Award-winning narrator and casting director Tanya Eby wrote this excellent article Creating Tension in Narration.
* To read the entire article, a subscription may be required to Tanya Eby’s Substack. She is offering a 50% discount to anyone coming from Narrators Roadmap. Follow this link to subscribe with the discount.
You must read the entire book 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.
In short, you cannot be true to the author’s intent if you do not read the book before you record. Prep is not wasted time but instead is the crucial element of the job. 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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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 will make you a more efficient narrator and enable you to maintain the flow of the narrative. 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.)
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 somehow revealed in a text.
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!)
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!
Awards are political, and everybody has an agenda.
If you spend your life chasing them, you’ll drive yourself nuts.
— Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) to Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler)
Parks and Recreation TV show, season 2 episode 17 — “Woman of the Year”
While the quote above came from a TV show, it does have some truth to it. Any awards program generates stiff competition from an increasing number of entrants. Realize that most of the outcome hinges on luck, timing, and other considerations that are out of the narrator’s control.
Also remember that if your title doesn’t receive nominations and awards, it is not a measure of your talent or competence. I believe that the best reward is continuing to do work I love!
This extensive list of audiobook award competitions will help you learn when, where, and how to submit your work for consideration. Please note:
I’ve used italics when quoting from the award websites. Each header is linked to the organization presenting the award.
The American Library Association offers several audiobook awards that aren’t open to narrator submissions:
You can watch the BookList webinar And the Award Goes to: The People and Process Behind ALA’s Audiobook Awards and check out the webinar Resources list.
Not much information is available about these awards. Per this Instagram video, narrator André Santana is one of the co-founders, and the awards started in 2024.
Two are offered with submission deadlines of 30 November 2025:
The magazine states that its monthly Earphones Awards are given by AudioFile to truly exceptional titles that excel in narrative voice and style, characterizations, suitability to audio, and enhancement of the text. The Earphones Awards stem from the reviews at the heart of the magazine.
On its Audie Awards page, the APA describes these awards as the premier awards program in the United States recognizing distinction in audiobooks and spoken-word entertainment. Publishers and rights holders enter titles in various categories for recognition of achievement. Finalists are selected, and then one winner is awarded in each category at the Audies Gala.
The annual Hugo Awards are science fiction’s most prestigious award. The Hugo Awards are voted on by members of the World Science Fiction Convention (“Worldcon”), which is also responsible for administering them.
Works published electronically rather than on paper have always been accepted as nominees. A decision of the 2009 WSFS Business Meeting formally acknowledged this by ratifying a Constitutional Amendment that added the words “or the equivalent in other media” to various category definitions. There is no requirement that a work be published on paper (for written/graphic fiction and non fiction), on film or video tape (for dramatic presentations), or that it be distributed through any traditional methods such as bookstores, movie theatres, etc…Aside from the fundamental distinctions between written, graphic, and dramatic works, medium of distribution has nothing to do with a work’s eligibility.
Formerly known as the IPBA Ben Franklin Award, the organization offers the IPBA Book Award.
In all honesty, this awards competition looks like a money grab to me. The rules offer no information about the judging process and instead talk about how they will promote those who are selected for awards. I think they may be banking (pun intended) on name confusion with the good reputation of the Independent Book Publisher Association Awards above.
The IPPY Awards shine a spotlight on the exceptional work being done by independent, university, and self-published authors.
They have an award for Best Audiobook Thriller of the Year. Submission deadlines between 31 August and 30 November are staggered based on publication dates. All publication dates must fall in the current year.
The application form is at the bottom of this page. These awards have no submission fees.
Finalists are announced in February, and winners are announced during an awards banquet held at Thrillerfest in May or June.
Criteria:
You must be a PANA member to be considered for the yearly Narrator of Distinction Award..
The linked page below contains the full information about the award.
While not an award, narrators may submit themselves to be highlighted in PANA’s monthly Narrator Spotlight:
The Narrator Spotlight is a program for celebrating narrators.
Every month, 1 active PANA member is chosen to be recognized for their work in the audiobook industry.
