a little time with ACX

ACX is a kind of parallel market. I worry most about kindle and paperback, and in kindle there's kindle unlimited and kindle sales - so I consider at least three separate markets right off the bat. But ACX is a fourth and is a world unto its own. Its "readers" don't generally read from the other two/three, or respond to ads for them (I'm not sure of this); acx readers want the book to be in its own marketing sphere. It will use the comments from kindle/paperback, as they have to know what people are saying about the content. But if there are comments on the narration itself, they'll have to appear in the ACX page and be directed mostly at ACX listeners.

Recently I had a cochlear implant surgery, and therefore need to do listening exercises to develop my hearing from my new implants. So guess what I jumped into the ACX world.

I have all ten of my story collections and my novel on ACX; in addition, I have three family biographies on there and one that was written by my great-great grandfather; he was a crotchety old pioneer but I figured what the heck, get his story out there and see if there's any market on ACX for 19th century crotchety old men. I may actually listen to that, too, as part of my three-month introductory plan ($2.97 total), but I'm finding out lots of new things by downloading both my own books and other people's books.

Back when my hearing was crappy I'd given up on checking carefully the quality of people's work, but now I'm kind of into it, since, no matter how good they are, they invariably make mistakes (I too would do this I'm sure) and there is some naturual variation in both speed/tempo and pitch which you only pick up after quite a bit of listening. I might be able to get them on my phone; in that case, I can listen while I dash or while I'm doing pointless errands. It cheers me up to know that I can actually get something done in my down time.

When I listen to my own I have all kinds of freedom to think about how I'd want to rewrite, or I fill in background things I'd forgotten from when I published them. I need this information. The plan also allows me to download books that I just like reading although now I'm more in a hurry to actually get something written, and need some background which I can only get from those books. So I am reading about the Mayflower on kindle unlimited and have started, as part of my listening exercises, to read (listen to) Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee which will fill in background for a book I'm reading about the period of 1890-1940.

It's good to know that some narration problems are universal, i.e. even the higher quality books have some mistakes in narration; and, that basically people do a pretty good job at narrating an entire book cover to cover in one voice consistently. I like to follow along and read while I listen; I catch everything that way.

As for the marketing, I'm still getting my feet on the ground. There are about a dozen sites to hit; I don't want to be too common on them though. Where do the ACX people go? I still need to find some of these places.