Best Practices

You must do preliminary work before stepping into the booth. This point is a non-negotiable standard in the industry.

If you don’t know where the story is headed, how can you possibly tell it well?

In her book Audiobook Narrator: The Art of Recording Audio Books, legendary award-winning narrator Barbara Rosenblat, whom AudioFile Magazine compared to Meryl Streep, wrote about the importance of pre-reading the book:

I read the book only once, slowly.

I determine what voices to lend to the various characters as I prep the book.I read the book only once, slowly.

I take the book, sit in my favorite chair with as much quiet as I can surround myself with, and slowly start to pore through the book and allow the characters and the atmosphere and the dramatic arcs to occur to me as I read.

I have to read the book at least once so I know where the characters are going, so I can foreshadow and deliver lines differently depending on what is still to come.

Most of us cannot be true to the author’s intent if we do not read the book before we record. Prep is not wasted time but instead is the crucial element of the job. Usually, the more work you can do on the front end leads to a smoother and easier time during the recording process and a better finished product.

Over time, you will develop your own process for prep.

Every word in the book has meaning and lends itself to one’s overall interpretation of the text.

In his 21 Targets course, narrator and coach Matthew Lloyd Davies further emphasized that the text is all we have. He said:

There are only the words on the page. There is nowhere else to look! If you look anywhere else, then you’re not telling the story of the book.

Most narrators read a digital copy of the book on their tablet. I’m one of the many pro narrators who uses the iAnnotate app on an iPad for this purpose. The $9.99 cost of the app is a business expense. This app works well with the Apple Pencil and has built-in features to aid in our prep. (I developed a video course on this app for those narrators who have a Member Express Pass. Click here if you’d like to see a sample.) Other popular annotation apps include Notability and Good Reader. You’ll want to experiment to find the one you like best.

If you want to reformat your PDF script before reading and annotating it, Johnny Freeman at Pozotron created the video Mastering PDF Prep in Pozotron to show the steps in the paid version of Adobe Acrobat.

Characters

You’ll be making decisions about how to perform the book to realize the author’s intentions, including giving thought to character voices. You need to glean every bit of info about the characters to be able to portray them as real people instead of caricatures.

Narrator and coach Matthew Lloyd Davies noted during my section of his 21 Targets course that we often forget to ask ourselves 2 important questions when deciding how to tell the story:

1. “Who is telling this story?”
2. “Could I listen to this for 10 hours?”

You may think that you can simply ask the author for character breakdowns and pronunciations. Please do not rely on this lazy approach! As the narrator, you are supposed to be the expert, and as such, prepping the book is a significant part of your job.

Other Considerations

Words not directly related to character development are vitally important for establishing appropriate pacing and tone. They reveal the subtext of the relationships and story arc and drive our interpretations.

You must “read between the lines” and understand the subtext of each scene and how it builds the story arc. You control the surprise for the listener. Otherwise, audiobooks could be recorded by artificial intelligence (AI) instead of actors.

You’ll want to consider diversity, equality, and inclusivity when determining whether you are the best fit for the material.

Reading the book also allows you to check your inner compass. If the manuscript contains sections you find objectionable that you do not wish to perform, the time to cancel a contract is before you have started recording the book.

Author and Publisher Contact

When an author hires you, you can send them a welcome packet that includes your questions, but please realize that it’s not the author’s job to supply you with anything. (For example of a welcome packet, look for my page in the Resources of Audiobook production workflow.)

When a publisher or production house hires you, you may only receive a synopsis. They don’t have the capacity to read every book. They expect the narrator to do thorough prep to make appropriate acting choices based on the author’s intent.

However, you can ask the producer for the book’s Style Sheet. Narrator Natalie Naudus shared that the traditional print publishers create these Style Sheets when editing the book. The audio group may need to request it from the print group, and it may not always be available. Some Style Sheets include more details than others. You won’t know unless you ask for it.

In addition, you should be aware that when you are working with publishers, you should not attempt to contact the author without the publisher’s permission. You would submit any questions about pronunciations and characters to the producer.

As a tangent to that last point about working with publishers, let me add that you should not share any pre-release info on social media without the publisher’s permission.

During your pre-read, do the following things:

1) Read Amazon and Goodreads reviews of your book. They often contain a synopsis of the book which may help you recognize its plot points and themes. Reviewers also frequently summarize the characters’ traits and sometimes comment that the book and/or characters reminds them of a TV show or movie.

2) Analyze the book’s genre, tone and personality. AudioFile Golden Voice Narrator Kevin Free offers these comments about what he looks for on his first read.