Selected members will have a graphic created including a short writeup about their work and accomplishments.
The goal is to use our organization’s platform to highlight a variety of members and provide new media to promote their work. We’ve partnered with over 50 producers and casting directors, and every quarter we’ll be sending them our NSLs to highlight new faces and information about PANA narrators!
You are eligible to be highlighted once every 3 years.
The Nebula Awards® are voted on and presented by full, senior, and associate members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. The eligibility rules state:
SOVAS offers audiobook awards in 18 categories.
Work entered for the 2026 award season, must have been completed between January 1, 2023 through October 9, 2025
The work entered into the Voice Arts® Awards contest for 2026, must have been aired, broadcast, published, or otherwise made available to the public or B2B (business to business) constituents within the “Eligibility Period.”
These awards are described as the original and only audiobook awards for 1.) the romance genre and 2.) nominated and voted by listeners.
Since I started this page with a TV character’s quote about awards, I’ll end it with another one, this time from Frasier, season 1 episode 18, “And The Whimper Is”, which I happened to re-watch while working on this article.
Character Fletcher Grey (John McMartin) offers sound advice (pun intended) to everyone who doesn’t win the award.
Note that this isn’t a comprehensive list — these are only awards an author, publisher, or agent can nominate their own titles for, and there are many more genre-specific contests you can enter. You should research to find the best-fit awards for your book and review full submission guidelines carefully.
Every narrator needs a web site. Web sites have replaced résumés for narrators. Your site needs to include demos/samples of your narration, as well as a way to contact you. If you use a pseudonym, consider creating a site for that pseudonym or indicating the name on your main site.
My email address appears on every page of my site. I have a contact form, but I personally hate filling in site forms and always prefer to send messages directly to an email address. You may want to set up an address specifically for your site that is different from your main address.
You may want to skip having your own site and simply host your demos on sites like SoundCloud or point people to your ACX profile or even a Pay-to-Play profile like Voices.com. However, you would be sending people who might be interested in hiring you to a site with 1000s of other voices. It would be too easy for your prospect to jump to another profile and completely forget you.
It’s much more powerful and professional to send people to your own site.
I suggest that you purchase your own name (if available) as your domain name and host your demos on your site. If any part of your name is frequently misspelled, I recommend that you buy the domains that match the misspellings.
For instance, I purchased most of the domains for the common misspellings of my last name and pointed them all to my site. One misspelling is in use, but I check every year to see if the owner renewed it. If they ever don’t renew it, I’ll snatch it up! As a result, I own these domains, and they all send people to my site KarenCommins.com:
This article explains why I decided my name needs to be my brand name. I still have other domains like AVOICEAboveTheCrowd.com (my first domain) and KarenVoices.com. Anything I linked to those domains in the past still works because they are redirected to KarenCommins.com.
Include your domain URL in the signature of your emails.
Every word of your bio is precious real estate that should sell you to the prospective market. You’ll want to think like a journalist and write the most important facts about you at the beginning of the bio. The idea is to curate and control your bio and all the information on your site to highlight you at your best advantage.
You won’t want to include generic things that are true of any narrator, like “I love to read.” Instead, write about your specialized training. Also, indicate your life experiences that could aid a casting person in hiring you.
You may find it easier to write your bio in 3rd person. Ask your narrator friends and coaches how they perceive your marketable skills, knowledge, and experiences.
Points in your bio can become the foundations for your Quick Pitches and ongoing reach-outs with casting people.
The best way to be cast is to form relationships with those who could hire you. At least 1 current picture of your face therefore becomes an important addition on your site.
People use the words Demos and Samples interchangeably. First, let’s talk about selection of material.
Text Selection
A demo does not necessarily showcase what you have DONE. It is a professional tool to demonstrate what you are CAPABLE of doing.
Assuming that you are not selling the demo recording or profiting from it, you MAY LEGALLY USE AN EXCERPT of copyrighted material for a demo without permission. The Fair Use doctrine of US copyright law is used as a defense in these types of copyright infringement cases.
