Category Archives: Audiobooks

My Foray Into Audiobooks – Pt. 4

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Okay, I missed a week, but hey – this time it was ONLY a week.

For this part, I promised to reveal what I’ve learned about narrating, recording and producing through my own experience–both the good and the bad.

I’ve now recorded and produced three audiobooks that are available for retail–THE RECKONING (my own), INTERLUDE AT COTTONWOOD SPRINGS by Liz Adair, and WHERE IS RALPH? by Valerie Hocker. I’ve also finished recording two more–Donna Hatch’s THE STRANGER SHE MARRIED and Liz Adair’s next Spider Latham Mystery, TROUBLE AT THE RED PUEBLO. I’m waiting for final approval from the authors before I send those to retail.

FIRST, THE BAD:

I jumped into my first production (my own novel), thinking I would learn from my own mistakes so as not to mess up other authors’ books when I recorded theirs. But I was in such a hurry to get going with Liz’s book that, after having my own finally approved by Audible, I figured I was good to go. Notice the word “finally”? You see, on my first try in submitting my narration to ACX, I got an email back noting that there were extraneous noises, not to mention mouth noises, that I would need to clean up.

I was in a quandary. I’d already contracted with Liz to have her book completed by a certain date and I didn’t want to let her down. But what was I to do about cleaning up my recording?

First Mistake

Too proud to contact my teacher, I rushed and grabbed onto some editing solutions (a de-clicker program, etc.) provided by a classmate who had a lot more experience with recording and editing. His solutions cleaned up my sound alright, but I wasn’t happy with what it did to my voice. Still, I didn’t think I had any other option, and besides, this time ACX accepted my submission.

Have a listen to the finished retail sample (a 5-minute or less segment from the beginning of the book) for my own novel:

THE RECKONING

 

Second Mistake

I should have waited for some reviews. There are a whole lot of audiobook fans out there on Audible, Goodreads, etc. and those who have been fans the longest tend to be merciless in their expectations for clear and clean sound. They’re used to listening to books that have been produced in big studios by professional sound engineers and editors. So, when they hear something that isn’t up to snuff, they’ll let you know.

And as a beginner, you can’t shy away from the truth. You want to know what you’re doing wrong, as well as what you’re doing right.

But did I wait for their response? No. I hurried on to get Liz’s book recorded to meet that deadline (which, by the way, I found out later need not be a hard and fast deadline…you can easily re-negotiate a deadline with the author, if need be, outside the purview of ACX, as long as the author is willing).

By the time, I began to read reviews for both our books, they were already available on Amazon, Audible, and iTunes…and once they’re there, you can’t pull them off the shelf and fix them. They’re there in all their glorious imperfection for 7 years! (After 7 years, the authors get the rights back and can fix them all they want.)

More than one reviewer pointed out that words were getting clipped off here and there and the volume was dropping off from time to time at the end of words or phrases. To be honest, Liz and I had both noticed this problem and thought we’d caught it and fixed it for the most part, but you can even hear it in the (GROAN) retail sample:

INTERLUDE AT COTTONWOOD SPRINGS

 

Third and Fourth Mistakes

By this time, I knew I had a real recording problem on my hands and was ready to swallow my pride and contact my teacher, David H. Lawrence XVII. Unfortunately, I had already recorded all of Donna’s Regency Romance, using the same editing techniques to get rid of extraneous noises. Still, I hadn’t yet submitted it to ACX for approval.

However, because I didn’t follow my Master Class teacher’s instructions to the letter, and keep original, unedited WAV files for each chapter and section, it was looking like I’d have to re-record everything. And I did, but not before I had a Skype session with my teacher, in which we figured out that I hadn’t had my microphone situated correctly in the first place!

He showed me how to place it so as to cut down on extraneous noise and focus on my voice, and also how to make my narration process easier by allowing me to look at both the script and the Audacity recording program at the same time.

