Marcus Barton
Google
I have worked as a narrator for Audible/ACX for a couple of years now and never really had an issue. I am not a professional narrator, but was hoping to become more popular.
Unfortunately, I feel that ACX and Audible does not help the narrators when legal issues arise. There is no enforcement mechanism when an author takes advantage of a narrator, such as it was in my case. I sent a Kill Fee letter and an invoice to the Rights Holder, but I have not been told by ACX what the next steps would be in order to recoup my losses when an author canceled 4 contracts when I was 23 pages from completing the final book.
All I can think about is the hours and hours of work that I put into those books that are gone and I have nothing to show for it except frustration and loss of time that I could have been using on other projects or spending with my family.
I fear the next step is I will be told that I have to seek legal representation to resolve this, but that doesn't help because I have no idea where the Rights Holder lives so its not like I can take them to small claims court.
ACX and Audible need to have some sort of way for narrators to recoup losses. The Rights Holder I was working with should have to forfeit her royalties from all of her books until my cancellation fees are paid. But there is nothing there. This author will be able to go on and do this to someone else.
So I have a couple of other books that I have left to produce for ACX, a couple with some very well known authors that have already told me that they will keep me on to complete book series for them. However, I will tell them that for any future books they should seek a different distribution method. I do not have confidence in ACX or Audible to help me fix this injustice.
I hope that maybe, just maybe, someone there will read this and realize there is a problem that could drive narrators away. And I hope you can fix it.