In fact, this court case ruled on this very point. The judge found that the demo met the Fair Use standard because it was transformative, used a limited portion of the original, and did not harm the market for the original work. Thanks to narrator Emily Lawrence for the link.
I wrote more about copyright basics and the Fair Use standard in this article. The US Copyright Office explains Fair Use on this page, which includes their Index where you can search for relevant cases.
I want to point out here that Section 4(3)of the ACX Book Posting agreement explicitly grants us the right to use our ACX auditions as samples on our ACX profile. Note that it does not state that you could post the audition on your site or share it in other ways.
From a practical standpoint, a copyright owner who finds your demo and doesn’t like you using their words will simply ask you to take down the demo. If you refuse to do so, they could initiate legal action, which could cost a significant amount of money. While the Fair Use standard is a very subjective matter, it’s doubtful to me that a court would find in favor of the copyright owner. It might even refuse to hear the case.
I would caution you to choose any copyrighted excerpt carefully so that you don’t give away the key point in a book. NO SPOILERS! Otherwise, you could damage the copyright owner’s potential market and future ability to make money from the book, which would cause you to fail the Fair Use test. The copyright owner could successfully win a suit against you.
You are free to edit your excerpts! You can re-write, remove, and add sentences and phrases and change characters/genders to create a perfect little scene that serves your purpose. If any part of your text doesn’t help you demonstrate the skill, makes your sample too long, etc., don’t be afraid to kill the darling! Your editing is only limited by your imagination!
You might use Kindle Unlimited to research current books. Of course, you could read anything you wanted from a Public Domain text without concern. However, be aware that a Public Domain book might not reflect a contemporary writing style.
Finally, you have the option of writing your own script.
Think of the work you’ve done and the genres where you want to work. In all your demos, you want to catch the listener’s attention with the first line. You could have a small bit of dialogue and something that moves the story along before concluding with a final line that leaves the listener wanting to hear more.
Recordings
Samples should be one of the first things a person sees on your site. You want a producer to be able to hear your voice with no more than 2 clicks. Ideally, these recordings are linked on your home page so that a producer can go right to the one she wants to hear.
Opinions vary on the number of samples you should present. I would list at least 5 and no more than 10. For what it’s worth, I have 8 samples on my home page and a separate Demos page that includes 4 additional recordings.
You can post a mix of genres, points of view (POVs), and skills. Organize them in a way that makes sense, like grouping fiction and non-fiction samples together.
Here a few more key points to keep in mind about your demos:
Incorrect pronunciations immediately take the audiobook listener out of the story. As you can see in the results from this Google search and this one of Audible.com reviews, listeners frequently leave very negative comments discussing the narrator’s mispronunciations. Numerous threads about mispronunciations on Reddit and Goodreads further emphasize this point.
Pronunciation research is part of our due diligence in completing the project. Therefore, the narrator must take special care to research names of real people and places. In addition, if you’re working directly with the author, you should ask them for any pronunciations of character names and fictional places. Note that If a publisher or producer hired you, you should request permission to contact the author or send your questions to the hiring person, who will act as your intermediary.
Actual place names often have many pronunciations. Albany, GA is NOT pronounced the same way as Albany, NY, as anyone who lives there will quickly tell you!
You should also look up any word you don’t know, including those in other languages. If you only think you know how a word is pronounced, you should look it up. I’ve been surprised more times than I can count!
Many — and in some books, most —of the words you’ll need to find aren’t listed in the dictionary. While no article can possibly tell you how to find every word, this one offers you some established sites and tactics for unearthing the correct pronunciation. I also included some savvy advice and ideas from narrators who responded to my question on Twitter.
Be aware that you sometimes will discover conflicting pronunciations, even between definitions on the same page. You’ll make decisions based on book-based factors like the textual context, author’s style, time period of the story, and dialect of the character.
Keep good records of your research and choices so that you can share your list with your proofer. Save your research for your own future reference, especially if you are doing a series of books. I’ve been surprised to see a word I previously researched show up in a dissimilar book.
You must be careful which sources you use. Sites with pronunciations created by artificial intelligence are suspect and may yield incorrect pronunciations. For instance, Google Translate doesn’t necessarily speak words with the correct emphasis.