Here’s my setup with the mic now (and you know I’ve tossed my pride out the window to share such unflattering pictures):

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Not only do I have my mic in a horizontal position so that I can speak across the top of its side, but you’ll notice the cheap athletic sock pulled over it to take care of pops, etc.

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I took the sock off so that you’ll see the front of the microphone, indicated by the small gold dot, should be at a 45 degree angle from your mouth and your mouth should be about the width of three fingers away from the mic (you do the Boy Scout salute with the side of your index finger against your mouth to measure), as you’ll see in the next picture.

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(I really can’t stand this picture for obvious reasons, but it gives you a clearer idea of where my mouth is in relation to the mic.)

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And here’s what I mean about being able to see the script and the Audacity recording program at the same time. Even though the script is partially covered behind, I can scroll up as I read further in the text.

Once I had everything set up properly, a lot of the background noises, etc. went away and I didn’t have to deal with any editing software (which was great because it was so time-consuming…now I can edit faster).

I tested it out on my next book, WHERE’S RALPH?, and sure enough it passed muster with ACX. No complaints about extraneous noise AND I had my real voice back. Here’s the retail sample:

WHERE’S RALPH?

 

NOW, THE GOOD:

I learned I could trust my voice and natural reading ability. Sure, I still need to keep hydrated as I record, and I need to stop for lunch when my stomach starts growling; also, every time the air conditioning comes on (and I’m sure it will be the same way with the heater in colder months) I take a quick 1-2 minute break from recording because, yes, the mic picks that noise up too. I also have to record around the grounds crew in our neighborhood every Tuesday.

Take a listen to my two latest retail samples from THE STRANGER SHE MARRIED and TROUBLE AT THE RED PUEBLO:

THE STRANGER SHE MARRIED

TROUBLE AT THE RED PUEBLO

I’ve found I can finish a 350-page manuscript in 10-12 days of recording. That means about 2 books a month. Granted, some will take more time because of accents, foreign words, lots of different characters, etc. but still, that’s being rather productive. I’m averaging 3-4 hours of work for every finished hour produced. If I’m not doing a pure royalty share or a hybrid share, then I charge $200-400 per finished hour, so if I produce 2 books a month, at the low end that will be around $4,000 a month (if the books are just 10 hours long…more if they’re longer).

I think this may conclude my series, unless you want a Part 5, focusing on working with authors and auditioning. Let me know in the comments below. Otherwise, I’ll consider this a wrap.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Foray Into Audiobooks – Pt. 3

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First, I owe you all an apology and an explanation. I know I’ve been neglecting my blog and kept you waiting for months on this next segment of my audiobook experience. In short, life got a bit overwhelming what with producing and marketing four different audiobooks, trying to keep up with my WIP (a novel set partly in Puritan times), and dealing with the failing health and eventual passing of my mother.

Mom with lily

After dealing with a bit of depression over her loss, I came to acknowledge she’s in a much better place and much happier being reunited with my dad. And I felt ready to move on in this new venture that was inspired, in the first place, by my mother. She always read to me both as a child and as an adult (she’d read aloud to anyone who would listen…she loved an audience) and so it feels only natural and right to read books aloud to others.

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At the close of Part 2, I promised in this posting to focus on ACX and how it works with both authors and narrators. In fact, the first lesson I had as part of that Master Class dealt with how best to use ACX to produce audiobooks. Since I’m both an author and a narrator, let me approach this topic from each side successively.

 

AS AN AUTHOR

ACX (Audiobook Creation Exchange) was created to be a market maker between rights holders (authors, publishers, trusts administering the rights of deceased authors, and aggregators of products not in the public domain) and talent (narrators and producers). Owned by Audible, which is, in turn, owned by Amazon, ACX helps rights holders find the perfect voice(s) for their books.

