Will you learn with me how to narrate audio books with Adobe Audition and publish audio books on Audible, an Amazon company, using the Audiobook Creation Exchange or ACX? Join me in a journey from start to finish in this class showing how to begin with a book idea and take it through to becoming an audio book! Why take the time to publish on Audible? My sales on Audible reached over $10,000 with me earning over $5,000 within the first year meaning this is one of the fastest ways I have ever made money online. The best part is that I know Audible is here to stay because I have been a gold or platinum member for 6 years and I love listening to audio books!
The problem is that getting an audio book published on Audible was one of the most mysterious and challenging processes I have experienced as a video producer and author online. I hope this class makes it much easier for you to get your first, second, and third audio books uploaded!
Figuring the whole process out for me has taken months including having several entire books returned to me and having to go back and reprocess all of the audio again which was really annoying. I hope this simple Audible ACX audio file tutorial using Adobe Audition is useful for you in having an easier time with it than I did! Would you like to continue learning with me? I am about to launch a complete class on Audible publishing using ACX and already have a class featuring how to publish Kindle books which allow for putting an audio version on Audible.
To begin, you need a recorded audio file ready to prepare for publishing on ACX. Open up Adobe Audition to repeat the steps exactly or use a similar program to find similar functions!
- Go to effects. Next, Noise Reduction/Restoration. Then select Adaptive Noise Reduction using the default settings or adjusting as needed. This removes remove background noise and prepares the audio to be matched directly on volume.
- Open the Loudness tab on the upper right in the Workspaces menu and drag the file into the match loudness settings area.
- Choose Total RMS and set it to -17. Then run Peak at -3.5. Doing each of these should position the volume directly where Audible wants it!
- To product an audio file ready for upload to ACX, visit Save As in the File menu. Choose an mp3 file with sample rate 44.1 kz in 16 bit depth using mono. For doing multiple files fast, make a preset to quickly change these all with two clicks.
After saving the file, you are ready to upload to ACX and get published on Audible at the right volume! You can verify you did it correctly by checking the loudness RMS and peaks in Audition in the Loudness workspace.
Where did I make this process from? I used the official ACX Audio Submission Requirements for Audiobooks as listed in Audible customer help at http://jerry.tips/acxfiles. Audible makes it clear the ACX Quality Assurance team may reject titles that do not meet these standards.
Here are the requirements for each audio file which using Adobe Audition as I show in this tutorial helps me to meet.
- Consistent in overall sound and formatting.
- All mono or all stereo files which MONO being HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for simplicity.
- Opening and closing credits.
- Retail sample that is between one and five minutes long.
- Recorded by a human.
- 192 kbps or higher MP3, constant bit rate (CBR) at 44.1 kHz.
- One chapter/section that is shorter than 120 minutes and with the section header read aloud.
- Half a second to one second of room tone at the head and a second to 2 seconds at the end.
- Free of extraneous sounds such as noisy computers, traffic, etc.
- Average RMS between -23dB and -18dB. Using what I show it should come out around -20dB.
- -3dB peak values.
- Maximum -60dB noise floor.
Thank you for reading this and I hope it is helpful!