Dictionaries
http://www.dictionary.com — The Library of Congress at one point considered the Random House Dictionary to be the definitive source.
http://www.merriam-webster.com — This dictionary seems to be the favorite among narrators and a definitive choice of producers. However, I’ve also read multiple comments from narrators using Mac computers who wrote that a redirect from this site introduced a virus on their machine. On any site, you should be careful where you click, and close the browser window when you are through.
These dictionaries also display a lot of ads that are such a nuisance! I bought an annual subscription to the M-W Unabridged Dictionary, which eliminates ads and offers 700,000 definitions.
http://www.onelook.com — This site searches through over 1000 dictionaries with one search.
I go to Merriam Webster for US pronunciations, OED or Cambridge dictionary for British pronunciations, FORVO for most other things – and if all else fails, YouTube or Google translate.
— Helen Lloyd🇺🇦🇪🇺🕷️ (@HelenLloydAudio) January 17, 2020
The British dictionaries Helen referenced are:
https://www.oed.com — Oxford English Dictionary (requires paid subscription)
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/ — Cambridge Dictionary, which also includes a number of translation dictionaries.
Specialized Pronunciation Sites
http://audioeloquence.com — Narrators Judith West and Heather Anne Henderson have developed this comprehensive site and spent innumerable hours curating and vetting the incredible smorgasbord of specialized pronunciation research sites which are sorted and cross-referenced by topic and language. Most sites include sound clips. Make this site your first stop if you don’t find the word in one of the dictionary searches above. Some of the sites below are listed on AudioEloquence.com but are included here as a quick reference. You’ll want to look under TIPS, TRICKS, TACTICS header near the bottom of the page for some more research ideas that may not be included here.
http://youglish.com — Enter a search phrase, and this site will search the transcripts on YouTube and cue up any videos containing the term at the point where it is said. You also can choose whether you want English from the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Scotland, or New Zealand.
You can adjust the speed of each excerpt by toggling the arrows in the lower right corner.
The site has been expanded to allow you to search in over 15 other languages including French, German, and Spanish. On a desktop, look for the pull-down arrow behind the logo at the top of the screen or the text options in the footer to change your selection.
http://www.forvo.com — Forvo is a pronunciation site of volunteer native speakers in hundreds of languages. The sound quality varies across samples.
Narrator Amy Deuchler comments that Forvo sometimes has another drawback.
I love Forvo because it has *humans* speaking the words, not AI. The site exemplifies that a word can be pronounced differently depending on the region or country. The downside – I have to make a decision on which way to pronounce it! OK to quote.
— Amy Deuchler, @amy_deuchler Twitter 1/16/20 (account since closed)
http://inogolo.com/ — This site provides English pronunciations, usually with audio clips, of people, places, and things.
https://howjsay.com — You can enter multiple words separated by a semi-colon and hear American and British English clips.
https://www.nameshouts.com — You can browse or search boy and girl names and family surnames in a variety of languages.
https://pronounce.voanews.com/index.php — The Voice of America radio pronunciation guide is continuously updated with names and places in the news.
https://www.sos.mo.gov/wolfner/sayhow/a — “You Say it How?” Guide to Names of Public Figures was created for the Library of Congress Talking Book Studios.
Many Wikipedia pages will include a pronunciation using symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet. Narrator Jennifer Wren Pickens shared that moving your cursor over each symbol as in this example gives you instructions for how to say it.
Narrator Adam Verner noted that you can copy and paste the Wikipedia IPA symbols into https://ipa-reader.com/ to hear it said aloud.
https://www.youtube.com — Videos are a fantastic source of pronunciations although you’ll often find a frustrating number of videos with music and no voiceover.
Since we do a large part of research on YouTube, I want to include a longer explanation for it.
The Youglish site mentioned above apparently doesn’t search every word of the transcript. Also, the word could have been incorrectly spelled in the transcript or is not an English word.
