Hi all,
Looks like a great resource here, delighted to have joined.

I've been in the audio industry on the production side for 25 years now and in the last 12 worked as an audio professional in the digital eLearning sector for companies like Riverdeep, The Learning Company, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Here's my Linked-in resume.

ie.linkedin.com/pub/richard-speedie/4/599/154/

Whilst I worked as Audio Video Manager for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, I was directly responsible for booking over 10 million words of voice-over through companies in Florida, Boston, Austin, Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego and Seattle. Throughout that time, I always saw the potential to operate as a vendor myself and use freelance voice arists with ISDN or their own studios. The idea is to have a large pool of pre-approved talent (by the vendor) that is able to take on some of these huge textbook eReader projects. For example, reading 13 grades of Language Arts textbooks with each book being betwen 600 and 900 pages. Add on the workbooks, the levelled readers, some web delivery and you quickly get the picture. I have the direct experience of script organisation, marking up textbooks, managing over all scheduling, contracts, NDAs, Statments of Work, negotiating favourable payment terms, working with Indian and Chinese software subcontractors that provide the engineering and Quality Assurance services to large corporations, dealing with online bug tracking databases...all the stuff that is a total headache for independent talent to manage.

I already have a number of projects in the pipeline and have already been in contact with some of my old suppliers, but I'm also looking for a bunch of new people. I'll be 100% straight up. As many of you will know, his isn't for everyone, in fact, it's for the few and renumeration wise, it's not nearly as lucrrative as advertising, broadcast stuff. These gigs are non-union, full buyout, volume narration, with hard deadlines and since it's education, considerations around pronunciation, pacing, clear diction, accents, all sorts of stuff. However, it's very steady work and can be lucrative if you grind it out. I'm looking to provide a clean service, honest, no bullshit and once I can demonstrate I can handle the capacity, will be able to bid on the huge contracts that are available through my direct contacts within a number of major companies. There is also a huge amount of IOS and Android App development going on within this sector with opportunities for more luicrative characters gigs.

If you're a male or female VO, any age, with your own ISDN line setup or own studio and can provide both raw files and/or edited files, please get in touch with me via rs@speedieserv.com

I'd be keen to have your reel, know your technical setup and at least some idea on pricing and your general availability. I most use the 'finished hour of voice over' rate...so how much $$ to provide me one hour of straight textbook or story book narration, clean, fully edited by the page. In terms oif quality, every line does not need to be handcrafted and perfectly delviered but it must always be educationally sound. For difficult reads, the clients will provide pronunciation guides.

If you're interested, please drop me a line and I'd be happy to do a call to talk it through. I'm based in Dublin Ireland where many digital software companies that provide content to the US and elsewhere are based.

I honestly hope this post does nothing to offend anyone, that I have not broken any forum guidelines or norms. If I have, please contract me and I'd be happy to remove or alter content to comply.

Best
Richard Speedie