Unlike other sites used to link rights holders and talent together, it’s free for you authors to use. Not only will you find the talent you need there, but ACX enables the project every step of the way from providing a contract and messaging system between you and your narrator…to uploading, approving, and preparing the finished project for Audible…to helping market the audiobook by providing free promo codes to both you and your narrator for free review copies. AND they take care of all money earned by depositing royalties, etc. directly into your bank account (or by check if you prefer).

You can either distribute through them exclusively (meaning your audiobook will be available on Audible, Amazon, and iTunes) at a higher royalty rate (40% split equally between you and the talent), or go the non-exclusive route for a lower rate. (But I think you’d be nuts not to go exclusive since, after all, Audible controls 99% of the marketplace and it’s the exclusive provider to both Amazon and iTunes.)

ACX will even provide a “bounty” payment of $50.00 (split evenly between you and the talent) each time your audiobook is the first book bought by a brand new member of Audible. (I earned an extra $150 that way for my novel, THE RECKONING.) Why would they do this? Because they recognize that the average value of a new subscriber to Audible is $200 and your book has brought them a new subscriber.

It’s true that ACX determines the price of your audiobook (the longer the recording, the higher the price…a 5-10 hour book will cost around $10), but on Audible, where membership is around $15 per month, most books cost a credit and members automatically get a credit per month. So price is not usually an issue.

The only real decisions authors have to make are:

  • Whether to narrate and produce their audiobooks themselves
  • Which few pages of their manuscript to use for an audition
  • Which talent to choose if they’re not going to do it themselves
  • Whether to pay the narrator a fixed sum per finished hour ($0-1,000, depending on the talent), or pay nothing upfront and instead share royalties (50-50), or arrange a stipend deal with the narrator (if ACX itself doesn’t list your book as a stipend book…it sometimes will for books it thinks will do well; in that case, you split royalties, but ACX also pays your narrator a stipend of $150 per finished hour)

Once you’ve entered into a contract with your talent, all you will need to do is provide a copy of the manuscript (preferably in PDF format), listen to each uploaded chapter as it’s finished to catch mistakes or “pick-ups” so the narrator can re-do them, approve the final production, and upload a square cover image for the audiobook.

The Reckoning-2

So how do you get started?

  1. Go to www.ACX.com and click “SIGN UP NOW”
  2. Sign in with your Amazon account
  3. Enter your Personal Information (at bottom of page, select “I Am Author,” etc.)
  4. Enter your Payment Information
  5. Read The Fine Print
  6. Check “I have read and accept the terms set forth above.”
  7. Now when you log in you can click on a link that says “Assert more titles” in the “Open for Auditions” box and a list of your books will come up. You can choose which to make into an audiobook. Just follow the directions in the upper right hand corner

 

studio microphone isolated on a dark background

studio microphone isolated on a dark background

AS A NARRATOR/PRODUCER

Again, ACX is completely free to use. There are no hidden fees for registration, premium placement, being listed as talent, or auditioning for a job. And you don’t have to pay a commission when you get a narrating job.

ACX is also “union friendly,” meaning any book listed on the site can be voiced by either union or non-union talent.

Unlike other voiceover job websites, ACX handles all the invoicing and payments, so you don’t have to stress out over getting rights holders to pay you.

You can choose to charge per finished hour (PFH) or share royalties…or do both by offering a hybrid stipend. (The author pays you a basic $150 PFH rate upfront and you share royalties.)

In addition, ACX helps promote you on their site by:

  • Displaying your customer profile(s)
  • Displaying your portfolio of demos
  • Highlighting if you’re an Audible Approved Producer

You narrators follow the same procedure as authors in getting started on the ACX site (except you select “I Am Narrator” and check “Narrate audiobooks” under “And I do the following”). In addition, before looking for projects for which to audition, you should:

  1. Create your ACX Profile (simple and to the point is best) using your Professional Name…if you do it well, authors may invite you to audition.
  2. Select your geographic location
  3. Indicate your gender
  4. Add your voiceover website (no personal website, LinkedIn profile, or FB page)
  5. Add Samples of your work
  6. Indicate how you want to be paid

One more thing…and this applies to both authors and narrators:

ACX is always very helpful if you’ve got a problem with the project or you’re confused in any way. Just email your question or concern to support@acx.com and they’ll get back to you within a few days. Believe me, they will!

