There is a lot of good information online regarding soundproofing and gear, but here are some tips for audiobook narrators and podcast producers that other sites rarely cover.

Stay on mic. This is especially important in less padded environments, where the room sound can be very distracting (and un-fixable in post!) Be mindful as you read down your script that you aren’t tilting your face away from the mic.  A consistent distance and angle with the mic will also allow for seamless splicing between takes.

Reduce mouth noise by eating an apple, using mouth sprays, or drinking hot water with honey and lemon (this is also soothing to a sore throat). Avoid mucus-forming foods and beverages, including dairy, sugar, coffee, etc. Sip some water during the session if you hear yourself becoming noisy.

Wear quiet clothing, and don’t move! Most spoken word audio will be highly compressed which brings out quiet noises. Every rustle or drawn-out noise during a phrase will require a re-record (un-fixable in post) so leave the corduroy jacket, dangly earrings, and ticking watch outside of the booth!

Listen back using good-quality headphones. Some of your audience will be wearing headphones, and your editor and quality control people definitely will be! We recommend using closed circumaural headphones.  If possible listen back in a different room; you’ll get a better sense of how the recording actually sounds if you move to a different space. Continue Reading »

What does audiobook post-production entail?
Audiobook post-production includes every step between the recording session and delivery of finished audio to the duplicator or digital distributor. These steps always include Editing, Mixing/Mastering, and Quality Control (QC), and sometimes include Sound Design and Music Composition. The most important of these steps is Editing.

In the audiobook industry, Editing involves taking raw audio from the recording session and cutting out all misreads and other interruptions. It can, and should, involve varying degrees of audio polishing to remove distracting noises, correct timing problems, and smooth volume levels. These tasks become more manageable with professional experience and the use of specialized software that allows extremely fast discovery and correction of problems. We average about 1300 edits in each hour of audio read by a professional voice actor; for an author or inexperienced reader that number can be doubled or tripled! The result is a squeaky clean and accurate rendering of the text with no audible distractions. Continue Reading »

Anyone interested in becoming an audiobook reader should check out these articles, books, and websites for more information about the audiobook business and craft. We welcome professional long-narration demos from prospective narrators. We also offer competitively-priced individual coaching and long-narrative demo production; please contact us for more information about those services.

Articles about the audiobook biz & narrating - http://www.audiofilemagazine.com/gvpages/narratorscorner.shtml

Book- There’s Money Where Your Mouth Is: An Insider’s Guide to a Career in Voice-Overs by Elaine A. Clark (Available through the Seattle Public Library and Amazon)

Article about audiobook demos- http://www.voiceoverxtra.com/article.htm?id=ue7x3qd5

To find the genres most likely to need your voice, go to Audible.com and listen to many, many audiobook samples!

To hear other narrator demos- http://www.audiofilemagazine.com/guide_search_advanced.cfm

Reading Practice-

Libravox: Volunteer Public Domain Audiobook Reading- http://librivox.org/volunteer-for-librivox/

Recordings for the Blind- http://www.rfbd.org/Volunteer/33/

The Braille Institute- http://www.brailleinstitute.org/volunteer

Your state’s department for the disabled and many public libraries, schools, and sometimes bookstores also welcome volunteer readers or can direct you to local places that do.

Pricing among audiobooks varies as much as print books, but here are some averages and rules of thumb that might be useful.

For a 6-hour audiobook on CD, prices are around $25-30, or about $4-5 dollars per hour of audio. For a 6-hour digital audiobook, expect to fetch about half of that, or about $15-17 dollars (~ $2.50-2.60 / hour of audio) . Per-hour prices generally follow an inverse bell curve which dips into the production “sweet spot” where the product-to-package ratio is ideal. This is a greater consideration for physical products like CDs, for obvious reasons.

The good news is that audiobooks hold their value pretty well over time, and older audio titles aren’t discounted as heavily as print versions on sites such as Amazon. Another difference that we’ve noted is that there is a much smaller discrepancy between Amazon and publishers when listing audiobooks (in all formats, but especially digital audio books) than there is with print books.

As with any product, you should research your competition and then price your book accordingly. We are happy to assist you in deciding between various production, duplication, and distribution methods. For your convenience, click here to see a spreadsheet with some of our author-read audiobooks and their various large-publisher prices.