As you can see from the comments in the post I wrote explaining the new royalty share opportunity for readers, we have been been inundated with willing participants from the voice over community. Those comments are only a fraction of what we received when compared against those who wrote to us directly. I want to acknowledge the voice over community for their willingness and attitude to this idea. It has always been tough for us turning down 49 out of 50 good applicants for jobs we post to the reader community and this may open up some new avenues for all involved. I do however want to take a moment and really be clear on a few points because it is very important to me that we build an open dialogue throughout.

The first is this. We cannot guarantee how any one book is going to sell. We simply don’t know and we haven’t been doing this long enough to give you a depth of data to analyze it. Clearly we believe that every book we handle has a market otherwise we wouldn’t participate on the same basis that we have proposed to you (100% risk with a 30% profit share) but it is largely unknown – but then that is the nature of the publishing business generally. Please, only read these books on the basis that you understand that it is a risk.

Secondly, please take a moment to read the post below this one about the timing of royalty payments. It is important that you understand the cash-flow side.

What we will be doing this side is making sure that the audio book is well presented in terms of price, image, descriptions, keywords and all the finer points of digital distribution, but ultimately it will be the market that decides on the success or otherwise. To date, on all books we have put into the platforms that are now paying out royalties, readers would have recovered their fee in the first or second payment – but it’s early days.

So what’s next?

Courtney in our office is handling this project and she will be in touch with all of you in the next few days that have either written a blog comment or emailed in. She will provide you with a short script to submit your audition and then we will distribute the work to as many readers as we can – however we now have more readers than books.

This first tranche of books are male voice-over roles and I forgot to mention that when I made the original post – however we already have several female voice over books in the pipeline where the authors want to engage on the equity share arrangement – so please submit your interest to Courtney irrespective because we will have work for you too.

Once again, I want to thank the voice over community for their willingness to try this concept. I really hope we can deliver a valuable outcome for you and I want you to know that we don’t take the gift of your time and expertise lightly. I really hope we can make this work for all involved.

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