Next week, in Part 4, I’ll share the good and bad of my experience producing my first four audiobooks, including my retail samples.

My Foray Into Audiobooks – Pt. 2

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Well, as you can see by comparing the dates of my last post and this one, it took me much longer than a week to continue this story.

Why?

Because I took an in-depth ACX Master Class in audiobook narration during the whole month of February and then hit the ground running in terms of setting up my narrator profile on ACX, auditioning for narrating jobs (I have two more lined up besides my own two novels and my friend’s novel), and actually beginning the recording of THE RECKONING (more on all of those things later).

First, I want to share my mistakes. We learn by mistakes, but we often don’t have to make them ourselves if we can learn by someone else’s. So, hopefully, I’ll save some of you some added expense, time, and grief.

Unless you want to become a professional sound engineer, you don’t need all the equipment recommended by ACX in their how-to-do-it-yourself video. I believe that video is now a bit out of date and ought to be re-done in order to save people a lot of headaches. I’m not saying the principles demonstrated aren’t true. They are. But there are cheaper, less complicated alternatives to some of the recommended items. And some are freely available to the aspiring audiobook narrator/producer.

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The most important piece of equipment is a good microphone (along with adequate headphones), and I don’t regret getting the one I ended up with: the Røde NT1A. I got a good deal on it because it came in a package that included a shock mount and pop filter. It’s an excellent studio mic, not a USB mic, so it required a microphone stand (I got the boom kind for flexibility) and an audio interface.

Here’s where I made my first mistake. Since ACX recommended Pro Tools as their audio editing software of choice, and said I could get the software included free with an audio interface called the MBox Mini, I went ahead and ordered it off of Amazon. It can be expensive, so I ordered one of the used deals because the seller claimed the software was included. Well, it may have been included but by the time I got it, the owner of Pro Tools had switched its support website around and, try as I might, I could not get the program to upload on my new MacBook Pro.

Long story short…I gave up on the MBox Mini and Pro Tools because:

1. I couldn’t get my mic to work on the MBox Mini and I couldn’t access the software.

2. The more I read about Pro Tools (which I should have done in the first place, before buying it), the more apparent it became that it had a monster learning curve.

3. I discovered a much simpler, more intuitive audio editing program called TwistedWave that was designed for Macs and only cost $80.

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So I ended up ordering the Scarlett 2i2 audio interface, which works really well with my mic.

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By the time I was getting the hang of TwistedWave and feeling ready to start recording, I took the plunge and registered for the ACX Master Class (not sponsored by ACX, but conducted by two well known professionals in the voiceover and narration field, one of whom is an Audible Approved Narrator).

Through twice weekly conference calls and online support (training videos, templates, etc.), I soon learned there was an even cheaper and more efficient way to go than TwistedWave.

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You can download Audacity for free and that, plus a couple of other plugins (also free) should give you most of what you need to successfully produce audiobooks. I can’t give away all the secrets here (including the essential editing secret which put me firmly in the Audacity camp). After all, the class cost a hefty amount, is only offered once a year, and I don’t think sharing all I learned would be considered “fair use.”

But I highly recommend it if you’re serious about getting into the business.

One thing I will share: There’s an excellent USB mic alternative…the Audio-Technica AT2020USB PLUS Cardioid Condenser mic, which doesn’t necessitate an audio interface like the Scarlett 2i2, and is more portable in case you need to do auditions on the road, etc.

Come back next Monday (and, yes, this time I will have something new posted by then) for Part 3 when I talk about how ACX is set up for both authors and narrators.

