Gotta love those cows, although most of the dairy herds were quite a bit further west. The Hudson valley is concerned with housing New Yorkers. And painters (Hudson School).
Congrats on baby steps. There are quite a few forum posters who ripped through a massive book only to get turned down with unsolvable, permanent sound problems.
You don’t have to guess where the volume control should be. Audacity will tell you. Blue wave tips should hover roughly between 25% and 50%. So Gain 90 is just about right. Many home microphones run most of the way up or all the way up. It doesn’t benefit you at all, but fewer microphones get returned when they do that.
It sounds like you’re recording in your office with bare walls and floor, or kitchen, or bathroom. Echo city. Nobody is going to buy that and there is no way to filter that out. You have to have a quiet, echo-free recording environment. Nobody wants to hear the word “studio,” but that’s what you’re making.
And speaking of quiet. There is quite a bit of noise behind you. I made it worse on purpose.
Is that your computer? If you can tell your computer is on by listening, it’s going to be a long day.
You may be able to get rid of most of that and the echoes with a kitchen table sound studio. If you’re near a Home Depot, they may have all the pipes available from the floor. No cutting. Heavy Moving Blankets are up to you. Harbor Freight had some.
https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/too-compressed-rejection/52825/22
You already discovered the forum test sound file process. ACX has one, too.
This isn’t a web page yet, so text it is.
ACX Audition
Also Known as ACX Test Clip and ACX Sample.
An Audition is a short reading you can submit to ACX to prove your performance quality before you submit a whole book. ACX will review your work and post comments. The work does not have to be produced using Adobe Audition.
Works must be perfect and ‘Retail-Ready’. ACX will not change any work once you submit.
Auditions should be between three and five minutes long.
Auditions should have 0.5 to 1 second of Room Tone at the beginning and 1 to 5 seconds of Room Tone at the end.
Auditions must be in MP3 sound format with constant bitrate of 192, minimum.
Auditions must have sound peaks no louder than -3dB.
Auditions must have a voice RMS (loudness) value between -18dB and -23dB.
Auditions must have Room Tone (natural background room sound without you performing-or moving-or breathing) quieter than -60dB.
You can submit this audition to ACX after filling out a questionnaire.
https://audible-acx.custhelp.com/app/browse/c/3549