ACXReviews of acx.com

As a narrator putting hours of work into recording and editing books, to find them for sale when I have not been paid is despicable and underhand and it is theft. I am disgusted but then again am starting to expect nothing more from an Amazon owned company. DO NOT BUY FROM AMAZON OR DO ANY WORK FOR ACX.

Sales reporting is a mess. Often nothing is reported for days, and seems somewhat random. No transparency: I have no idea if reported sales are accurate. Last month I was getting dozens of sales every day. Then, the new month began and no sales were reported for 6 days. There are still an estimated 150-200 sales missing. I wrote to customer support, who said they were aware of the problem and that many others have complained, but nothing since. Edit: overnight, ACX deleted 139 of my sales. These were not "returns" (the returns number remained the same as the day before). Still no response from my first email. I've written again.

So much effort for so little...... You do all the work they stick it on their website and take most of the profits and they are soooo picky about EVERYTHING especially cover art...it took me almost as long to get cover accepted than it did to write the damn book!

Warning - ACX.IO is a fraudulent website. They accept bitcoin deposits but can't log on to sell bitcoin.

Like a lot of others I have had a lot of issues with ACX so far. Firstly their website is not laid out well and is missing a lot of key features, like instant customer service chat. Why is that not there? I wrote to customer service and asked some questions, when someone got back to me I suggested adding this feature. Then a manager responded saying thank you for the feedback and he would pass it to the 'higher ups' who knows maybe there will be improvements in the future. But here's the real problems. My narrator spent hours recording and downloading, I went back with some notes and she fixed those errors, finally we put everything in for review and here we go. "This review may take up to 30 days" Right around the 30th day we get an email saying they are denying the project because of some issues that needed fixing with the recordings and the cover art. Now when I say "we" I don't mean "We" my narrator got the email, I got nothing. She contacted me and was like, did you see this? I'll make the changes but they also say something about changing the cover art. I hadn't received anything. Regardless we both went in and fixed everything right away. She submitted it, I approved it. We get the generic email saying it'll take 30 more days. Then about a week later, I get an email very reminiscent of the first saying there are issues with certain chapters and the cover art. My narrator did not get the same. We looked into it and she said, no, the files they reference on the email are the wrong ones, they are not the new ones. She knows because she changed the file names. So we start emailing them. We are getting no where. Customer service says they can't help us because they are not the QA people. We say, get us in contact with the QA team then, they say they can't do that. So now what? We wait for another who knows how long with no explanations or help. Its clear that the different departments in this company don't talk to each other and there's no tracking system, so they're sending multiple emails to different people from different people and missing details. No wonder things take so long!! Ridiculous. I'm just crossing my fingers that somehow the rest goes okay but I highly doubt it.

Just notified after a month that my completed audiobook was cancelled. No explanation. After finally getting someone on the phone they said the rights holder was a fraud and had stolen the rights. Wouldn't you think they'd vet these titles before posting them? Or at least tell you it's on you to do that? It should not get as far as a completed, week-of-work book to tell me I am a slave. There's no insurance to pay SAG rates for the hours completed, either. You just wasted your time, too bad.

Please stay away from this company. They are unscrupulous, dishonest and vindictive. They cheat indie authors out of their royalties.

I am writing this warning about ACX but about Audible too because ACX is simply the interface through which independent audio producers upload their work to Audible. Coming at this new, from a business background I am less than impressed. Contracts and terms: When you sign up to ACX you sign a non-negotiable contract. You know those unenforceable, non-negotiable consumer contracts you have to sign to access ... I dunno ... your internet provider? Like those. And because they are huge, you've got to be in there so against every fibre of your being, you sign. For 7 years. ACX/Audible offer a fairly measly 45% of royalties for audiobooks - the lower end of standard - if you go exclusive. For those with the temerity to publish books on other retailers they slash that to 25%. That, in itself, has resulted in many authors signing to them exclusively, growing the company's dominance and its stranglehold on the market. It's never good when one company becomes dominant and Audible/ACX are the worst possible outfit to be allowed market dominance. Why? Well, here are some reasons. 1. It takes Audible '30 working days' to approve a book, a working day, like a Travel for London minute is ... flexible. Take my series; 4 books ranging from 12 - 19 hours each. Book 2 was approved first, then 4, 3 and finally another month later, 1. Logic? Nope. The box set of these books was uploaded mid July and went on sale on 9th October. All the files bar 2 were already approved and on sale on Audible as separate books. ACX still took 3 months to approve the opening and closing credits, which are about 5 seconds each. Mistakes? They'll tell you there is one but not where it is. You search your book, find nothing and resubmit ad infinitum. It's really not so difficult to say where errors are which would save time and resubmissions. 2. Payments. Audible works on several levels but many readers are subscribers and they use a credit system. Their monthly subscription fee buys a credit which they can use to purchase a book each month. (Btw why do they pay to subscribe when, in many places they can use their local library app for free?) The producers of the book then receive a payment. My first beef is that nobody has any idea how Audible/ACX arrives at the amount paid and there is no transparency. Authors who ask are fobbed off with platitudes or ignored. This has been going on for months. No information is forthcoming. 3. Reporting. ACX/Audible's reporting is extremely opaque and often bears little or no relation to what you are paid. Case in point, in September, my sales report was in minus figures (more on that in a minute). According to the report I received I owed audible around 80 cents. I asked support about this, it was one of the few occasions when I actually received a reply. Apparently it meant more people had returned my books than bought them. This surprised me, my normal return rate with ebooks is about 1%. Having discovered my sales had officially ended the month in the negative, I then received a payment from ACX. I have no idea what for and there is nothing on the report that would indicate any earnings. Flying blind is ... not a great way to run a business. 4. Returns. ACX does not show these. There is literally no way to accurately determine them. Why does this matter? Because until January 2121 if an Audible customer exchanges or returns a book, it's the author/narrator/producer who pays. Meanwhile, Audible encourages readers to return or exchange books at every turn, even if they've read to the end, for up to a year after purchase. There are even screenshots of Audible customer service saying it doesn't affect authors. After pressure, ACX/Audible agreed to absorb the cost of any returns made after 7 days, but are still encouraging readers to return books for up to a year after purchase even if they've already finished them. Why is that bad? Because the subscription fund is finite, so the costs of the returns will still be passed on to authors: smaller amount bigger number still us. Even after Jan, if a book is returned within 7 days, ACX will claw back any royalties paid from the producer/author and narrator even if the reader listened to it all. ACX were asked to cap returns at say, 30% listened to. No response so far. ACX reporting does not show gross and net sales or returns but it's possible estimate a percentage. Many folks are at 60%. 60% of sales they aren't paid for. 5. Punitive contracts. The contract with ACX is non negotiable and they change it without consultation or warning to 'partners'. ACX and Audible are currently behaving like rapacious pirates. Approach with extreme caution. For more info, google #audiblegate or read about it on the blog of susanmaywriter There is also a Facebook pressure group: Fair Deal for Rights Holders & Narrators