If it looks like a duck and smells like a duck, it's probably a duck

I got an email the other day from a company that said "We heard your voice sample on a voiceover website (name protected here). It spoke to us. We'd like you to audition for our project.”

I don't get many of these as I get most of my auditions directly from various voiceover websites. But some do trickle in...I asked them for more details and they sent me a 34,000 word audiobook script and said they'd pay me US$5,000. They wanted the project done in 6 days!

In an  earlier blog post I wrote that I had sworn off audiobooks...but the money here wasn't bad.  I looked up the company (I won’t name them here) and they seemed legit, they had an actual website.  The person who emailed me had a LinkedIn profile. They asked for a 2 sentence read, I provided that, they came back to me and said they “loved it” and wanted me to get started.

One problem – they had not provided a contract.  So I asked them for one and they sent me an “Independent contractor” document that was pretty heavily one sided towards them.  I looked it over and asked them to include language addressing the following:

-Include the stated pricing and terms.  I also asked for 50% payable up front (why not ask) and 50% upon completion.

-Kill fee.  I should be paid the entire amount if they canceled the project for any reason.

-Revisions.  Limited to technical or performance errors.

-I can use the material for a demo.

So I sent this request to my contact and she responded “We’ve talked about this before, don’t stress the process”….and that’s when my “Spidey Sense” went to defcon.

So I did some more research on the person from their end.  As I mentioned she had a LinkedIn profile and but upon further research I found that she was involved in the field but didn’t list the inquiring company name in her profile.  I also contacted my VO coach and she told me to do more research but this looked fishy.  Then I reached out to the support folks at the VO Website where they said “my voice spoke to them”.  They responded and said that the inquiry was not legit.  They blocked them from accessing their website and strongly suggested I walk away from the opportunity.

Which I did.

I have talked to some others in the voiceover field about this.  Some said that they wanted my voice to convert it to AI.  Others said that they wanted to just use my recording and not pay me.

The moral of the story here is that you have to be on the lookout for stuff like this.  It’s unfortunate but true. Things that are read flags (some are obvious):

-Email from the inquiring person is not from a corporate address (ie gmail). This was a corporate address but different from the name that was on the contract draft they sent me

-Weird script stuff. Like this one ended with an incomplete sentence. I asked about it and they said "the book is not finished, just read what you have"

-If they get your voice from a VO website most of them (but not all of them) don't let potential clients contact you directly. If in doubt ask the VO guys

-Unrealistic deadlines

-High Priced Offer. Other Audiobooks I've done paid much less than these guys were offering me

If you have any other thoughts on the matter please reach out to me, I’d like to hear your thoughts. Keep voicing!