Production Intelligence

We measure timelines in finished hours of audio, roughly 9,300 words per finished hour (1FH). Once production is under way, recording averages about 1FH a day. On either side of that, budget about a week of pre-production to lock casting and prep, and about a week of post for editing, mixing, mastering, and final QC.

We need your final, proofed manuscript (Word or PDF). We also ask for a brief Character Profile sheet describing the voices, accents, and personalities of your main cast. If you have a specific tone in mind, dark and gritty versus light and fun, let us know.

Yes. While we specialize in cinematic fiction (Romance, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Thriller), we also produce high-impact non-fiction, memoirs, and business books, in whatever format suits the material, from a single narrator to a full cast.

You do. 100%. CineSonic operates on a Work for Hire basis. Once the final invoice is paid, all intellectual property rights transfer to you. We do not claim any ownership or future royalties. We do require one thing in return: a spoken producer credit in the finished audiobook, plus the right to feature our name on select marketing materials.

We charge a flat Per Finished Hour (PFH) production fee. We do not take a percentage of your sales. This model is generally more profitable for authors in the long run than royalty-share deals, especially since we actively help market your title and stay behind it long after it ships.

PFH refers to the length of the final audiobook, not the time spent in the studio. If your book is 10 hours long, you pay for 10 hours, regardless of whether it took us 20 or 50 hours to record and edit it.

Absolutely. We curate a shortlist of 3 to 5 perfectly matched voices from our roster for you to audition. You have the final say. If none of them fit, we go back to the drawing board until we find the one.

Tell us who you have in mind. If they're a fit for the project, we'll reach out to them on your behalf, at our discretion, to see about bringing them on board.

Then we go find the one who is. With over a decade of casting experience behind us, if no one on our current roster is right for your characters we'll run a custom casting call and hold auditions built specifically around your book until we land the perfect voice. Casting is our craft — your story is never limited to who's already on the roster.

We catch this early. During the first 15 minutes of recording (the First 15 checkpoint), we send you the file for approval. This is where you can tweak accents, tone, or pacing before we record the full book.

Yes. Duet is our specialty. Unlike Dual narration, where actors just read their own chapters, Duet involves actors recording strictly their character's dialogue lines, which are then stitched together for a seamless conversation. It is the most immersive format available.

Yes. We guarantee our files pass ACX technical requirements. We deliver high-quality MP3s (192kbps or higher), mastered to -23dB to -18dB RMS with a -60dB noise floor.

We deliver the retail-ready files to you via a secure download link. While we don't log into your ACX or KDP account for security reasons, we provide a step-by-step Upload Guide that makes the process foolproof.

Our files are compatible with every major distributor: Findaway Voices, Spotify, Kobo, and libraries like Overdrive and Hoopla. And through an aggregator like Authors Republic, a single submission pushes your title out to basically every storefront and library at once, so you're covered everywhere.

Honestly? No one can prevent piracy. Even the biggest DRM-locked, exclusive titles show up on the pirate sites within hours, and anyone who promises you an 'unpirateable' audiobook is selling a fantasy. So we do the opposite of pretending: every copy we sell direct is personalized and invisibly watermarked to its buyer, so a leak traces back to its source; we actively monitor the major piracy sites for your titles and act on what we find; and we keep your books DRM-free so we protect your honest readers instead of punishing them. A bonus of scanning for our own watermark is that we end up watching the whole field, so we'll often spot whether your book has been pirated at all, across every platform you use, Audible included. Almost no distributor does this for the artist. See our Author's Watchdog page for the full picture.