Findaway/ACX, what’s the difference?

ACX (Audiobook Creation Exchange) is the largest audio-book production platform in the world. In terms of production, ACX itself will almost never involve themselves past hosting and QA. This is great if you know what you’re doing and if you trust your narrator. ACX is also free to use.

However, ACX is far less regulated compared to other platforms like Findaway. There’s no guarantee of professional quality from narrators since literally anyone can sign up and submit auditions. The selection of audiobooks is equally un-vetted, meaning there’s plenty of scam-books that narrators have to slog through. Bear that in mind when working with an ACX narrator- we will have to exercise extra caution.

Typically, you’ll also retain fewer rights to your book if you publish through ACX.

If you want my honest, genuine, unfiltered opinion- I can also tell you that the consensus of the writing/narrating community is that ACX (which is run by Amazon) does not care about you, your narrator, or your book. If, God forbid, you do run into a situation where you need protection, ACX will do the bare minimum they are legally obligated to. Often times, this means they’ll do nothing. Moreover, you’ll have very little control over books you publish on their platforms. They decide the price of your book, as well as when it goes on sale, and they won’t consult you about any of this.

Findaway on the other hand is much more controlled, vetted, and involved. If you produce through findaway, an actual human being from their team will be involved in the process. If you don’t already have a narrator in mind, the ones you’ll find on the site are guaranteed to meet certain standards before they’ll be presented to you. Narrators who contract through Findaway are guaranteed payment, and in general, both author and narrator have more protection and rights. Finally, Findaway is non-exclusive, meaning you’ll be signing away fewer rights to your book and be free to publish wherever you like.

All this comes at a cost. Findaway adds a production fee per finished hour on top of what your narrator charges.

So, which platform you contract through comes down to two questions:

• Are you willing to pay extra to for safety?

• Are you willing to pay extra to retain more rights?

If the answer to either of those is “no,” you’re probably better off working through ACX. Just be aware of the implications of that.

From my end, I don’t really care which one you contract me through. I’ve completed more books on ACX and it tends to be faster, but I also have a genuine hatred for Amazon that burns deep within my soul, so I’m content to work with other platforms even if it sacrifices convenience. I make the same money either way, so I leave it to you which to work through.