3) Create a pronunciation list and note any words you don’t know how to say or only think you know how to say, including names of cities, real people, brands, technical jargon, and foreign phrases. Incorrect pronunciations are a sure-fire way to make a listener drop out of the story! (I encourage you to read narrator and director Kimberly Wetherell’s Twitter thread about the audiobook production process in response to a listener who complained about pronunciation errors.)

You may need to consult several sources in order to find an authoritative answer. The first pronunciation listed in a dictionary may not be correct for your book or your character. Your decision about the correct usage is based on the context, author’s style, time period, socio-economic background of the character, and dialect.

Also, names of cities, towns, and streets should be pronounced the way the locals say it. For instance, Cairo, GA, Cairo, IL, and Cairo, Egypt have 3 different pronunciations.

Some narrators prefer to enter add their pronunciation research to the text. I advise you to enter all of your pronunciation research in a separate document so that you can easily share it with your editor and proofer, and reuse it on later books, especially if you are doing a book in a series. I use Evernote as you can see in this video.

Finishing your pronunciation research before you are in the booth could make you a more efficient narrator and enable you to maintain the flow of the narrative. Some narrators who work alone in their booth — NOT in a company’s studio or on a project involving other narrators — prefer to research pronunciations on the fly. You’ll find some pronunciation resources listed in the Welcome Center.

4) Take notes about anything descriptive about fiction characters, including what the character says about himself and what others say about him. For instance, you may learn deep into the book that they have a specific accent. I discuss this step more and include an example of one of my Evernote character dossiers in this article.

You’ll also find some helpful tips about character development in this Backstage article and tips for committing to your characters in this one written by narrator Elise Arsenault.

If you have permission to contact the author, you could ask them for any background material they can share with you, such as character profiles, pronunciations (especially helpful for sci-fi/fantasy books with invented places and species), or their ideal Hollywood casting. Narrator Joel Leslie describes his character questionnaire in this article.

Some people find it useful to highlight each character’s dialogue in a different color or write initials in the margin so that you know who is speaking.

It may help you to highlight or underline descriptors or “stage” directions, such as “he whispered” or “she said in a trembling voice” as narrator Suzy Jackson demonstrates at 1:31 in this video.

You may also find it useful to map out relationships between characters and/or the characters in a scene. To that end, narrator Rachel Leblang offers this suggestion:

I always block some time out after I finish reading a book for prep to sit down and hand write out the main characters and what lasting impressions I had of them: characteristics, relationships, story arcs, etc. To see what really stuck with me about each person after reading the whole thing.

Whether you decide on a voice before you record or during the session, save a snippet of the voice some place where you can easily reference it later in the session. You might save it on your computer with you DAW or on your phone’s voice recorder. You’ll be able to hear it and get back into character whenever you need it.

Site members can watch watch module 12 of my iAnnotate Video Course in which I show how to store and share voice clips within iAnnotate.

Narrator Barbara Henslee shared her Excel workbook template (file download) in which she records all her notes during prep. The file has tabs for Time, Space, Notes for Author, Characters, Chapter Summaries, Typos, and Pronunciation.

5) For non-fiction books, you need to perform with the passion of the author even though you will probably lack their expertise. You would do well to follow narrator and coach Sean Pratt’s guidance in his 2-part mini-masterclass about non-fiction prep on VoiceOverXtra:
Part One
Part Two

You’ll also want to refer to Sean’s article about the 4 voices of non-fiction.

Narrator and Casting Director Tanya Eby offers advice about Narrating Non-fiction. (Note: You may need a subscription to read Tanya’s Substack. You’ll find a discount offer in the Welcome Center.)

Case Studies

Audiobook narrators always hear the anecdotal story about the narrator who didn’t do any prep and learned when recording page 300 that the main character had a specific accent. This narrator then had to re-record all of that character’s lines in the book.

I want to share 2 actual case studies that illustrate the importance of thoroughly prepping the entire book before starting to record.

1. Harold and Maude by Colin Higgins, narrated by Barbara Rosenblat

A listener on Audible commented in her audiobook review:

I did not care for Barbara Rosenblat’s use of a German dialect for Maude. Again, Ruth Gordon’s portrayal of the sweet, seemingly naive and fun loving Maude appealed to me much more.

The narrator can’t depend on or even consider a movie actor’s interpretation of the text and must come up with her own interpretation of the author’s words.

