Limited time lower price for audiobook commissions · 12:33am Nov 20th, 2020
Hey, y'all. I've been listening to audiobooks, and that got me wanting to record some audiobooks again. But due to some hardware issues, I haven't been able to do that. So I was looking into the cost of what it would take to get a decent mic and pop filter to do this thing properly (previously I had been using my wife's gaming headset, which is part of what causes the noise level to be too low on my recordings; I don't use a proper dedicated mic), and it's around $65 to get both, from what I see recommended.
Now, being unemployed and unlikely to ever make money doing audio readings, I'm really uncertain about spending this money. It's pretty much exactly one entire month's income for me. So I thought about it, and wondered if I could crowdfund this purchase. But obviously I'm not expecting people to just give me money for this (I don't think anyone wants to hear me read my own stories that badly), so I was thinking maybe I could raise the money through offering a deal. I had previously said I'd read stories for $1 per 500 words, now I'm thinking I'll (temporarily) offer that at $1 per 1,000 words, half the price it would've cost you in the past. In addition, after the first 10k (so $10) I'll give a bulk discount rate of 2,000 words for $1. This can be spread across stories with no upper limit. A great rate, honestly. The going rate for a professional reader is something like $500 for a full-length novel. Using an estimation of 100k words for a novel, that would cost $55 from me at this rate.
Obviously this is because I'm not a professional, and my autism makes me not always the best at conveying certain emotions, though at the least if I can get close to $65 from this (I can cover some of the cost out of pocket if I get close enough) I'll be using some professional quality home equipment (which in itself is not studio quality, and I still won't have like a sound room setup, but noise already wasn't an issue with my recordings and now I'll have no issues with the volume either). I'll do anything, fandom or original, except erotica; I can't imagine myself doing dramatic readings of that... And if you're feeling generous or want to hear more audiobooks from me, but don't have stories of your own for me to read, you can of course ask for someone else's stories to be read, though I'll need to contact the author to seek permission, and won't do anything that isn't freely available online; i.e. I won't do a Neil Gaiman book because distributing that online would be problematic. On that note, unless asked to do otherwise, everything I read will be going on my YouTube channel. You can browse there for my other audiobook recordings to gauge what an audiobook by me would be like (sorry that they're buried under my rare song uploads; my YouTube channel is a mix between rare songs and audiobooks; check the playlists to find the audiobooks though!)
If I get this funded, I'll also be back to doing WWB audiobooks, starting with Inner Strength. Speaking of this getting funded, this deal will go on until such a time as I order the mic and pop filter and tell y'all that it's ordered, at which time I'll go back to my old rates. If some unlikely circumstances pop up and I get more than enough business with this, then I'll still honor whatever takers I got up until I say otherwise. And if I don't raise much money at all, I'm sorry to say I won't do it. I would if I had the equipment on hand, I'd do even just a single 1k word fic if that's all I got, but I need to buy this stuff and need to know I'm not just throwing my money away when I do so.
Contact me either in the comments below, my inbox, or if you know me on Discord, DM me there if you want!
Have you thought about advertising this in any of the audiobook groups on the site? This is prime stuff for them.
5401207
I planned to do that but hadn't yet, though I only knew of one of these groups, so having the other two here helps a lot! Thanks for the tip!