If that question was any more loaded, it would be illegal on airplanes.
We could talk about how different books pay you, the tone they are looking for, accents, genres, etc.
The best answer I have is the heinous cliche, “It depends”, but I will tell you what I know about each of the genres I have recorded for.
For your first book or 2 or 3, don’t be picky. Just go with something short and see if you can handle sitting in one spot, talking to yourself, for minutes at a time.
Aaaaaafter that…..*Cracks knuckles*…here are some generalization about what you might enjoy.
Fiction Novels: These are my preferred genre because I have a theatrical background and I enjoy voicing different characters. Sometimes there are a LOT of characters, so you should be comfortable doing a number of different voices for both genders. Have good communication with the author because there may be a lot of made up words or ways that they imagined certain characters.
Business and how-to books: These are usually shorter, 30 minutes to 3 hours. They’re neat because you can read how to do things you are interested in or are passionate about. They’re pretty straightforward and don’t tend to use big words because they’re written for average people.
Science Summaries: My father narrates a lot of these and also does some business books. He likes narrating shorter books. Science summaries have a higher likelihood of using big words so if strong vocab isn’t in your deoxyribonucleic acid, then you may want to avoid these and check out some business books.
Erotica: Yep, you can narrate pornos. And yep, I’ve done it. Take the word of a moron rookie and NARRATE IT UNDER A PSEUDONYM…Cuz I didn’t… Like a big, floppy idiot. There are different levels of erotica and I’ve found that authors are pretty forthcoming about how hardcore it is or not. These can be short (my first one was only about 45 minutes), or long romantic novels up to 8 or 9 hours, so there’s flexibility. Also, if we’re talking theatrics, you may need to moan…into a microphone…while alone in your house. Which is really uncomfortable and you may or may not feel the need to make your husband leave the house when you’re narrating these sections…
Non-fiction: Authors usually want these to still be narrated with energy, like a fiction novel or a motivational how-to book, but you usually won’t have to voice many characters if at all. So if you like a story, but aren’t comfortable with dialogue and different characters, these may be for you. Non fiction is a pretty broad category so there could be books from 15 minutes to 20 hours.
Sports, Poetry, Drama, Kids: Unfortunately, I have yet to dabble in these genres, so I can’t speak to who these are appropriate for, but some of them seem pretty obvious to me. Don’t narrate sports books if you know nothing about sports. Don’t narrate poetry if you’re not familiar with reading it. Don’t narrate drama if you hate dialogue. Don’t narrate children’s books if you’re a pedophile. Kidding, but probably just read slowly and energetically for kids books.
Hope this helps! Happy audiobooking!
