Now That You’re Here, Where Do You Start?

A number of articles in this Knowledge Base fall in the category of Best Practices.

The info in each article is not just my opinion. Instead, I’m sharing hard-won knowledge gained through being in the audiobook industry for 20 years, listening to hundreds of audiobooks, attending continuous training and conferences, judging in the Voice Arts Awards for multiple years, voraciously reading articles, and daily discussing the topics with peers and producers in person and on-line. I also am republishing some excellent advice generously shared by other well-respected industry pros.

You can and should do your own listening and research to be aware of best practices and changing trends in the industry.

Start by listening to audiobooks published by the big 5 print publishers. If you don’t know who they are, a Google search will help you learn the answer. Learn to start with Google for most things you want to know. In this case, I’ve also included the Big 5 in the Glossary.

Subscribe to AudioFile Magazine and listen to the audiobooks in genres that interest you and especially those that earned Earphone Awards. Listen to audiobooks that earned Audie Awards from the Audio Publishers Association, Grammy awards from The Recording Academy, or any of the other dozen types of awards listed on this Audible page. Choose books with narrators who have been inducted into the Audible Narrator Hall of Fame and/or AudioFile Magazine’s Golden Voices.

If your rights holder asks you to do something that you haven’t heard done before, chances are very good that it isn’t done for a reason.

In addition, a narrator should seek out coaching to improve text analysis, performance skills, and workflow. This article and those linked within it will help you evaluate a coach.

While you can ask questions in narrator Facebook groups, you need to be very careful about the advice you accept and use. All members of such groups do not share the same level of experience or knowledge about the industry.

Taking a weekend class and/or doing a short book does not make one into an audiobook expert. If someone promotes themselves in multiple roles, such as a narrator, editor, and proofer, they probably haven’t done the requisite work needed to be an expert in any of those disciplines.

I’ve also seen some on-line offerings by those who have done a number of short books and are now selling their “secrets” to success rather than becoming a better narrator. For instance, one product states “Don’t be too concerned about a lack of experience when you are just starting out.”

Wrong.

If you are presenting yourself as a professional narrator, you are implying that you have the knowledge and skills to complete the job. You can volunteer to gain experience.

Do some research before accepting advice from someone unknown to you:

• If the person is another narrator, look up their portfolio on Audible.com. Listen to some of their samples and look at the customer ratings and comments. How many books have they done with durations longer than 6 hours?
• Check the person’s web site. How do they present themselves? Do they have professional reviews or awards?

 

Other resources on this topic:

• Narrator Ann Richardson has written a golden trifecta of excellent articles that all relate to Best Practices:

1. 1. She discusses 11 general Best Practices in this article.
   2. Ann offers terrific advice about ethics and etiquette in this one.
   3. Narrators need to have integrity and set and live up to standards of excellence.

If you’ve been hired by an author, their rep, or a small print publisher, you will want to send information to them at the outset that establishes expectations for both sides. You’ll find a link to my Welcome Packet below in the Resources.

When working directly with the author, you can request that the author provide you with character descriptions and pronunciations of any made-up words, supply them with an outline of your workflow, and establish expectations for payment. The author is not obligated to give you any descriptions.

When a producer or audiobook publisher hires you, though, be aware that you should NOT contact the author without first obtaining permission from your producer. Authors often license their audio rights and are not part of the audiobook production process.

Otherwise, when working with indie authors, many rights holders want you to upload chapters individually so that they can listen and critique them. As the producer, you should only upload the files of the complete, finished product. Revisions requested by the RH should be only of a technical nature, such as a mis-read or mispronunciation, rather than those based on artistic or stylistic choices.

This type of situation often becomes one of micro-management where the rights holder tries to act as a director after the fact.

Audiobook narration is a performance art based on the narrator’s interpretation of the text. The rights holder is not the director and should not expect to attend the recording sessions or re-shape the performance during the corrections process. In the same way that the author of the book is not present during the movie production of the book, their presence in an audiobook recording session would be disruptive to the recording artist and against the industry best practices.

