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I love audiobooks. I love listening to them, I love recording them, and I love talking about them. I even subscribe to Google alerts to find out the latest news about them. It’s been exciting seeing the increase in the consumption of audiobooks over the last 12 or so years that they have been on my radar. I’m guessing there may be a few audiobook fans out there that wonder what goes into the process of creating an audiobook, so here it is (at least from the perspective of one narrator):
I rarely do open calls. Usually a producer, or sometimes an indie author, sends me an email to ask me whether I’m interested in a project. Sometimes they request an audition, and other times they just submit a demo they have on file for me, or maybe a link to one on Audible- I’m guessing.
If I am offered the job, I’m usually given the manuscript immediately. Sometimes it’s a prep script, if there are final changes that need to be made before it is ready for audiobook recording. I read the script at least two weeks before I record, noting any questions I have. These questions are usually about name pronunciations, or typos- in the cases where it’s unclear what the author meant to write.
On the week I plan to record, I read and mark up the final script. Everyone has different mark up strategies. I like to highlight the dialogue for characters when there are more than two in a scene, and I add marks to remind myself to breathe in a specific place if a run-on sentence doesn’t contain enough punctuation. I even made a macro for finding these spots on Microsoft Word, since I often don’t notice them while reading silently in my head.
I step into my recording booth after lunch. I used to do theater, so performing in the afternoon and early evening actually feels early to me. My booth is about 3 and a half by 5 feet, and made by Studiobricks. It was by far the biggest business expense of my career, but well worth it, as it keeps out most sounds from my house, apart from my meowing cat, so I don’t have to work around my boyfriend’s noise-making schedule.
When I’m recording, I take breaks every hour, even if that means stopping in the middle of the chapter. This helps me to stay focused on the book and my narration. I’m always grateful for “past Rebecca” for the script mark up that I have done, while sometimes wishing that I did a bit more. It can be hard to find the sweet spot for the amount of time spent prepping and marking up scripts. The more time spent prepping generally means less time spent in the booth because I don’t make as many mistakes, but mistakes will still happen, no matter how much prep I do.
When recording fiction books, I generally wait until I get in the booth to try out any character voices. Since I read the book twice before I actually start recording, I already have a pretty good idea of how they will sound, having heard them in my head. The majority of my acting experience before audiobooks was in improv, so jumping into characters on the fly is in my wheelhouse. To be honest though, most of the voices are inspired from actual people I know, or have met. I never forget a voice, and that comes in pretty handy when I have sixty characters in an audiobook!
Non-fiction doesn’t usually require a variety of character voices. The most important thing is that I know exactly what each sentence means. I generally do a lot more prep for non-fiction than fiction. If I’m unfamiliar with a rare word or jargon, I don’t just look it up in the dictionary. I watch video clips on Youtube or find someone using the word in context on a website called “Youglish”. I want the listener to forget I’m a narrator and listen to me as if I’m the author or an expert on the subject.
Although I wear other hats in the audiobook industry, like directing and producing, I spend most of my time narrating, so once I finish recording the book, I export the raw (unedited) audio files, re-label them in the style specified by my client, and upload them to a file transfer service. A few weeks later, I record corrections, or “pickups” for any misreads I made. When the audiobook is released, I usually share a link to it on social media.
Thanks for reading!
Rebecca H. Lee
Visit my website at becksvoice.com!
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