From manuscript to production plan
The finished length drives everything else: narrator fees are quoted per finished hour, ACX needs one file per chapter of two hours or less, and the dialogue share tells a narrator how many voices to prepare. The analyzer turns your manuscript into those numbers before anyone records a word.
| Words | At 140 wpm | At 155 wpm | At 170 wpm |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30,000 (novella) | 3 h 34 min | 3 h 14 min | 2 h 56 min |
| 80,000 (novel) | 9 h 31 min | 8 h 36 min | 7 h 51 min |
| 120,000 (long novel) | 14 h 17 min | 12 h 54 min | 11 h 46 min |
Only have a word count? Use the audiobook length calculator. Then estimate the budget with the narrator cost calculator.
How to prepare a manuscript for narration
A narrator performs exactly what is on the page, and every change after recording means pickups: re-recorded words or lines matched to the original session. On ACX the rights holder approves the finished audiobook and can ask for up to two sets of revisions,1 so the cheapest time to fix a manuscript is before the first session.
- Lock the text. Narrate from the final, edited manuscript, the one that matches the published ebook or print book. Changes after recording cost studio time.
- Decide what is read. ACX doesn’t recommend reading the table of contents.1 Mark anything else that shouldn’t be read aloud, or should be read differently: image captions, tables, footnotes, links and “see page 12” cross-references. Rewrite them for the ear, or cut them.
- Check the chapters. Each chapter becomes a file that starts with its spoken header (“Chapter One”), and ACX files can’t run past 120 minutes.2 The analyzer above shows the chapters it found and flags any that would run too long at your narrator’s pace; plan where to split them.
- Write performance notes. List the main characters with age, accent and manner, and the book’s overall tone. ACX suggests putting performance notes (“characters, accents, overall tone”) in the title profile for auditions.3
- Build a pronunciation guide. Names, places and invented or foreign words, each with a respelling and, ideally, a recording. The analyzer lists capitalised names it finds; send them to the pronunciation guide maker.
- Choose an audition script. ACX recommends no more than 2–3 pages, uploaded as Word, PDF or text;4 its checklist suggests some dialogue, some description and any important accents or character voices.3 The analyzer’s dialogue share per chapter shows where to look.
- Pick a 15-minute checkpoint. ACX advises one once a producer accepts your offer, pieced together if needed from the hardest parts: main characters, dialogue, tough scenes and tricky pronunciations.3
- Write the credits. Opening and closing credits are separate files; the credits generator writes them in ACX’s wording.
Narrating with an AI voice instead? Clean the text with the script cleaner, which strips page numbers, footnote markers and broken lines, then narrate it with text to audiobook or EPUB to audiobook.
Sources
- Narrate an audiobook, ACX Help (19 August 2025), checked 23 October 2026
- What are the ACX audio submission requirements?, ACX Help, checked 23 October 2026
- The ACX author’s audiobook checklist, ACX blog (14 May 2014)
- Get audiobook auditions, ACX Help (3 June 2025), checked 23 October 2026