You can type your word in the YouTube search bar and find videos that contain that word. Checking the transcript first will save you loads of time. After you click on the video to go to its page, click on the 3 dots to the right of Save to see if it has a transcript. A menu option to “Open Transcript” will appear only if a transcript is available.
If the video has a transcript, open it. You’ll see the lines are cued with timecodes. Search the transcript with a CMD-F (Mac) or CTRL-F (Windows) to find your word, then play the video at that point.
I often start my research with the simple Google search “pronounce [word]”. Many times, that instruction gives me search results with my word, especially if I view the videos.
If I’m looking for a person’s name, I might Google “pronounce [name] interview” as interviews tend to include introductions. Unfortunately, most TED/TEDx videos don’t include the speaker’s name!
Occasionally I’ve had good luck with this Google search: “how did [historical person] say [his/her] name?”
CITY: If you’re trying to find a city in the United States, do a Google site search across the site City-Data.com like this:
site:city-data.com pronounce [placename]
or
site:city-data.com [placename] pronunciation
The site www.city-data.com holds a comprehensive repository of info about places, including an active forum where locals talk about their city. Many times, they will write out the pronunciation of the place. Click on one of the search results. Once you’re on the page, type CTRL-F (PC) or CMD-F (Mac) to find the reference on the page.
ABBREVIATION: You can Google “[abbreviation] acronym” and see a list of possible acronyms in the results. You also can look in an acronym dictionary like http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com or http://www.acronymfinder.com.
Google the word plus one syllable of how someone might spell out its pronunciation.
If you’re dealing with a language that is written in characters like Chinese, Cyrillic, or Korean that have been transliterated into English, type the English phrase in Google Translate to get the original language characters. Copy and paste them into Forvo or Youglish to get the source language pronunciation. Thanks to narrator PJ Ochlan for this tip.
If you’re narrating a book that heavily relies on another language, your best bet may be to invest in a specialized product. For instance, The New Lakota Dictionary advertises that it “has over 40,000 example sentences and phrases, each originating from a story or dialogue by a native speaker.”
Sometimes a phone call will be your quickest and easiest way to learn a pronunciation. Most people responding to such calls are surprised at the request but eager and happy to help you. I imagine that such calls become interesting anecdotes that the person relates to friends or family.
Calling after-hours usually will connect to an outgoing voice mail recording that will include the pronunciation. If you feel shy when someone answers the phone with the pronunciation you’re looking for, you can always respond with, “I’m sorry, I must have dialed the number incorrectly.” 🙂
I often have emailed people using this template message asking them to leave a message on my voice mail with their correct pronunciation. Sometimes they’ll even send an audio clip in a reply message. In either case, I can then add the recording to my pronunciation research in Evernote. Refer to the Resources section below for a video.
Librarians and realtors usually are happy to tell you the pronunciations of street names. Several narrators have told me that hotel employees also are very helpful about local place names. Also, the property tax assessor’s office is a good resource for street and neighborhood names. Some narrators have consulted with a university linguistics department in their research.
If your book mentions a real business name, Google their phone number and call them!
You can Google a town name and usually find a web site for the town. Call the town clerk or the Chamber of Commerce. If the place is in another country, narrator Jim Seybert has this advice:
The aforementioned tools are essential. For hard-to-find words, I’ve called the Tourism office at various Embassies or Consulates. Getting the pronunciation is the first step, teaching my tongue is critical. I trick my tongue by pretending I’m the character.
— Jim Seybert, @jimseybert Twitter 1/17/20 (account since closed)
Narrator Caitlin Kelly suggests another source.
I love Forvo and Youglish BUT I just came across a handful of local street names in Destin, FL for my current audiobook. I’m going to call the vacation rental service we used for a family reunion trip in 2018. Always good to talk to someone on the ground.
— Caitlin Kelly🧜♀️🧚♀️🧝🏻♀️🧛🏻♀️🧙♀️ (@CaitlinKellyVO) January 16, 2020
Narrator Holly Adams has some other inspired ideas:
Like everyone, I use forvo, M-W, etc but for local pronunciations of places, I watch local cable tv interviews & weather, or see if a local has written an article for tourists! Local DJs are great too-the correct pronunciation is also often in a regional dialect😀(ok to quote me)
— holly adams (@hollyshearwater) January 16, 2020
Don’t forget social media in your searches! Facebook allows you to enter the pronunciation of your name. If you use Facebook, I encourage you to take this step. You can also search Twitter and Instagram accounts for the person.
