Info for Narrators

About

We set up Winooski Tyne in 2021 with the intention of shaking up the industry and making it a bit fairer for narrators. As it stands, most narrators don’t get very large fees for work on audiobooks, despite the amount of work involved, and it is almost unheard of for narrators to get ongoing royalties from sales. While we can’t do much to improve the upfront fees, we want to ensure that narrators receive ongoing royalties for their work. We also wanted to create a system that provides narrators with a way to build up a large portfolio of work, that can generate ongoing royalties for years to come (Winooski Tyne Classics). The original intention was to set up as an audiobook production house for indie authors, a voiceover agency, and to run Winooski Tyne Classics. Long term, we would like to achieve all of this, but at the moment we are just concentrating on the Winooski Tyne Classics side of the business. Since setting up in late 2021, we have released a number of audiobooks that are selling in all major digital marketplaces across the world. We’re now ready to start expanding our work by bringing in new narrators.

Winooski Tyne Classics

Winooski Tyne Classics produces high quality audiobooks of works that are in the public domain. There is a high demand for audiobooks by the likes of Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy and George Elliot, and a lot of classic audiobooks currently available in the market aren’t of the best quality. As there is an inexhaustible supply of out-of-copyright works, we hope to be able to give narrators the opportunity to build up a portfolio of work that will pay ongoing royalties and the ability to work whenever they have free time. This would work on a royalty share basis – narrators don’t receive an upfront fee, but get 65% of all sales profits. Winooski Tyne receives 35% to cover the costs of proofing, editing, marketing, distribution and other admin costs. Unless anyone particularly wants to narrate “War and Peace”, we’ll be concentrating on short stories and novellas, to build up a catalogue of works that can be released as stand-alone shorts or as part of an anthology collection. It also allows first-time narrators to see if audiobook work is for them, as it doesn’t suit everyone. Another reason for concentrating on short stories is it allows narrators to record a book whenever they have time, without committing to a large project. We have already released several shorts and novellas on the Winooski Tyne label and have found it surprisingly lucrative, but it’s certainly not a get-rich-quick scheme. It can take up to 6 months from release for royalties to start being paid, but with enough titles out there it could provide you with a nice income supplement in the long term.

Audiobook Production

Narrators need to have good home recording set-ups, with the ability to produce professional quality recordings with the following specifications:• 16bit stereo raw (unedited) wav files• Noise floor no higher than -60dB• Peak values no more than -3dB• RMS measuring between -23 and -18db• Recordings must be made in acoustically neutral space, free from background noise.• Recordings must be one single reading of the script, with any repeated lines or mistakes edited out. We highly recommend using the “punch and roll” method of recording. While we want to encourage new narrators to the industry and are happy to help newbies get started, for practical reasons the Winooski Tyne Classics project is really intended for those that already have easy access to a professional quality studio and experience in recording long form scripts.

Money Matters

We want to be totally up front about how much you can expect to earn, before you decide if this project is for you or not. Firstly, this isn’t intended to replace your regular paid VO gigs, but act as a supplement for any time you find yourself with fewer projects than usual. That notwithstanding, here’s how the figures break down… Obviously, there are no guarantees how well a title will sell, but in the last 6 months Winooski Tyne audiobooks have on average made just a little over €35 per title. This might not sound like much, but bearing in mind that as we concentrate on short stories, most titles are less than an hour long. The UK industry average upfront fee that audiobook narrators receive is around £70 per finished hour, so in theory, within 12-24 months your royalties could exceed what you would have achieved with an upfront fee. Once a narrator has a few titles on the market, we hope this will become a nice supplementary income for them for years to come. Again, we can't promise how well any particular title will sell, but we are already starting to see sales patterns, so will only assign titles to narrators that we think will sell well. The other thing we intend to do, once we have a big enough catalogue, is release anthology collections, so we can package titles that haven't sold quite as well with our best sellers, to try and maximize royalties for everyone. We realise working solely for royalties is taking a risk, with no guarantee of income, but that's why we concentrate on short stories, so it's not that much of a time outlay for anyone, and also why we offer what we hope is a generous royalty split.

