I’ll break this down into two parts in case there are a few rock dwellers that are unfamiliar with audiobooks AND narrating.
Audiobooks typically have 3 parties: the author, the narrator, and the reader. The books are written by authors. They are read aloud and recorded by narrators, so that they can be consumed by the readers as audio (instead of as a paper book). There are optional 4th and 5th parties, but let’s keep it simple.
Even though today, most audiobooks are streamed through mobile devices and the internet, you can still go to your local library and find books that have been recorded onto CDs instead. And before that, children, there used to be these things called “tapes” and books could even be recorded on those.
My husband is an avid consumer of audiobooks and in times when we give up TV to try to be more productive, he can often be found staring unfocused at a wall while his audiobook plays…a small tendril of drool slowly stretching down from his lip. The pinnacle of productivity!
Narrating an audiobook means that YOU are the person who is reading the author’s work aloud in order to turn it into audio! You’re the hero!
Narrators usually have: a microphone, a laptop or computer, and a quiet place to record… at the very least.
At the time of writing this article, I have only ever narrated through ACX.com (Amazon’s “Audiobook Creation Exchange”), so I can only speak to the process of narrating through that site, but hopefully soon I’ll be able to post a new article about how to work with a publisher. However, ACX is a GREAT place for beginners.
As a narrator through ACX you will be responsible for not only recording yourself reading the book aloud, but also for editing that audio to remove any mistakes you make.
For me, editing takes much longer than recording. To produce 1 hour of finished audio, it usually takes me over 3 hours total: 1 hour and 15 minutes to record it (to allot for mistakes, redos, etc) and about 2 hours to edit it. If narrators are going to drop out from this hobby/profession, I believe that editing is probably why…it’s just not as fun as narrating.
Of course, it’s possible to outsource it, but that can get expensive. Or, if your husband is the one helping you, it can boil down to a difference of opinion in how you chose to interpret a specific passage that he disagrees with. In my opinion, better to just do it yourself, especially when starting out….but that’s a post for another day.
So there you have it. Audiobook narrating is just reading books out loud and editing it! The best part….you can get paid to do it. Which is the whole reason I started!
Check out my next article on How to Get Started!
Or, skip ahead to How you Get Paid to Narrate Audiobooks!
