13302: How To Produce Audiobooks For Rights Holders Globally (Not Just Where ACX Operates)

Raw transcript:

So, you’re an audiobook narrator who
lives in the US, but you’re contacted by
a rights holder who doesn’t live in one
of the four ACX countries, but rather
Australia or Mexico or Brazil or in the
Caribbean, and you can’t do any work for
them via ACX. How do you handle this?
I’ve got the solution. Standby. We’ll
talk about it. or rather Noah Michael
Lavine will talk about it in this
episode of the VO Heroes podcast.
I I haven’t even had a chance to to
change my clothes uh from just getting
off of a Zoom session with Noah Michael
Lavine, who is the guy who runs Skywire
Paymaster Services, my Paymaster, the
guy who I use for all of my projects on
ACX and and independent projects. And
for the longest time, it’s been kind of
a sticky thing when you wanted to work
for a rights holder that happens to live
in a country that isn’t in the ACX4, and
that of course is the US, Canada, the
UK, and Ireland. Right?
So, how do you do that? How do you how
do you tell somebody in Australia,
“Yeah, I can’t do the work for you,
especially as a union uh narrator,
because I I live here and you live there
and there’s no ACX there.” Well, Noah
does more than just provide paymaster
services if you do a perfinished hour
job or a royalty share job on ACX. He
actually has his own union signatory
contract that lets you live anywhere you
want and lets your rights holder live
anywhere they want and you can make
beautiful music together or you know
narrate a great audio book together. Uh
so here’s a clip from this lesson which
we just recorded for VO Heroes for the
ACX the ACX master class and for uh
narrate your own book. Here’s the clip
that talks just about that. People don’t
just live in those four areas of the
world. Uh I have clients all the time
from Australia, from Japan, from Mexico,
from Brazil, uh France, you name it.
They want to play in this space. It’s a
huge growing space.
Is there any way that if I as a narrator
get approached by someone that’s outside
the space or maybe I don’t want to use
ACX, I mean personally I don’t know why
I wouldn’t, but I’m sure there’s a
situation where that might present
itself. Are they able to take advantage
of your independent production services
to make that happen?
Absolutely. Um
um I get payments from all over the
world all the time.
um
mostly and also I pay talent that live
outside the US. Some of them are members
of the union, some of them aren’t. Um
uh there’s a company called Wise,
which used to be called
um Transfer Wise and it’s basically a
borderless banking company. So, you
know, I have accounts for
British pounds, euros, Australian
dollars, New Zealand dollars, whatever
pretty much whatever currency uh I would
need to receive funds from uh in rather
uh I can do that. And um I just had an
author from the UK send quite a large
payment for a big project. So, don’t
worry about working with um somebody who
lives outside the US. We can still
process the project. We can still have
them sign documents if necessary and um
we can still receive payment so that I
can get the narrators paid.
So, there you go. Problem solved. So for
those of you that either yourselves as
narrators don’t live in one of those
four countries and couldn’t use ACX or
you do but the rights holder that you’re
working with uh doesn’t live in one of
the ACX for the four ACX countries or
neither one of you do. Either way, hit
up Noah. He can help you. He can take
care of it. You can set your rates. You
can come you can do the job which is you
know that’s that’s what I love about
this. I love Noah. He’s great. Uh Noah
Michael Lavine, Skywire Paymaster. Uh
and we give you links in the show notes
where to get in touch with him.
If you have questions, let me know in
the comments below. Uh if you’re
watching this on Vioheres, or if you’re
listening to this uh via Buzzrout or one
of the platforms, go to vohhereroes.com
where the episode lives. Put your
comments in uh the the comments area
below, the questions that you might
have, or you can just contact him
directly. But let’s get a conversation
started about this cuz this is one more
thing that we’ve been able to solve
about this growing exploding area of
audiobook work and uh Noah is one of the
people that can help you. Hit the like
button if you like what you’re hearing.
Subscribe to the channel. Click the
notification bell if you want to know
when the next episode comes out. If
another performer in the audiobook space
has said, “God, I wish I could I wish I
could do this work worldwide.” Well, now
no geographic boundaries. You can you
can share this episode with them and I’d
appreciate it if you did. I’m David H.
Lawrence 17th. I thank you so much for
watching and for listening and I will
see you in the next episode of the VO
Heroes podcast.

(from YouTube)