Has anyone asked, “Can I pay you $3500 to write a book?”

Yeah, I didn’t think so. So why should I, as a narrator, ask you $3500 to narrate it? If we agree to work together on a creative endeavor, we must both be willing to accept risk. We accept that risk when we’re confident we can persuade the market of the book’s quality.

Hey, I’m Jim — audiobook narrator and partner to authors wanting narration and assistance marketing and promoting their books..

We should be partnering and agreeing on a revenue split that represents the effort each one of us puts into making your book a success. You take a risk in writing it. I share that risk in partnering with you. You don’t pay me up front.

What do we do?

For Authors

Plan 60

This plan calls for close collaboration in almost every aspect of a book’s marketing, promotion, and sales, including weekly video-conference meetings to plan and update activities. You retain 60% of all net book revenues (gross sales minus merchant card fees and audiobook distribution expenses).

You gain all the benefits mentioned in the 80% plan below in addition to the program attributes listed on the right.

Let’s Collaborate

We create landing pages on your web site that coordinate with our shopping cart product pages. These can be ebooks, audiobooks, bundles, or specialized products. These pages integrate with our email list manager, FluentCRM.

We assist with the creation of your newsletter. We decide on articles, who is best to write them. We may engage in interviews that give a podcast air to the newsletter. The goal is to get your readers to know you, your writing style, your heroes, your values, why you write, and why you’re worth their attention.

We provide an email manager (FluentCRM) to manage all your email distribution and automationneeds. Email is the primary way of communicating with your readers.

We partner with BookFunnel to provide opportunities for Group Promotions, and Author Email List Swaps.

We provide a shopping cart and product landing pages for all direct sales of ebooks and audiobooks. We utilize FluentCart, coupled with Fluent Affiliate and link to Stripe merchant card services.

We provide audition services of vetted narrators willing to work on a Royalty Payoff basis. Payoff parameters are negotiated between the author and narrator.

HANDS is involved in creating automation systems that allow AI-created social media campaigns that provide automatic messaging that emphasizes the human attributes of partnerships that are designed to create “superfans”. We want to market author/narrator teams whose fans know and love them. Think of it as using AI to combat AI.

For Authors

Plan 80

You do not need to manage credit card services, shopping cart, sales tax, mailing list, distribution of ebooks and/or audiobooks. Purchaser contact and detailed sales information are provided to you. Transparent sales reports are provided. You have access to vetted narrator pool and audition services. We assist with potential narrator Royalty Payoff contracts or Per Finished Hour contracts.

You retain 80% of all net book revenues (gross sales minus merchant card fees and audiobook distribution expenses).. We coordinate with your promotion efforts.

Let’s Collaborate

We provide links to include on your web pages to HANDS product pages.

We provide a shopping cart and product landing pages for all direct sales of ebooks and audiobooks. We utilize FluentCart as our shopping cart.

We provide audition services of vetted narrators willing to work on a Royalty Payoff basis. Payoff parameters are negotiated between the author and narrator.

For narrators

Narrator Partnering

Narrators canexpect:

  • Small roster, application by invitation only.
  • Vetted authors
  • Confidence that Royalty Payoff contracts will be accompanied by active promotion/marketing effort
  • Audition opportunities
  • Rates and Royalty Payoff terms negotiated with author
  • Must provide high quality, production-ready audio files
Let’s Collaborate

When a narrator works on a Per Finished Hour (PFH) basis, the narration service is billed at the narrator’s hourly rate times the audiobook’s total hour length.  This amount constitutes the basis that is paid off by splitting the net book revenues at a split agreed upon by author and narrator until the PFH amount is paid off. Gross or net (according to the plan) revenues from that point on go to the author exclusively. See this HANDS payment  spreadsheet for examples of potential negotiated contract arrangements.

While we encourage author/narrator partner teams, it’s important to have a pool of narrators that can be called on to voice books that can’t or shouldn’t be voiced by the narrator partner. Hence, we maintain a roster of vetted narrators who are willing to work on a Royalty Payoff basis and can respond to audition calls.

Narrators are hesitant to work on a Royalty Share basis through ACX because, quite often, they’re not confident of the author’s intention to market and promote their books. An author’s participation in a HANDS agreement is evidence they are interested and willing to market and promote their books.

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