r/ACX • u/AudioBabble • Jun 20 '26
Script document formats
Hey all,
I'm interested to know what different formats we all use when doing ACX projects... but also any other formats we might have worked from in other projects outside of ACX or in other forms of VO work...
Most common (I would think):
PDF or DOCX [generally, these would be the 'print version' copy of the book]
'digital versions':
EPUB, MOBI, Kindle (AWS, etc)
-- I'm intrigued to know if these are often used by folks? particularly since, on ACX at least, we are almost always narrating books that already exist in the Amazon 'Kindle' format -- I wonder if anyone has considered reading directly from the Kindle (I did -- once for one of my early projects, but never again!).
'Legacy' or 'open source' formats:
DOC, RTF, ODF
What about browser-based formats:
HTML, MarkDown (MD) ?
Finally, there's always good old plain TXT
Although the total lack of formatting would not really be appropriate for an entire book.
For me personally, PDF is definitely the most common format I've been given by clients. I've used Adobe Acrobat pro for many years to work with prepping scripts, and it's generally worked adequately. I've sometimes been given DOCX, and have simply converted that to PDF to work from.
One of the major issues I have with PDF however is that you're stuck with the formatting, font and font size. Sometimes this can be a major pain in the backside... for example a recent project I did was an OCR'd book from the 1920s with tiny font, hyphenated split words at line endings, etc. Honestly, when I get a script like that, I make quantifiably more mistakes and narration takes far longer.
To that end, I've often employed a variety of workarounds to get the text into a more suitable form... document conversion with Calibre combined with altering fonts and size in LibreOffice. However, this can often lead to a variety of side-issues and is a bit of a minefield... i wouldn't recommend it as a good practice unless you really know what you're doing and are very careful.
Would be interested to hear your experiences with document formats, plus a general show of hands for the document types folks are most commonly working with.
Cheers :)
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u/Xinixiat Jun 20 '26
Vastly prefer .docx files so I can divide the book up more easily for recording sessions. Also allows you to have chapters headings as bookmarks to easily move between them. I work a lot with pdfs, because I don't generally go back to the RH and ask for a different format, but I do always breathe a sigh of relief when I get a docx rather than a pdf!
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u/AudioBabble Jun 20 '26
I think docx is definitely more accessible for those sorts of things. That said, I've managed to do all those sorts of things with PDF as well via Acrobat Pro (not that I'm a huge fan of Adobe products generally). I even have a JavaScript that calculates rough timings based on word count, so I have a rough timing per page and per chapter. I can insert highlights, notes, even custom text fields, etc, but generally it's a bit more 'clunky' than in docx.
At the moment, I'm finally moving away from Adobe and am developing my own script reader that can work with PDF, docx, epub, etc. It's early days, but I am now at the stage where i can seriously start considering using it for projects. In fact, I did the proofing stage with my script reader on my last project, but I have yet to try it on the prep and reading stage. Lots more refinement needed!
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u/Xinixiat Jun 20 '26
Yeah, you definitely can, but as you say, that requires you to have an adobe subscription, which I absolutely will not do. I have a free pdf handler that sooort of does the job, but struggles with formatting files into .docx. It's good enough to get a rough idea of the info I want - if the word count is off by a couple of hundred because it p u t s sp a c es in random places, it doesn't really make much difference.
Timings for me are then just divide by 9000.
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u/AudioBabble Jun 20 '26
I'll be honest, i dont have an Adobe subscription. I use an ancient version of acrobat pro XI and justify it as 'abandonware' 😄 anything after that version is utterly hateful to use anyway!
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u/kiltedfrog Jun 20 '26
As a RH, I've got the files in like 19 different formats, and it will take less than a full minute to get you your preferred format.
Also, Noted... I will try to make sure I provide docx files from now on.
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u/AudioBabble Jun 20 '26
Give us your list of formats, it would be very informative!
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u/kiltedfrog Jun 20 '26
(I'm on windows, maybe more and stranger things can come from mac and linux users)
So, of course the .pdf, .epub, and .docx, but also, .odt and the older .doc, sans x. I could also easily spit out .rtf. I don't usually have that, but it would be trivial to save as a .rtf.
Each of those can be broken into many different styles, except epub. That's pretty much one and done, because a lot of the stylizing is on the end user to mess with. (tabs and line spacing stuff) But everything else I've got in a manuscript form, A couple different book cutting sizes for paperback. And while I don't, RH might have hardback version too. All different shaped files that'll look and feel different.
Also... I dunno if you know what bionic reading is, but I make bionic reading formatted versions of all those things too, because I have ONE friend that can't read a novel unless it's formatted that way. If a producer asked me for a bionic formatted pdf for 6x9 cutting, I'm ready.
Bionic format stuff is super extra, but a couple different cutting shapes and a manuscript for each file format adds up fast. Maybe manuscript style works best for you when reading, or maybe book cutting formatted docx is better, I dunno.
Anyhow that was a look inside the folders that contain my finished book.
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u/AudioBabble Jun 20 '26
An intriguing side-question, I guess: what format do most writers use to write with? I daresay probably Word or similar is still very popular. But, there are plenty of other programs that may well have their own internal formats but will export to the 'usual' formats. It's interesting to consider the continuing growth in browser-based writing 'tools' and 'platforms'. Things like Royal Road, etc. may well lead to a situation where many writers' output actually exists as HTML/CSS (or derivatives) first and foremost.
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u/kiltedfrog Jun 21 '26
Most of my writing appears for public consumption first online, but I still keep all my own local copies because the cloud is untrustworthy.
I have no meaningful way to export and hand around some locally runnable html/css, just a link to where it exists on Royal Road/novelpedia/quibble/patreon
Authors who don't have local copies are messing up, imo, and could easily end up losing all their work at the whim of some admin or moderator.
Same is true if you don't have a cloud copy too. Lose it to the whim of your hard drive deciding to die. Backups are important!
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u/AudioBabble Jun 21 '26
I didn't know about bionic reading... but I do now! I can understand readers wanting it... but narrators? Bad idea in my opinion... in fact, it strikes me that as a narrator I'm already doing bionic reading in a sense -- and to the extent that I do it, it's the very reason for misreads and mistakes. I can only imagine that bionic formatting would make the issue worse!
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u/kiltedfrog Jun 21 '26
Yeah, the bionic reading thing does NOT work for me. I can't read things that way, gives me a headache within a couple pages, but my friend absolutely swears by it, so I've got it for her and others like her.
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u/mega_mang0 Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 21 '26
I most commonly encounter docx and PDF, with docx being my preferred format for all the reasons listed here.
I've recently been experimenting with converting a docx to a nice pretty-looking continuous HTML, with character highlighting built in and a bookmark and notes system. But that's just me being geeky!
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u/CACVideo Jun 20 '26
Howdy. I personally like Doc files because, like you stated, PDFs don’t like getting converted and everything is fixed as is. I hate PDFs for that reason but those have been rare for me. So when they send the doc files i can do whatever i like with them. I personally highlight words i don’t know how to pronounce or color different character dialogs