Important Information

A few important things that relate to making sure you get some money! Winooski Tyne works with a distribution company in Germany called Feiyr. Your share of royalties will be paid directly to you via Feiyr, which means you will have to set up a free Feiyr account. Unfortunately, their website is a bit clunky to navigate, but they do provide the best service so that’s why we use them. If you run into any problems using the Feiyr portal, we’ll be on hand to talk you through it. All payments are made in Euros into your Feiyr account. You can withdraw your money at any time into a bank account or PayPal account, but Feiyr does charge a €2.50 admin fee if you withdraw an amount less than €250.00, so it’s worth letting it build up.

FAQs

Will I have to edit my own work? We will deal with all editing, clean-up and mastering, but we do expect recordings to be delivered as one single reading of the script, with any mistakes or repeated lines edited out. Using the Punch and Roll method of recording is the easiest way to achieve this. Is there an upfront fee or is payment solely based on royalties?For the Winooski Tyne Classics project you won’t receive a PFH (per finished hour) fee, just your 65% share of royalties. In the future we aim to open a general audiobook production house. Our intention for that would be to pay a decent PFH fee as well as a small ongoing share of royalties. Do you choose the titles or do I?We choose the titles for you and provide scripts. When choosing titles, we have a few factors to think about such as the how marketable it will be and global licensing implications. However, we are always open to suggestions. If there is a particular author you would like to narrate, let us know and we’ll see what we can do. Will there be deadlines?We don’t impose deadlines. As the Winooski Tyne Classics project is designed to fit around your other work, we let you record your assigned title whenever you want. We may check in with you if we haven’t heard from you for a couple of months, but just to check if you still want the assignment, or if we should give it to someone else. If you just need more time, but still want to record that story, no problem. We will never re-assign a title without checking with you first. Can I work on more than one title at once?If you think you could get through a few titles in a short space of time, let us know. We can assign projects so that you have plenty of work to keep you going. Why does Winooski Tyne get 35%This is a very good question. We’ve tried to make the split as fair as possible. We are audiobook narrators ourselves, so we know how much work goes into recording an audiobook (and how tedious it can be sometimes) and would love to let you keep all of the royalties, but for each title that gets released there’s a lot of work and expense for us too, including preparing scripts, proofing the recordings, editing and mastering, graphic design, marketing, distribution fees, ISRC registration… to name just a few. Do I have to sign a contract?For each assignment you will have to sign a release form. This protects both parties. It means we have the legal right to publish your work and you have it in writing that you will get your royalties. If you would like to peruse a draft copy of the agreement, please ask. How do I set up a Feiyr Account?We will invite you to join the Winooski Tyne team on the Feiyr platform and you will receive an email directly from Feiyr. This will include a link to set up an account and a free account code. By inputting the code, you will be exempt from paying the €10 deposit that is normally required when setting up an account. Verifying your account is a three-part process. It is very important that you complete all verification steps, as you will not be able to accept royalties until completed. The three steps are standard email verification, verifying phone number using a code they will send by text message and verifying address using a code they will send by post. Once you have completed these steps you will be able to accept the invitation to join our team and accept royalty shares. I don’t want to set up a Feiyr account. Can you pay me my royalties directly?Unfortunately, payment through Feiyr is the only option. We just don’t have the resources to set up royalty accounting for each narrator at the moment. This also protects narrators. If for any reason Winooski Tyne had to cease trading, you would continue to be paid your royalties through Feiyr. Why Winooski Tyne?In case you’re wondering, Winooski and Tyne are the names of the two rivers closest to where our founders each grew up. We could make up something about stories taking you on a journey like a river, but honestly, we just thought it sounded cool…

Get in Touch

If you are interested in becoming a Winooski Tyne narrator, please use the form below to contact us and we'll be in touch.