chapters and sections for ACX

[spawneydave]

probably the wrong place to ask this question but perhaps someone can help, I am attempting to narrate my own audible book using Audacity and starting to get to grips with it but I am a bit unsure how to divide my chapters and can’t seem to get clarification on the ACX site, my book is 15 main chapters bit with subsections as per the screenshot, should I am recording each subsection as a single file but how should I name them for audible? some sections are pages and others just a few paragraphs.

Chapter Two: A Spring Tide in the Affairs of Man 28
Bridlington Diving Services 29
A Taste of the North Sea 37
Back to Bridlington 43
Shell Cases and Ingots 44
Near Death 48
Botany Cut, 1976 52
Rothesay 56
Trawlerman 58

[kozikowski]

probably the wrong place to ask this question

Generic Windows is good—assuming you have a Windows computer. If you’re wildly off-base, we can move it.

my book is 15 main chapters bit with subsections

That’s a darn good question. I’m pretty sure they don’t have provision for “sub-chapters.” I do know they expressly forbid reading instruction books and technical manuals, and this gets uncomfortably close to that format.

“Chapter Two, Rebuilding Your Engine,” “Sub Chapter: Piston Polishing.”

Another reason I’m pretty sure they won’t allow that is the difficulty of finding a particular reading in the blizzard of segments when you play it back.

That and I don’t think sub-chapters will fit in millions of audiobook players.

My Personal Guess would be to smooch the sub-chapters together for the reading. Do a long-sh pause within the chapter at each of the sub breaks, or re-write them together. How did you do the actual book? 1-A, 1-B, etc? What does your table of contents look like? Alternately, make everything a chapter and follow the chapter format rules ACX posts. I don’t remember seeing a restriction for short chapters. They absolutely do have a long chapter limit.

Don’t forget to leave the Room Tone (background sound) pauses in the right places. That’s a surprisingly common mistake.

========

I obliquely alluded to two odd requirements in the ACX instructions. I need to be able to buy your book right now on Amazon, and it can’t be an instruction book or any other type on this list (scroll down).

https://www.acx.com/help/200878270

There was one forum poster who tried to paper and audiobook publish at the same time. It wasn’t pretty.

narrate my own audible book using Audacity and starting to get to grips with it

ACX will no longer offer Human Quality Control like they used to. The best they do is their Audio Lab Automated Service

https://www.acx.com/audiolab

Which test a lot of the same things that our own ACX-Check does. Neither one will check if you can read out loud.

Missing features

And even though they don’t offer personalized service any more, we can do an analysis if you produce a short voice test.

https://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/TestClip/Record_A_Clip.html

Read down the blue links. They’re very short and talk about common errors.

Koz

[kozikowski]

The 120 minute rule does mention sub-chapters, but those are just fancy labels for real chapters.

"Chapter Two: A Spring Tide in the Affairs of Man – Bridlington Diving Services "

So the book is going to have all those chapters strung together end to end.

Koz

[spawneydave]

Thanks for the reply, lots of the stuff you posted I have already done after a few errors and the book is an autobiography and each chapter is a different time in my life but because i kept changing subjects, ie, work travel etc I have subdivided the chapters in the written book, the book is already published as a book and a kindle, but i have a friend who is going blind and I narrated the entire book in Audacity for her, once i finished it and she enjoyed it i decided i would clean up the files and publish in audible, currently I have 15 files, one for each chapter with a track for each subsection to make the file easy to navigate, in the first version i simply paused and made a statement for the subsections so its the same as the written book, as none of the chapters are greater than 90 minutes i can probably just do the same, and as you say its unlikly anyone actually reads it so its down to meeting the technical criteria, this is my book and you can read the first section on kindle so i think you can see what i mean

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B094JT1FDD/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0
Thanks for the links, i will check them out

[kozikowski]

I have already done after a few errors

Most forum posters aren’t this far along. It’s not unusual for someone to post right after they get their microphone out of the bubble wrap and just then realize what they’re getting into.

I think they want you to state the chapter followed by the subheading, pause, and then read. So the chapter will be read again and again depending on how many subs you have.

Kozikowski, the Kindle Store on Amazon.co.uk is for UK customers only. To shop for titles available for your country/region, please visit Amazon.com.

So I’ll just have to believe you that you passed all the technical doobly-doos and the only problem is chapter management.

You seem to have passed the primary requirement that your book sound like someone telling me a story over cups of tea.

If you want to pursue this, the forum will accept 20 seconds of mono presentation in WAV format, or longer in MP3. Scroll down from a forum text window > Attachments > Add Files. Stay under 2MB.

Koz