In this book, the author steered Rosenblat to a German accent with these lines:

p. 16 The narrative tells us, “She spoke with a slight European accent.”

p. 29 Maude says, “I don’t speak Dutch. German, French, English, some Spanish, some Italian, and a little Japanese.” I would think that most people would list their native language first.

p. 58  Maude says, “When I was a little girl in Vienna…” and [she met her husband when she] “knocked off his hat. With a snowball in the Volksgarten.” Note that German is the official language of Austria.

p. 72 The narrative states “She had taught Frederick to play marbles when they were in hiding after the Anschluss.” 

2. Bamie: Theodore Roosevelt’s Remarkable Sister by Lilian Rixey, narrated by Karen Commins

I confess! Even with my experience, I became one with the anecdotal narrator though not because of lack of thorough prep. Instead of discovering a necessary accent late in the book, I learned a critical pronunciation, which I never would have thought would be so obscurely revealed, especially near the end of the manuscript.

Theodore Roosevelt’s sister Anna “Bamie” Roosevelt married a man with the last name of Cowles. I didn’t know whether it was pronounced to rhyme with bowls (long ō) or howls (dipthong) and couldn’t find it in during my pronunciation research.

I needed to start recording on a certain day to meet my deadline. I had read and prepped most — but not all — of the 303 pages in the book.

Since I still hadn’t discovered how to pronounce Cowles, we called an organization dedicated to the study and legacy of Theodore Roosevelt and asked them. The person confidently said the name rhymes with howls.

I silently read and prepped the remaining pages after starting the recording phase. I didn’t note any issues.

You can’t imagine my dismay when I read aloud on page 279 this “rhymed toast” in Bamie’s guest book written by her sister Corinne, who certainly would have known how the name was pronounced:

To Admiral and Mrs. Cowles
(Magnetic pair of sunlit souls!)

Since souls rhymes with bowls, I did what I should have done at the outset — I combed through obituaries, found a surviving family member, and contacted that person to ask the correct pronunciation. I had to re-record about 150 instances of the name! I was just glad I could make the edits before sending the book to the editor!

Other resources on this topic:

• You’ll need to consider these comments on delivery speed, genre, pauses, and tone in shaping your performance.
• I found The Art of Reading audio course and accompanying guide to be extremely useful in analyzing a book’s structure and author’s style in depth, which helps us to give a more nuanced read. Professor Timothy Spurgin’s discussion of the type of narrators’ voices in the text is invaluable! Note that the presenter is not a professional narrator, so he stumbles over his words a lot in these lectures.
• While she’s not an audiobook narrator, NPR’s Terry Gross explains her process for reading books before an interview in this video. Her comments about writing down the connecting theme of the book and finding clues in the author’s prologue, introduction, and dedication are especially relevant to our work. Thanks to narrator Elizabeth Wiley for sharing this find.
• APA members will find at least 2 past webinars on script prep under the Resources/Webinars menu option after logging in to audiopub.org.
• Grammy-winning producer and director Paul Alan Ruben describes:
  • using the prep process to connect emotionally to the text in this article
  • how the text gives us actable clues in this article
• Audible Studios producer/directorThomas Mann discusses the prep process in this video for ACX University.
• Star narrator Katherine Kellgren was well-known for her extensive prep. Sadly, she is no longer with us, but you can learn much about her process from her interviews here and here.
• Award-winning narrator Ann Richardson wrote a comprehensive article about prep for VoiceOverXtra that includes guides for fiction and non-fiction books. She also described skills needed by a good book-preparer on her blog.
• Award-winning narrator Joel Leslie Froomkin takes you behind the scenes of his prep process in this article. He also shows how to use reviews before you audition and markup your book during prep in this video.
• AudioFile Golden Voice Michael Crouch describes his process for prep and character delineation in this interview.
• Award-winning narrator and former casting director Tanya Eby describes in this article how your prep might change as you gain experience. In this article, she discusses whether to notify the author or producer about errors you discover in the book. (Note: You may need a subscription to read Tanya’s Substack. You’ll find a discount offer in the Welcome Center.)
• Narrator Dawn Harvey shares excellent tips about prep in her article on VoiceOverXtra.
• Narrator Heidi Rew offers her approach to prep using a spreadsheet in this article.
• Narrator Matt Godfrey discusses his thought process and actions during prep and recording sessions in this in-depth article.
• ACX University created this video on audiobook prep.
• Several narrators offered good preparatory tips, including how to maintain consistency between recording sessions, in this article.
• Author and narrator CC Hogan shares here how he prepares the script for recording.
• Award-winning narrator and business coach Jennifer Jill Araya joins the hosts of The Narrator Roundtable in this video to discuss working with a prepper.
• Award-winning narrator Sean Pratt describes the “colors” of the paragraph in non-fiction books and shares a few pages of mark-up in this article.
• This article illustrates that every word has meaning, and a single word can shape an actor’s entire performance. Thanks to narrator Michelle Lee for the find.
• Prep tips from several narrators are included in this Voices.com article.
• On 10/28/25, several narrators discussed prep on the Narrators Assemble show on Clubhouse.
• Award-winning narrator and author Travis Baldree offers advice about developing your process in this essay.
• Work with a coach from the Coaches Directory and check out the list of downloadable courses in the Welcome Center.