My Foray Into Audiobooks – Part 1

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(A peek into my home recording studio)

A little over two years ago, I thought about venturing into a new market with my books–the world of audiobook listeners. I dove straight in on the Internet and soon discovered this site called ACX, which stands for Audiobook Creation Exchange. At the time, I didn’t fully understand the site but learned this much:

If I wanted to, I could narrate and produce an audiobook version of both of my books and make it available on Amazon and Audible. (I don’t recall if iTunes was part of the deal then, but I do know that this was before Amazon bought Audible.)

The idea REALLY appealed to me. Why? Because, for as long as I can remember, I’ve loved reading aloud to other people. I think I got it from my mom, who, at 89, still tries to read things aloud to us. And besides, the others in my writing groups were always telling me I should look into doing it professionally because I read so well and with such characterization, etc.

So, I got a few recording items that Christmas–a really nice microphone, boom stand, shock mount, pop filter, nice headphones, and an external hard drive. I got those particular items because they were on sale and they were all recommended by the video guy on ACX as being necessary to any home studio. And I never even took them out of their boxes. They stayed stowed away in my closet, along with my ambition, to hibernate for another year and a half.

Then on January 1, 2014, we moved to Southern Utah. The boxes came with us. And I still didn’t open them. This time I had a better excuse. The recording space I needed to set up in was currently being occupied by our daughter, who had moved with us. I bided my time, planning some day to pursue the audiobook thing.

One day in May, as I and a good friend and fellow writer were driving back home from the LDStorymakers Conference, we got to talking about goals. I mentioned my intention to eventually try recording my own audiobooks and, like she often does, she basically grabbed the ball and began to run with it.

MY FRIEND:  “What would you need to get going on it?”

ME:  “Well, I need the right recording space, but right now the room’s being occupied by my daughter.”

MY FRIEND:  “Do you have to be in a separate room? Can’t we make kind of a portable, soundproof recording booth?”

ME:  “Well, maybe…”

MY FRIEND:  “How big would it need to be? What should it be made out of?”

ME:  “I don’t know. I’m not an expert at this, but I do know that cloth or clothing muffles sound well. That’s why so many people set themselves up in their walk-in closets.”

MY FRIEND:  “Well, there you go. Use your walk-in closet.”

ME:  “Can’t. It’s got marble flooring, no carpeting like back in Washington.”

I thought that would do it, but my friend is as persistent as the mule that once took her down (and that’s a whole other story you ought to hear some time), and she was soon back on the idea of building me some kind of portable booth that I could set up in any quiet corner of our home.

She had a bunch of canvas material left over from another project she and her husband had taken on, and she knew where she could buy big styrofoam panels. So she proposed a deal:

She’d build me a portable sound booth in the next 3-4 months in exchange for my narrating her re-write of one of her novels for free (after I first recorded my own novel, THE RECKONING). The rest of the ride south was taken up with setting some very specific goals, almost none of which we really accomplished.

But she was true to her word and she built me that sound booth. Unfortunately, by the time she delivered it, I’d had my fall and broken my left foot and was laid up, unable to venture very far from the living room sofa, much less go downstairs and attempt any recording.

So the seven canvas covered styrofoam panels, ingeniously designed to fit together with velcro straps to form a 4 x 6 foot cubicle sat in a storage closet along with my recording equipment, waiting for me to heal.

Fortunately, in the meantime, my daughter got engaged to a wonderful young man and we began planning a December wedding. My foot was strong enough to dance at that wedding and a few days after they left on their honeymoon, my husband helped me set up that portable booth in her now-empty bedroom.

That Christmas I also got the rest of the equipment I thought I needed (more on that in Part 2) and I finally began to assemble my home studio a month ago. I was in a hurry now because my friend had talked me into doing a presentation on our little audiobook adventure at the next ANWA Conference February 20th and 21st in Mesa, AZ.

Stay tuned for a rundown of all my mistakes next Monday.