Audiobook hassles


We are struggling so much to get the Audiobook published. The sound files have been checked and accepted and there just seems to be a major glitch, now, with the cover art!

I’m struggling to understand it because we seem to meet all of the technical requirements with our image file, and yet it’s not passing their checks.

The only things left to try – which seem mad, but we’ll have to – are:

  • taking all of the words out of the background, map image, in case their scans are picking them up as part of the title; and
  • somehow getting rid of the three block background, in case it’s somehow reading this as “horizontal or vertical columns”.

It’s so strange though, because these factors didn’t cause any problems with the e.book and paperback editions and all of the platforms involved are owned by Amazon, so why no congruity, across the board, when it comes to scanning and approving the cover art?

I’ve got potential customers telling me they’re waiting for the audiobook before making the purchase, so time is of the essence and this is therefore pretty frustrating.

Reading around the internet, I see that getting cover art approval is a fairly typical problem for authors using ACX, which is Amazon’s audiobook hosting service. I wish they’d fix it! Or at least, add a function that tells us exactly what the problem is, so that we know exactly how to change the image at our end, instead of desperately trying one thing after another. We’ve tried about ten different versions of this artwork now and nothing seems to work. So far.


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