Music playing under the opening and closing credits is acceptable as it may help set the mood for the book. In the past, almost every audiobook included music during the credits. These days, the trend is to not include any music in the intro or outro of the audiobook.

A music bed should not be playing under the narration in the chapters or between scenes or chapters in an audiobook. Like sound effects, audiobook listeners can find music to be jarring.

You can use music from any source, but keep these 4 caveats in mind:

1. Any music used in an audiobook must be licensed to you for this purpose. If the rights holder wants you to use copyrighted music in the audiobook, you should not use it without proof of an accompanying license.
2. The music must be mixed with the narration to keep the files within specified levels.
3. All of your book audio files must be either mono or stereo. They can’t include both types.
4. The normal contracts between a RH and narrator do not include the addition of music. Selecting and mixing music are tasks that should be charged as additional line items.

Case Studies

Credits

I have used Audioblocks.com to find stock clips that I added to audiobook credits, such as in the clips below. The Audioblocks.com license includes this commercial usage.

Opening Credits

Closing Credits

Between Chapters

Read the numerous negative Audible listener comments about the harmonica music between chapters of THE GRAPES OF WRATH audiobook. Click the “Show More” link at the end of the reviews a number of times and then search the page first for mentions of “harmonica” and again for “music” using a CTRL-F (PC) or CMD-F (Mac).

Other resources on this topic:

• This article offers more information about copyrights and music and lyrics.

If you are producing the audiobook in addition to narrating it, you should NOT hold the view that “the customer is always right.”

Many authors have not listened to audiobooks and are not aware of industry norms. When working with an author, it’s up to you to guide them correctly.

You should listen to many, MANY titles produced by big audiobook publishers to hear and learn standard practices for all phases of production. A good place to start your education is with the titles reviewed in AudioFile Magazine. For instance, I have heard ending credits that mention the director, producer, and sometimes even recording studio for the production. Certain publishers will include their web site. However, I have never heard ending credits include the author’s bio or other books.

You may ask producers and publishers if they have a style guide, which may include information about sections to record as well as specifics that the publisher uses for consistency across titles. For instance, a publisher may dictate whether you should say the word “Chapter” when the text only indicates a number or name for the chapter heading.

However, major audio publishers don’t always specify the sections they expect to be in the finished audiobook. If no style guide is available and you’re self-directing, use this chart and the notes below it to determine the parts of the book that you should record.

A PDF document for screen readers is available at this link.

Notes:

These guidelines apply to retail products. If you are narrating for an organization that produces recordings that are fully accessible for the visually-impaired, you may be instructed to read the bibliography and other sections that are not normally included.

The opening and closing credits are supplied by the rights holder.

On a multicast recording, you would say all of the narrators’ names in both the opening and closing credits. You wouldn’t say the parts they played. That information is sometimes listed in the audiobook’s description as shown in this example.

In the end credits, you can also say “Original music by Whomever”, “Engineered by SoAndSo” along with the author and narrator. It’s entirely proper to add these people to the credits.

If the rights holder wants the dedication included, it would be recorded at the head of the file after the opening credits, which is typically chapter one in fiction books. You would not re-write the dedication but simply read the words as written.

When the Foreword, Preface, or Introduction morph into Acknowledgements, the entire section may be omitted in the audiobook. The practice is to read all or none of these sections.

If the epigraph or any part of the book contains lyrics to a copyrighted song, you should review Can I sing the lyrics printed in the book? before including those lyrics in the audiobook.

The narrator is not the editor! The rights holder should provide a finished manuscript that is ready to be recorded. In some non-fiction books, the narrator may be asked to extemporaneously describe charts and graphs that appear as reference material. Doing so requires extra skill and time. You may be able to negotiate a higher rater depending on the amount of description that you must supply.

While glossaries usually are not read, the narrator may need to include them in sci-fi or other books where the author made up terms.

