You might think to yourself, "I can just post chapter one as the audition and that should be fine, right?" Please don't, and here's why: you can tell if someone's voice is not a good fit within 5-10 seconds of listening to them talk. There is no need to waste everyone's time by getting a 10-20 minute audition when you're only gonna listen to a minute or two, tops. Instead, you want a curated list.

Here's what you should be looking for as you prep your audition sheet:

• A paragraph of general prose
  • This is going to be ~70% of the book, so you'll want a paragraph of it so you can hear how 70% of the book will sound when it's read aloud
    
    
• Dialogue between important characters
  • Get dialogue for the most important characters in the story, and include notes on how they should sound (gruff, sassy, airheaded, tired, etc.), what accents do they have, how are their names pronounced, and anything else that might help a narrator get the right sound; if you don't have a single dialogue for all important characters, grab dialogue from different places in the book
    • Since this will naturally have less context in text, add some context with your notes for the audition (e.g., Note: this is a conversation after a climactic fight scene, every character is tired and wounded) 
      
      
• A paragraph of action/intense scene
  • If your book has action or an intense climax, you'll want to hear how the narrator performs that; include a note that the paragraph is action or intense; if they read it exactly the same way as the paragraph of general prose, that’s not generally a great sign as it could be an indicator of relatively monotone performance
    

This should result with an audition that's probably around a minute or two long. Again, for the wrong narrator this is more than enough time to weed them out, but if you get a couple of right narrators who audition, this will be enough range for you to decide who is the better fit for your story.

Instead of a pay-for-production (PfP) gig, some narrators are open to a Royalty Share (RS) or Royalty Share Plus (RS+) agreement through ACX. Here’s what you should know about those options:

RS means you (the author/rights holder) split any royalties of audio sales with the narrator in a clean split. This requires Audible exclusivity to set up through ACX, which puts the royalty split at 40% to you and 60% to Audible. Of that 40% that goes to you, half will actually go to you and the other half will go to your narrator. This lasts for 7 years, then the author gets full royalties beyond that point.

RS+ is the same deal except in addition to the even split, you will also pay a reduced PFH on top. Exactly how much you’d pay is negotiable between you and the narrator. I’ve never worked a RS+ job and never hired someone for it. I’d rather just do a PfP or a RS job. This seems more like a rip off for the author.

Pros of RS

• No upfront costs
  • Because the royalties are shared, you don’t have to pay anything out of pocket to get your audiobook made
    
    

Cons of RS

• You’re betting against your book
  • If the book takes off and does super well, you may end up “paying” more in missed royalties than you ever would have on a PfP gig
• Most experienced/in demand narrators are not going to be interested in a royalty share unless you can show some marketability for your book
  • Think of this like how a publisher might only be interested in certain follower/patreon amounts
  • The narrator is taking a risk by taking on RS, and generally they want some assurance that risk is worth it

When you submit your book on ACX, it will ask you what cost range your budget is for the audiobook. RS and RS+ are checkbox options, but otherwise the ranges go $50 – $100, $100 – $200, $200 – $400, $400 – $1000. You’ll have to decide what’s in your budget. When I hired out for Project Tartarus, I knew $200 was industry standard and I set my budget range to $200 – $400 and got 50+ auditions within a week.

NOTE: Audible & ACX are moving toward a different royalty model where exclusive books will be earning 50% royalties instead of 40% (and nonexclusive earns 30% instead of 25%), however the way the royalties are calculated is a lot more convoluted and diluted. The short of it is that a lot of authors I know are seeing reduced payouts based on these changes. A follow-on effect of that is that audio production becomes riskier, which may curb some audio publishers' appetites to produce audiobooks.

For full details on the royalty changes, visit this link: https://kindlepreneur.com/audible-royalty-changes/ 

I've been working on short stories in downtime, several of which have been posted to my YouTube channel under my narration. These will be intermittent uploads as they do take a bit of time and effort to write, record, and produce. At some point, these short stories will be wrapped up in their own collections and made available for purchase but I don't currently intend to stop having them available on YouTube.

Project Tartarus: Arche is available for pre-order via eBook on Amazon. Right now, that's the best way to show support. Once it comes out, the best way you can show support is by leaving honest reviews on whatever service provided it to you and bugging your friends, family, coworkers, and social media followers to get it. I'm a small author and a team of one, I don't have the luxury of marketers or community managers. Getting the word out is a difficult thing, so if you enjoyed it and want to see the series thrive or would like me to be able to do this full-time, tell everyone you can about it. This is far from the only series I would like to publish and it's only through your support that I'll get the chance to do so in a reasonable timeline. This is also a huge monetary investment that has no promise of ever being paid back, which is only to say I have to budget for these things accordingly and that can delay schedules. Thank you.