Even in a case where the author would be willing to pay real time studio hours (as opposed to finished hours) in order to attend the recording sessions, the narrator should not accommodate this proposal. The author usually has not had any training in acting or directing and might not be able to communicate nuanced changes to the narrator.

The steps listed below outline the industry standard approach for the production process. While they aren’t rules set in stone, this workflow makes each step its most efficient.

Anyone who tells you things like “there are no rules” or “do whatever works for you” or “do whatever you feel comfortable with” or “don’t listen to the naysayers” is someone who wants to justify their own routine, ignores these industry best practices, and does not work for big audio publishers. If you hope to become a professional narrator, you will want to follow professional standards on independent productions.

Furthermore, deviating from these best practices can cause problems for people behind you on the path. Just as price shoppers brag about how little they paid, indie authors will tell their friends about directing sessions, critiquing chapters, and changing the narrator’s performance after the audiobook is completed.

 

Workflow

1) Narrator pre-reads ENTIRE book and does prep before ever setting foot in the recording booth. If the rights holder is different than the author, the RH may or may not allow the narrator to consult with the author.

1A) On ACX and Findaway Voices, the narrator records and uploads the first 15 minutes so that the narrator and rights holder can ensure they agree on tone and characterizations. This first 15 minutes does not have to occur at the beginning of the book. It can be any segment. Some audio publishers also have instituted this preliminary checkpoint.

Tanya Eby is an acclaimed narrator who wrote this excellent article about what a narrator should do if the first 15 minutes aren’t approved. She commented that an author once asked her to speed up her narration. Be aware that this sort of direction from an author on ACX can be a red flag of a project to avoid. Note: You may need a subscription to read Tanya’s Substack. You’ll find a discount offer in the Welcome Center.

2) Once the RH approves the first 15 minutes, the narrator records entire book, preferably using punch and roll technique, and making all acting choices without further input from the RH. The narrator reads word-for-word only the words that are on the page and is not allowed to make changes to the text without RH approval except in cases of obvious typos. Depending on your deadline, you may need to hand off the narration to the editor on a daily basis so that their work stays just behind yours. This situation is more common when you are working for an audio publisher,

Here are a couple of additional notes about reading the words on the page:

A) At section or scene changes, you do not insert the word “Meanwhile” or anything else. If the author wanted the word “Meanwhile”, s/he would have written it.

B) Narrator Holly Adams shared a cautionary tale on Facebook and gave me permission to reprint it below.

I recently narrated a non-fiction book for [a publisher] by a prominent expert in that field. It contained many interviews, and they were verbatim. [The publisher] makes whatever cuts/adjustments they feel are appropriate with the RH BEFORE I get the script.

It had many “uhs” and “ums”, and I was required to do each one. One of my pickups was actually to redo do a sentence because I had left out one of the “uhs” (there were two in a row for a total of three).

The prominent reviews trash me out as a narrator for “choosing to leave in the uhs”, and one review is even called “Narrators take note!!”.

DON’T take note. If you are working directly with an author, you must get their permission. If you are working for [a publisher such as] Tantor, Dreamscape, Podium, etc., THAT’S NOT YOUR CALL. You can ask, but in all likelihood, your manuscript will come with an email (or when you join the roster, it will be there) that says you must record every word, and if you don’t, you will be asked to do it over.

3) Editor edits the entire book for pacing, noise reduction, and volume consistency. The goal is to enhance the performance, not change it.

4) Proofer listens and notes errors with a timecode for the editor (noises) and narrator (misreads and mispronunciations) to fix.

5) The narrator rerecords their items found by the proofer in the previous step, which are known as pick-ups.

6) The narrator sends all the pickups (usually in a single file) to the editor, who seamlessly inserts the new recordings into the appropriate places in the original audio.

