Is This the Moment? (Cecilia Peartree)

In the intervals of wrestling with ACX, I've managed to start some minimalist gardening.

For some time now, I’ve had the idea at the back of my mind that I’d like to have a go at audiobooks. I have a feeling the books in my 30-book mystery series might suit the format, and as a recent audiobook listener I now know that the right narrator can add a lot to the basic text.

Until now there were two main barriers preventing me from going ahead. One was the likely cost, needless to say. However I’ve somehow managed to make enough from Kobo sales, of all things, to cover the cost of having the first book, at least, narrated.

The other and slightly more daunting barrier was that I had always imagined my younger son was the only person I could trust to do the books justice. They are set in Fife, in Scotland, with a cast of characters who vary in age and life experience but are mostly Scottish, so I needed someone with a Scottish but not too Scottish accent. When I say ‘not too Scottish’, I mean an accent that is recognisably Scottish but still completely comprehensible to English speakers elsewhere.

Unfortunately for me, though not for himself, the son I had earmarked for the task now has a full-time job that keeps him very busy, in fact so busy that he sleeps through quite a lot of the weekend. However, I recently discovered that one of his friends, who like him has been involved in drama and film-making, has set up his own audio studio and is now narrating audiobooks professionally. I asked him to record a sample chapter and it was very much better than I had ever expected. The voices were exactly right for the different characters. I laughed out loud in the right places when I listened to it. We were all set.

 But I had reckoned without a third barrier popping up like the retractable bollards I had once seen in a television show. On the face of it, the process of setting up an account on ACX should have been ludicrously simple, since I was prompted to log in with my Amazon account details, the same ones that I also use for buying things on Amazon, selling books via KDP and listening to audiobooks via Audible. I got as far as doing a very basic setup and ‘claiming’ my book there, but I thought I would go back later to add my tax information and officially hire my chosen narrator, who had told me that was what to do next.

The next time I tried to log into ACX I was foiled by the advent of Two Step Verification on my account, which prevented me from getting any further. This was because for some reason ACX was unable to send a text message to my phone with the secret verification code, and there was no viable alternative way of sending the code. After trying in vain to have the text message sent, I went into Amazon as a customer and logged out and back in again. Two Step Verification had also unexpectedly been added to my account there, but fortunately the basic Amazon login gave me the option of having the code sent to WhatsApp instead. I usually hate WhatsApp but in this case it was just as well I had it on my phone. I found the same thing had happened to my KDP login, but again they used WhatsApp as an alternative to text message.

After fuming for some time, and then trying a sort of identity verification on the ACX login page, which meant uploading a photo of my driving licence, and which apparently had no effect whatsoever, I managed to find a support email address and contact them that way. The support people referred me to an irrelevant page on the Amazon help site, which was no use, but it did convince me that I should have a look at my overall Amazon account settings, so ACX support had sort of pointed me in more or less the right direction. Sure enough, after working through what seemed like a million kinds of setting, I found one that allowed me to disable Two Step Verification altogether. There was a moment’s hesitation during which I reflected on the possible consequences of being locked out of all my Amazon-related accounts, but this seemed to be the only way of ever getting back into ACX so I went ahead and clicked on the button.

So far, so good. I can access ACX again at last, so I can add the missing information, liaise with the narrator and get going with my audiobook. It will have to happen now anyway, as I’ve designed a square cover that matches the ebook and paperback covers. What more can go wrong? - watch this space!