Director's Notes for Your ACX Production

Every collaboration is unique—each author/narrator team prefers a different method and degree of participation, and it's important to find the right style for you and your creative partner. But whatever in-production workflow you favor, there's a few basics you need to nail down up front to set your production up for success (and minimal editing)—the pronunciation of certain places and names (including your own), personality or accent notes for specific characters, the tone of key passages, background, history, foreshadowing, etc.

This template is meant to help you do just that. Use it to set the stage before you and your narrator embark on your journey of creative collaboration to make sure you're on the same page, and don't be afraid to add to it or to suggest a pre-production phone or video call with your narrator to work out some of these details in real time.

Book Title: The main title of your book, not including subtitle, series name, etc. To keep titles in a series consistent, we'd recommend sharing with your producer how you want these first four fields narrated—for example, "Audiobooks: How to Get Started. Book Four in the Independent Publishers Series," vs. "Audiobooks: How to Get Started. Independent Publishers Series, Book Four."

Subtitle: [if applicable]

Series Name: [if applicable]

Series No: [if applicable]

Rights Holder: This can be the author, publisher, or agent—whoever runs the ACX account for this title and is managing the production from the rights holder side.

Rights Holder Contact Info: Email address and/or phone number—depending on what you're comfortable sharing and how you want to keep in touch with your producer during the production.

Author's Name: This should be the name that is read aloud in the opening credits of the audiobook. It may be the same as the rights holder, but may be different if you use a pseudonym or variation of your name, or if you're an agent or publisher handling an author's audiobook production.

Phonetic Pronunciation of Author's Name: You can indicate pronunciation here as a reminder or cue to the narrator when reading, but to ensure the best pronunciation it may be best to get on a call with your narrator.

Genre: This can be different than the genre or sub-genre(s) you indicate when submitting your audiobook, and can be more descriptive to give your narrator an extra sense of tone and direction.

15 Minute Checkpoint Due Date: Work with your narrator to determine an agreed upon production schedule including due dates, so you're on the same page from the outset.

Final Audio Due Date: This is the due date the final audio is due to you from the producer, not the date you plan to submit the audio to ACX. Be sure to build in time to listen carefully to your audio before submitting it to QA.

Story Notes: This can include anything you think is important for your narrator to know in order to tell your story effectively. That could be the overall tone of the story, moments that are meant to be particularly funny or heavy if you're concerned it isn't clear from the text, important scenes or climactic moments you want to ensure receive appropriate weight, foreshadowing for future books (things the narrator should know but the listener doesn't), your inspirations, how you want the listener to feel hearing certain passages, etc.

Character Descriptions: The same as above, but for characters—make a list or chart of significant characters with names and accent notes, and offer character notes for each. This can be things like where they're from, how they relate to other characters in the story, how they think of themselves vs. how others see them, their motivations, important notes about their backstory, how you imagine they look or sound or carry themselves, etc.

Note: It's important to remember here that you hired your narrator for their abilities, so while it's fine to share who you imagined a character to sound like in your head for inspiration, you'll get a better performance if you allow your narrator to make their own dramatic choices rather than insisting on replicas of other characters or performers.

Specific Pronunciation Notes (Names, Places): If you have names or places that might be unfamiliar to your narrator or have a non-standard or ambiguous pronunciation, you can list them here with pronunciation notes as a reminder for your narrator when reading. This is especially important if your book contains fictional locations, made up names, or invented languages that a narrator couldn't look up pronunciation for. Sci-fi, fantasy, or LitRPG titles may require a more robust pronunciation guide.

Key Points from Prior Books in Series (if Applicable): This is particularly important if you aren't using the same narrator across a whole series, but can be a helpful reminder even if you are. Use this space to summarize previous books, being sure to hit important plot and character development points that will be important for the narrator to know in order to effectively tell this story.