You could suggest to the rights holder that they should create a PDF of the reference material that accompanies the audiobook. You then would say things like “See chart E on page 22 of the reference PDF.” Ideally, the rights holder would include a script of these deviations from a word-for-word reading of the text. You could refer rights holders to this guide that shows how to create the companion PDF and this info from ACX/Audible about submitting it.

Footnotes and endnotes also are rarely recorded. As the director, you can choose to include one or more that contain an interesting fact, but you would not be obligated to say all of them. To aid listener comprehension, you would read them in or after the line with the citation, indicating that the info came from the foot/endnote.

Previews of the next book should not be recorded for 2 reasons:

1. You may not be the narrator of the next book.
2. More importantly, as author Isobel Starling noted in a FB discussion (quoted with her permission):

Listeners don’t like sneak peeks in audiobooks. They choose audio based on the length — and audios are priced on length. If an audiobook has chapter one of the next book in a series, that addition artificially inflates the running time. Listeners feel cheated to find out the story isn’t as long as they were led to believe.

Other resources on this topic:

• ACX provides suggested text for opening and ending credits on this page.
• Award-winning narrator and Casting Director Tanya Eby elaborates on these guidelines and offers additional advice about narrator expectations in this article. She includes some additional information about components of non-fiction books in this article. Note: You may need a subscription to read Tanya’s Substack. You’ll find a discount offer in the Welcome Center.
  

Audiobooks usually do not include sound effects.

However, you may have heard effects in some audiobooks and know their usage is growing in popularity. You may want to add them to your book.

Your rights holder may insist you include effects.

Don’t do it.

Audiobooks are not a radio or TV show, movie, podcast, stage production, or game where effects would be utilized and expected by the audience.

Instead, an audiobook is an intimate performance of the storyteller right in the listener’s ear, usually by a solo narrator, though dual, duet, and multi-cast reads are increasingly in demand

Our job as a narrator is to connect the listener to the author’s words and message through our performance. A sudden sound effect could be jarring to the listener and take them out of the story.

Beyond that point, effects can not be added arbitrarily to the narration. Any effects need to be planned in advance and executed with precision by someone who is experienced in mixing audio.

Most narrators do not have either that depth of engineering skill or the time and need to acquire it.

Acting choices and mic technique should be used instead of sound effects.

The producer, not the rights holder, has the final say on the decision about production choices. As the producer, you should just say no to effects.

Case Studies

Some audiobooks are audio dramas with rich, layered music and effects throughout the book like a movie soundtrack. You can hear the difference between an audiobook and audio drama by listening to the retail samples of the 2 versions of 1st to Die by James Patterson:

Straight narration

Booktrack version (music only)

Even though the books are in a popular series of 25 titles by a very popular author, the publisher only made the first 2 books available with music and effects. The Booktrack versions were published in 2018, which seems to indicate the publisher is not producing more of them in this series.

Many audio dramas include a full cast. Listen to the difference between the 2 samples of Ordinary Magic by Devon Monk:

Straight narration

GraphicAudio version (full cast, music, and effects)

The production costs go up significantly in hiring an engineer to plan and implement sound design in a book. As you can see in the examples, the Booktrack and GraphicAudio editions have a higher price.

Here are long-time Audible standards for the seconds of pasted room tone to use in each file:

.5 at beginning of file

2.5 after chapter announcement

At least 2 and no more than 3.5 for mid-chapter section breaks designated by ####, ****, ———, or blank space in the text. Even when the text does not include these visual cues, you may need to add this transitional silence to alert the listener of a scene change. The narrator’s pace and type of story can cause this time to vary, but 2-2.5 seconds usually works well.

3.5 at end of file

Some rights holders will ask for a musical interlude or sound effects between chapters. They also may ask for longer pauses than those shown above and/or request that the narrator speak slower throughout the book so that the finished time will reach a certain threshold. Say NO to these types of requests.

Many indie rights holders have not listened to many audiobooks and do not know the norms of production. They also may be unaware of listener expectations. The audiobook’s pacing will be organically derived in the recording sessions and depend on the narrator’s normal rate of speech, acting choices, and complexity of the text. If a narrator speaks too slowly or adds unnecessary pauses, the listener can give up in frustration, leave negative reviews and ratings, and possibly even return the audiobook.

Other resources on this topic:

• Check out the Knowledge Base articles about music and sound effects in audiobooks.
• This article contains instructions for estimating your finished time and amount of real-time hours needed to produce an audiobook of that duration.