Q: Why are you unpublished?
A: Great question. If you're not heavily involved in the writing world, you might not be aware that getting published traditionally (typically meaning through a larger publishing company) is an incredibly tedious, time-consuming process that is both humbling and frustrating in equal measures. I have watched many authors quit writing altogether after being rejected constantly for years. Why am I unpublished? Because I have not yet self-published the work I have. I do have some smaller (indie) presses in mind that I plan to reach out to, but I am not currently at a point in my life where I can do that.

Q: What's stopping you from self-publishing now?
A: My life is rather chaotic and I want to devote a reasonable amount of time to ensuring I can produce the best quality stories I can deliver. My day job, which I won't discuss, involves traveling (often on short notice) and consumes quite a bit of my time and mental energy. The next reason is that despite having several books "completed," I have not yet found an editor I jibe with. I'm a weird person, I need a compatibly weird person to collaborate with. Once I find one, I have quite a bit of work for them to go through. About five books worth, all unrelated projects, which will take time and patience to refine. This is if I'm able to find an editor at all. After that comes other important things, like cover art. For someone without a publishing company, this will be several thousand dollars in expenses, which will take time to budget out. Especially since, as an unknown author, I don't really expect to recoup those losses for a long time, if ever.

Q: What have you written?
A: I've got a few different projects I've been working on. Some are finished, some are still in progress, so I'll list the ideas below. We'll see how they go in development.

1. A young adult/new adult (YA/NA) medieval sword & sorcery fantasy series about the last elemental "immortals" who integrated into human life. (1 book finished, ~9 planned; will likely require some serious revising)
2. A YA modern fantasy series about holiday figures. (1 book finished, 3 books planned)
3. Project Tartarus. (1 book finished, X planned. The series has an end, I just don't know how long it will take to get there).
4. A short story fantasy collection. Each story is different but most are reminiscent of Dungeons & Dragons. There may be more anthologies in the future, but I make no promises. This is currently the catalogue I'm working through with my narrations, which you can find in the above tag or on my YouTube channel

Q: What are you currently working on?
A: Currently, I'm working on Book 2 of the LitRPG series. These are some of the longest books I've ever done. Book 1's final draft (before professional editing) is sitting at 150k. Book 2 is projected out to be around 160-180k. In pages (a much less accurate count because formatting changes it drastically) that's about 600 pages for Book 1 and 650-750 for Book 2.

Q: When do you hope to publish?
A: Another excellent question. Short answer: I don't know. I've got a lot of life plans ahead. I'd say three years from now would be the absolute fastest, but not likely. Most likely it will be five to seven years from now, with a possibility of it being longer. But the good news is that I'll have a lot more material to publish by that point. The main reason for the large delay is that I have plans to return to school for a doctorate in English, and it's very possible that after obtaining that education, I'll revisit my work with the hopes I can improve upon it further. Again, the entire goal is to produce the highest quality product I can.

Q: If you're not going to publish for years, won't you get discouraged and never publish at all?
A: No. I started writing stories over twenty years ago. I've been honing my craft, learning, and growing all that time. I want to share my stories, even if no one reads them. As long as there continue to be avenues for self-publishing, my stories will one day be accessible.

Q: You've mentioned not expecting to make money from this, are you unconfident in your books?
A: On the contrary. I'm very confident in the quality of my work. Everything I do is about making that work better but I'm also a realist. There are more people making books now than ever before in history. I am not a loud person, nor am I famous. I don't have a cult following or a mainstream presence. I love my books and I hope those that find them love them too, but I don't expect to become a household name.

Q: What can I do to support you?
A: You could follow me on social media, but that's entirely up to you. I don't have a Patreon or Ko-fi or any other fan-based payment platform. That may change at some point in the future, but at the moment I'm financially sound enough that I feel it would be dishonest to take donations without just cause. I would recommend searching out other indie/self published authors and buying their books. If you fall in love with any of those stories, leave them a positive review. It means the world and it helps the almighty algorithms of whatever platforms recommend those books to others. When my books are out, you can support me by buying them, reviewing them, and telling friends about them if you like them.

Q: Are you going to do anything between now and publishing?
A: Yes! I am still brainstorming creative ideas I can do to start growing my online presence. Currently I'm fixated on YouTube, though my video making/editing skills are poor. I've been toying with the idea of doing narration of public domain and personal work. If that's something that interests you, check out my YouTube channel and leave me a comment.

​Thank you for sticking with me. I can't wait to share my stories with the world and your support means a lot.

If that applies to you, then you're the kind of writer I'd like to petition to try something new. If this doesn't apply to you, then you're probably the kind of writer who writes how I'm about to suggest.

In the Twittersphere, among writers, there's generally two kinds. There are Plotters and Pantsers. Plotters plot out their stories and make detailed notes of their stories before they really push pen to paper (or finger to key) and begin. Pantsers write "by the seat of their pants" and write down the story as it comes to them. Now, like most things in life, this is not an absolute, but more of a spectrum. Some writers gravitate naturally toward Pantsing and others toward Plotting, but most fall somewhere in the middle. A delightful region affectionately known as Plantsers.

