Support for Indie Authors discussion

Tantor has offered to create an audiobook of my novel. Sounds like they're an upstanding company overall. There's been a good deal of discussion of them on Kboards, but I don't see anything here.

Have you worked with them? I'm weighing them vs. running my own production via ACX. From what I've read, this seems to be the tradeoff of accepting Tantor's offer:

Pro -- They pay you an advance, cover production costs, manage the process, draw from a good pool of narrators, and you might get some library sales that you'd miss out on otherwise.

Con -- You lose control over the final product (though they might offer narrator and cover approval rights), Tantor gets the audiobook rights for 7-10 years, and you're likely to make a lower royalty rate than with ACX et al.

I've seen opinions varying from "they're wonderful to work with" to "their royalties and marketing effort were disappointing". Generally positive; I haven't seen anybody outright trash them.

Tantor created an audiobook edition of my novel Anything For Him. I got narrator and cover approval and I'm really pleased with the audiobook, which was produced very quickly.

I get some library sales, as you mentioned. I don't think they really promote my book that I'm aware of, but I wasn't really expecting them to and they never said they would. I manage to get some sales through my own advertising and some organic sales.

It works well for me, and I probably wouldn't have had an audiobook edition of my book otherwise as I didn't really want to use ACX, and I think Tantor have made a high quality product.

L.K. wrote: "Tantor created an audiobook edition of my novel Anything For Him. I got narrator and cover approval and I'm really pleased with the audiobook, which was produced very quickly."

Thanks L.K., I really appreciate it.

I'm curious -- what made you not want to use ACX?

I'm curious -- what made you not want to use ACX?

I did sign up to ACX at one point before Tantor Media contacted me and tried to find narrators but it wasn't really working for me and I found it a bit of a drain on time and energy, especially as I was finding it difficult to find British narrators. Also, I don't personally listen to audiobooks and don't really know anything about them, so I just didn't feel very confident about what I needed. In the end using ACX just felt like it wasn't a good fit for me, and I couldn't really commit much more time or energy to it. I had pretty much given up on the idea of having audiobooks, until I heard from Tantor.

L.K. wrote: "I'm curious -- what made you not want to use ACX?

I did sign up to ACX at one point before Tantor Media contacted me and tried to find narrators but it wasn't really working for me and I found it ..."

Very helpful. Thanks so much!