticeably reduces mouth noises. Who knew?

I put together my studio and was two chapters into recording PERSONAL MBA when disaster stuck. Two major back-to-back wildfires made my office unavailable for recording, and since the area was under evacuation orders, I couldn’t retrieve my equipment. (If you remember the “High Park Fire” in Colorado that made international headlines this summer, my office was in the middle of it.) I decided to team up with Aric Johnson of A.K. Studios in Laporte, Colorado to finish the recording. Aric was ready to edit and master the book when I finished recording, but he also has a great professional recording studio a few miles north of Fort Collins. Together, we completed recording PERSONAL MBA over a period of two weeks. Aric then edited the recording to ACX standards and mastered the final recording, now available on Audible.com.

ACX is the best audio publishing platform I can imagine for authors: it’s simple, straightforward, and the royalty structure is killer. Audible, Amazon, and iTunes represent the vast majority of audiobook sales, and ACX is the easiest and most straightforward way to deliver an audiobook to those markets. ACX’s royalties start at 50% (vs. the “industry standard” of 10-15%), and can increase to up to 90% if you sell a lot of copies. This royalty structure requires an exclusive agreement with ACX, but since most audio listeners purchase downloads online instead of hard copies, exclusivity is a non-issue in my opinion.

In addition, ACX calculates and pays royalties every month, not every six months. I can see exactly how many copies I’m selling every day, which makes it much easier to tell what sorts of marketing and promotion techniques work the best. My audiobook is one of my core products, and I love that ACX’s structure rewards ongoing promotion.

That’s why I turned down a substantial audiobook contract from a major traditional audio publisher in favor of publishing with ACX. With ACX, I can set my own timelines, maintain creative control over the product, get better data, get paid faster, and keep more of what I sell. Compared to a standard audio contract, publishing my audiobook through ACX was a no-brainer. I’m thrilled with the results, and I intend to publish every book I write in audio via ACX.

Watch out for part two of Josh’s story in the coming weeks.

Tucker Max may not be the first New York Times bestselling author to use ACX, but he’s certainly one of the most skilled at understanding and adapting to the new paradigm for publishing success today. Max had a flourishing website and a TV deal before selling his first book, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, which became a bestseller in 2006 thanks to Max’s tireless promotion of his book (and himself) and his ability to connect with his fans through the internet. Since that initial success, Max has published two more bestselling books, built a legion of fans through social media and word of mouth, and in another example of forward thinking we particularly like, he just made two of his books in audio himself through ACX. Since Max personifies the idea of author empowerment we talk about so much at ACX, we thought other ACX users might learn something from a Q&A, to which Max generously agreed. Thanks, Tucker!

How did you discover ACX?

I found out about ACX through my old assistant, Ian Claudius. He’s now running a publishing start-up I invested in, and he came to me with the idea of retaining my audio rights and just doing the audiobooks myself. I thought it was a great idea, and I was in.

You’ve now narrated four of your books. What makes the audiobook format important to you as an author? Do you think the audio format is becoming more important for authors?

I actually didn’t want to narrate the audiobooks at first, and only did it because they paid me 5k (Editor’s note: “they” refers to the audio publishers of Max’s previously published, non-ACX audio titles). But once I did it, and I started getting feedback from my fans, I realized that they really liked how I told the stories. They liked that I laughed at certain parts or that I ad-libbed certain things not in the book, or my little intonations or things that I did that only the person who wrote the book could bring to the reading of the stories. Once I realized that they liked it, I started taking it seriously and really putting some time into it.

I have no idea what the future holds for audio format for books. Sometimes I wonder about this–I think that oral storytelling is an incredibly cool and difficult art form, but I don’t think most authors currently give any real thought to creating different products for audio than for print–myself included–and maybe they should. Though the fact is, they are different art forms. For example, because I am a funny writer and quick-witted in person, lots of people tell me I should do stand-up comedy. No chance. That is a VERY different style of comedy, but people who aren’t artists don’t get that.

Any advice for other authors considering narrating their own work? How challenging is narration, and does it get easier?

It depends. If you like doing it, and you can bring something to the work that a professional voice actor cannot, then yes. I hate my recorded voice, but I do bring an authenticity and immediateness to my readings that no actor could ever replicate, because he wasn’t there and he didn’t live these experiences. I did.

Did you find yourself changing or editing your book as you narrated it? Did the experience change the way you felt about the book(s) in any way?

Oh yes. No matter how much I edit it, reading the book out loud fundamentally changes how I see it. I ALWAYS want to make changes and it drives me nuts each time. But that’s part of writing a book–you can always find something to fix. Sometimes you gotta just put it out.

A big part of the ACX message is self-empowerment for authors—promoting your work and driving your sales. You have proven that this method works. What tips can you give other authors about effective promotion and use of social media? What approaches/strategies have worked for you? 

Oh man, there are about 1000 things I could say here. I wrote a big piece about this for Tim Ferriss, but the big takeaway is this: The best marketing is a great book. The second best marketing is having something out there for free that people can try.

You recently described your “new life” in The New Yorker. What’s next for Tucker Max on the book front?

I just signed on to co-write the autobiography of the highest grossing movie star in the world. I can’t say exactly who it is until his people announce the book, but you should be able to guess who it is from that pretty obvious clue.

To download Max’s new audiobook of Hilarity Ensues, see here; for Sloppy Seconds, go here.