Plantsers are writers who will write down some important details that they don't want to forget, but mostly write the story as it comes to them. They may have important milestones in their story already mapped out (even if only in their heads), but how they move between these milestones is a mystery even to them until they write it. This culminates in a story that is planned, but fresh. The writer can start right away and it doesn't matter if they don't have the perfect beginning because at least they started and they can always go back later and fix things.

Seems great, but it's not a completely perfect fix. If you're going for a convoluted and complex plot (or several concurrent plots), you'll likely need to write it all down to keep it straight in your head. Most people write their books over the course of months or years and the more complex it is, the more preparation is required. Preparation isn't a bad thing, in fact it's a very good thing, but when you suck all the choice out of writing through prior planning, it can be very boring to actually sit down and slog your way through however many tens-of-thousands of words it takes to get yourself from the beginning to the great "the end."

There is no one-place-fits-all on the spectrum between Plotting and Pantsing. Every writer is unique, and what works for one (myself, for example) may not work for another (you). What's important is learning what options you have and trying new things until you find what works. This advice is not "do this or you'll be a bad writer," it's simply a "here's an option that might help." Having a burnout while writing can absolutely slaughter a story before it ever has a chance to be fit between two covers, and sometimes it can be years before the writer comes back to it, if at all, because of the association with mental and spiritual draining that the story has accrued.

So now that we've talked about the spectrum of how to go about a novel, I'd like to address the actual process of writing. For many, many years I edited as I went along. I would write a few paragraphs, then go back over it for mistakes and make sure that everything lined up exactly how I wanted. It was how I wrote and I took great pride in it. Then, inevitably, several months on into the writing of the story I would grow tired. I would be spending all this time on this story and I would have very little to show for it, just a few measly chapters that worked well together, but was nothing close to a full story. Then I would think of how much further I had to go in the story and I would get even more tired. If that applies to you, then here's my advice:

Don't edit.

It's really as simple as that. Focus on getting from beginning to end (if you're a linear writer, I'm not going to touch on nonlinear writing in this post) before you go back to edit. You may decide that a turn you take 2/3's of the way through your story is much better than your original plan, and if you've been editing as you go then you'll probably stop writing forward and start fixing everything up to that point to make sure it all fits together. Absolutely do not do this. Just worry about getting that first draft done. Get to the end, then go back and make everything work. By all means, if you have an idea right then and there of how to fix something and are worried you might forget by the time you actually need to go and edit, make a comment for yourself on the document, but keep pressing forward. Finishing is more important than finishing perfect. You'll go through and edit anyway, likely multiple times, so all that work you front-loaded won't matter in the end except to make you more tired of your own story.

If you're growing tired of your story before you finish, it probably means somewhere along the way your process is getting in your own way. It doesn't mean give up, even though that might seem the most enticing option, it means keep trying new methods of writing until you find what works best for you. Sometimes all you need is a short break, but make sure you find the motivation to come back to that story and keep at it. Keep trying new things, keep learning, keep experimenting, but most of all, keep writing.

Hello! My name is Erebus Esprit. If you're reading this then you probably have some idea of who I am, but allow me to introduce myself anyway. I am not a writer by trade. I do have some formal education on the matter as well as a history of personal research, creative decisions, and public feedback on literary matters. I have many opinions on how writing is and how it should be, but a lot of those fall under the category of 'this works for me, so I do it.' I will likely repeat myself whenever I talk about writing, but I'll go ahead and say it here and now: these are just my opinions. Take what works for you and do it.

This is the blog away from the reviews where I can get a little more personal with all you lovely people. Drops of Darkness is going to contain writing advice, philosophical pondering, and a little bit of miscellaneous postings. I'll do my best to steer clear of contemporary politics and religion, I ask that everyone does the same in the comments if you decide to leave any. This is not because I don't believe these things shouldn't be talked about, but rather because I don't wish to talk about them and don't want to use my platform to do so. I find those issues rather divisive and counter-intuitive to what I am trying to do.

If you're wondering about the name for this blog, 'Drops of Darkness', it actually comes from my name. 'Erebus,' sometimes called 'Erabus,' is the Greek Personification of Darkness. Didn't think you were actually going to learn anything from a blog, did you? If you walked into this already knowing the namesake of Erebus, I just want you to know you're awesome. If you didn't, you're still awesome because now you know. Drops of Darkness is meant to be the place where I can get more personal, share some thoughts and ideas, and interact with all you lovely people. It has its own separate place so that those of you who are only interested in my books or my reviews don't have to be distracted by it. This section of the website is largely going to be text. I'm not going to flower it up with a lot of distracting images because you're here to read what I have to say, not look at other people's pictures.

I'm not going to promise regular blog schedules because this takes third priority after my day-job and writing my books, but I can promise that there will be future posts. If you're interested in following along, consider signing up for my monthly newsletter to stay abreast of not only the blogs, but also the books.

​Thank you all, and as always: Peace and Love