7) Once the entire book is edited and proofed, the editor or mastering engineer masters the corrected audio files to achieve consistency of sound throughout the entire book.

8) That person then exports the mastered files to MP3s that adhere to the specifications and sends them back to the producer who hired them.

9) In independent projects, the narrator is the producer who then uploads the final, mastered MP3s to complete the project.

Some people start a new session for each chapter. Others use one session file for the entire book. Either option will work within the framework stated above. Real digital audio workstations (DAW) are formulated to do long-form recording.

When working with indie authors, narrators should outsource their post (steps 3, 4, and 6-8) so that the narrator can focus on the thing that makes them money: NARRATION.

 

Other resources on this topic:

• Budget 6.2 hours (not including prep time) in real time to create 1 finished hour as explained in this article.
• I send a link to this “welcome packet” page on my site to rights holders at project inception to manage their expectations.
• This article for authors lists 9 things professional audiobook narrators do while recording the book that make narration a demanding and challenging performance medium.
• Narrator Tom Dheere presents an audiobook production checklist on his blog.
• Colin Firth beautifully expresses the division between the author and performer in this 1:10 video.
• Narrator Tanya Eby discusses how to keep your voice consistent during narration in this article. She also covers roles and expectations for the narrator and the author. Note: You may need a subscription to read Tanya’s Substack. You’ll find a discount offer in the Welcome Center.
• In this article on VoiceOverXtra, narrator James Romick explains punch and roll and includes links to videos demonstrating it in several DAWs. In his follow-up article, Romick compares P&R with the method of using a dog clicker during a raw record, and he includes a Reaper function and link to a Reaper video.
• This ACX blog post describes Audible’s QC procedure.
• In this 2:25 video, I show how one editor and I used iAnnotate during the corrections process. It also shows me recording the pickups.

 

It’s a very good idea for someone other than you to proof listen to your work for these reasons:

1) If you say a word incorrectly during the recording session, you’re likely to miss it again during proofing. Some people who hire a proofer even misspeak during pickups because your brain and mouth have been wired to say it a certain way. If you’ve been saying a word wrong for your whole life, you really don’t want to learn its correct pronunciation from reviewer after reviewer of the retail product.

2) If you pronounce a word inconsistently (like 2 ways for “either” or a character’s name), you may not notice the inconsistency throughout the recording.

3) An outside proofer will catch errors like booth noises that you are used to hearing. An experienced proofer may even hear issues with your technique that you aren’t aware of.

4) Even highly experienced narrators with 100s of books completed may average 5-10 misreads per finished hour, especially when working solo in the booth. At least 1 error every 10 minutes is common.

You should receive 3 things from your proofer: PDF, notation of errors, and voice match samples of the original audio.

The rights holder is NOT your proof listener. When working through ACX and Findaway, projects submitted to the rights holder should be the final, retail-ready product. It is incumbent upon you, the producer, to get your work proofed.

People who invest money in themselves, their business, and their production process move up more quickly in this business.

Doing lower quality work and avoiding industry best practices until you have more money will hold you back. Titles stay with you for 7 years. Audio publishers spend $1000s of dollars for the rights to produce audiobooks, so they must trust you before they will hire you to narrate for them. If you are producing sub-par work, you will be unable to earn that trust.

 

Other resources on this topic:

Since many narrators have asked me for resources so they can learn how to proof listen, I’ve included that information here.

• Proof listener Sarah Hannah Gómez wrote this detailed BookRiot article describing her job.
• The Audio Publishers Association created this video to demonstrate the proof listening process using Pozotron software.
• This archived article offers some tips for the proof listening process.
• This interview with proofer Genevieve Louis and the sites for proofers Lynda Rossi and Dalton Lynne give other perspectives.
• I created this list of additional info, training, employers, and other ideas about becoming a proof listener.
• A time-saving app to aid in proofing is listed in the Welcome Center.
• If you want to hire a proof listener, check out my searchable directory in Audiobook Village.