Sometimes you’ll feel like a private detective and need to think creatively when chasing down a tricky pronunciation. In one instance, I was helping another narrator find an unusual surname of a deceased person who was a celebrity in the first half of the 20th century. His name didn’t turn up in the easy searches with Google or YouTube.
I then Googled “[name] obituary”. I quickly found his 2002 obit in the NY Times and learned the names of his son and daughter. The paper noted the cities where they lived.
A Google search for “[son’s name] of New York” yielded a Whitepages listing for someone in Florida who used to live in NY. I thought he probably was the person’s son.
However, I found the daughter on Twitter and LinkedIn by searching her name.
I also found a nephew on Twitter by searching for the celebrity’s name. The nephew had replied to someone’s tweet and commented that the person under discussion was his uncle. The nephew’s Twitter profile listed his web site address, which showed his phone number and email address.
In a different narrator’s hunt for a celebrity name, I plugged in the name on Twitter and found his daughter correcting someone for spelling it that way! In this instance, the author spelled the name incorrectly, leading the narrator to search for the wrong name..
In both cases, a quick message on social media or a phone call solved the pronunciation question.
Determining pronunciations for historical figures sometimes requires piecing bits together. I couldn’t find a pronunciation for a suffragist who demonstrated in the 1910s for the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution. I scanned numerous articles about her and learned that her alma mater named a hall after her. I quickly found a video made by a student there who said the building name.
When I was narrating Mary Lincoln: Biography of a Marriage, I wanted to verify the pronunciation of a family friend of the Lincolns, as well as the name of a Victorian biographer. I found a family research site that contained the name of the friend. I wrote to one of the administrators who shared the same last name and asked how she pronounced her surname. The biographer had donated his papers to a college, so I wrote to an archivist of the college to get the pronunciation.
Narrating So Big had the challenge of pronouncing many Dutch names of people and cities. Rather than struggling to look up words in a variety of sources, I made a list of them and sent the list to a native Dutch speaker who recorded the words for me. I could play back and practice the pronunciations until they easily fell off my tongue.
You’ve probably heard that audiobook narration is a marathon, not a sprint.
That phrase not only describes the type of work, but it also conveys the amount of time you may need to reach the level of success that you desire.
Like any business, audiobook narration has start-up costs, and it may take a while before you begin to see a profit.
Like any field in the performing arts, audiobook narration is an EXTREMELY COMPETITIVE field. Each job has exacting requirements the narrator must fulfill.
Before you even THINK of submitting yourself for publisher work, assess whether you:
Each person follows a different path. Some people do a handful of books on ACX and soon get cast by audiobook publishers like Blackstone and Tantor.
For others, the climb may take years. People who are viewed as “overnight successes” usually have been working diligently for 5-10 years.
You need to build a relationship with people in a position to hire you. An audio publisher might have invested $20k in a title they are going to produce. They don’t cast books on the basis of 1 random email from a narrator.
They don’t have the time or staff to train you. They have to know they can trust you — first, as a person who understands the industry expectations, and second, with the particular project — before they will cast you. If you are cast in a project, you must prove that the producer’s trust in you was warranted.
Unfortunately, narrators can break that trust after being cast in many ways, such as:
In addition, producers are working with and being contacted by 100s of other narrators. You need to distinguish what you bring to the table that they don’t already have.
You must continue doing your best work and marketing yourself to those who can hire you for as long as it takes.
Therefore, you must patiently persist and persevere by setting goals which include:
The last 2 bullet points are important because it’s easy to feel frustrated, disappointed, etc. when it seems that it’s taking a long time to gain traction.
Remember, if it were easy, everybody would be doing it.
Some of the points in this article are based on this public Facebook post written by narrator/producer Tanya Eby.
