Episode 208: 6 Tips For Working With Audiobook Narrators

The Pulp Writer Show

In this week's episode, I look at six ways indie authors can effectively work with audiobook narrators to produce great audiobooks.

TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Update

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 208 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is July the 5th, 2024, and today we're discussing six tips for working with audiobook narrators. Before we do that, we'll have an update on my current writing projects and Question of the Week.

For my current writing projects, I'm very pleased to say that Shield of Darkness is finally done and published. By the time this episode goes live on Monday, the book should be live at all the ebook stores and you pick it up at your ebook store of choice. It took a bit longer to write this one because I was obliged to take quite a bit of time off during the writing process, but I'm pleased to report it is finally done.

My next project will be the third Rivah book, Half-Orc Paladin and I am 35,000 words into that one. I think the final book will end up being around 80,000 words, give or take. I'm also about 18,000 words into Ghost in the Tombs. Not sure when I would do that one. Possibly after Half-Orc Paladin. I might do another book after Half-Orc Paladin first, but we will see.

In audiobook news, nothing has changed from what it was last week. Both Stealth and Spells Online: Leveling and Wizard-Thief are currently underway for production, which would ironically tie into my main topic of this week about working with audiobook narrators.

00:01:14 Question of the Week

Now it's time for Question of the Week, which is designed to inspire interesting discussion of enjoyable topics. This week's topic: your home Internet goes out, which means you can't use the Internet until your Internet service provider gets around to fixing it. What do you do instead? The inspiration for this question was that I wanted to play Starfield, but the Xbox Network services were down and I didn't feel like going through the settings to get the offline mode to work on my Xbox. So I wrote the blog post for Question of the Week instead. We had an interesting range of responses this week.

Our first response is from Justin who says: if the Internet is down, I have many things to do. During leisure and recovery time, I can read, play games, and watch movies just fine without the Internet. Most of my computer games are old and do not require connection in order to function. World of Warcraft is the only exception to that, and I keep that around as much to chat with friends and family who play it. If I need to use the Internet (banking, ordering, directions, etcetera), my phone can act as a hotspot and as long as there's phone service, I have slow connectivity.

Adrian says: I am lucky enough to live on an island where all the Internet is via fiber network and we have a minimum connection of 500 megabits per second and only have failures once a year at most and our phone network is about to change to 5G.

Adrian is quite lucky here, I have to admit, because 500 megabits is very fast.

Jonathan D. says: mostly I listen to my son complaining that he cannot watch YouTube videos and then tell him that when I was his age, we only had four TV channels. After that, I would wonder when I became more like my parents. I do have plenty of books, board games, DVDs, and offline computer games if it's a long-term outage.

Joaquim says: this would be my day. Over the years we've amassed nearly five terabyte worth of movies and TV shows from tape video recorder, DVD video recorder, and online video recorder. Also, we have a lot of DVDs. My family would rather stream, even if we have it offline already. For music, we have a lot of CDs and MP3s. We would have an outage if a Caterpillar would cut the cable during driveway refurbishing. The last time this happened before smartphones were available, I used a Mini WLAN router as backup. Now I just bought a 5G smartphone, which can act as hotspot for up to 10 devices and has USB tethering for my router. I tested both modes and the speed was quite good.

Surabhi says: my data was over for the day, so I read one of your books. I often have these days. I usually catch up on more homework or read some books. Have you watched Oppenheimer yet? I sadly missed the opportunity to watch it in theaters, but I streamed it recently and it was honestly well worth the hype. I read the screenplay before the movie for some reason and it added the experience for some reason. Nolan’s screenplays always make for a nice experience.

In fact, I did watch Oppenheimer in the theater back in July or August, when Dragonskull: Crown of the Gods was done, and I published it and finished the Dragonskull series. That was how I celebrated. I took a half day off and went to the theater to watch Oppenheimer and because it was like a three hour movie, you kind of have to take a half day off work to go watch Oppenheimer. I thought it was quite good and one of my favorite movies of 2023.

Our next comment is from William, who says: this is also a good reminder to buy physical copies of games you really like. On a side note, I have had very few Internet outages that lasted very long since I switched to fiber, and nowadays you always have your phone for backup Internet anyway, so work can continue. Power outages, on the other hand, present more of a challenge, especially in winter.

Becca says: do some gardening or read.

Michael says: yeah, as others have said, I just tether to my phone instead if I wanted to use the Internet. If my phone signal is also gone, I just assume a global apocalypse and go hide in bed.

Probably a sensible reaction to the situation.

Mike says: well, I have books downloaded on my iPad and hundreds of other paper books to read and go outside and see the world.

Braq says: I hope on my adventure motorcycle (Triumph Tiger 1200), then I find the nearest back road and a cold clear water stream and I fly fish till the sun goes down.

Adeline says: hotspot off the phone, if I need to be online. It's happened before. It'll happen again. If I don't need to be online, I really just read one of your books on my phone, either on the sofa or wander out to the nearest park if the weather is good and read it there.

Todd says: there's plenty to do without the Internet. I grew up in the ‘80s. Pet my dogs, read a book, play cards or dominos or another board game, make some tasty food. Work on a hobby. Go for a walk or bike ride.

Maaike says: if the Internet goes down, I'll be drawing, painting, reading, or kayaking. Or maybe practicing martial arts or going for a run. Plenty of stuff left to do.

Jenny says: my phone becomes a mobile hotspot.

Juana says: read.

Jesse says: guitar, paperbacks, and the occasional card game or tabletop game.

I realized that for me, the question breaks down in two ways: if the Internet goes down while I'm working, or if the Internet goes down while I want to relax. If the Internet goes down while I'm working, it's not necessarily a huge deal. If I'm writing or editing, everything is downloaded locally anyway, so I would just keep on writing and editing until the Internet came back up. If the Internet goes down while I’m uploading an ebook or an audiobook or setting up ads or changing my website, that is in fact super annoying.

However, I usually work on multiple books at a time. Right now, I'm finishing up the publishing process for Shield of Darkness, and I'm also writing Half-Orc Paladin and Ghost in the Tombs. So if I'm working on an online task, and the Internet goes out, then I'll switch to one of the books I'm currently working on and make progress with that.

If the Internet goes down while I want to relax, I'll read a paper book (I still have lots of those) or watch a DVD. When Oppenheimer came out on Blu-ray (to tie it back to Oppenheimer), Christopher Nolan rather famously said that you should get it on Blu-ray so no evil streaming service could take it away. Obviously, Mr. Nolan had a financial motive for that statement, but he wasn't wrong. So if there is a movie I really like, I will attempt to get it on DVD or Blu-ray.

00:06:14 Main Topic of the Week: Working with Narrators on Audiobooks

Now on to our main Topic of the Week: six tips for working with narrators on audiobooks. I decided to do this as a topic because at this point, I have had quite a lot of experience at this. I did my first self-funded audiobook back in 2018, so over half a decade now. You occasionally hear horror stories of indie authors and narrators that don't get along well or the entire thing falls apart and it turns into this mutual cycle of bitter recriminations and so forth. So with that in mind, I thought I would share six tips for how to have a good relationship with your narrator if you are an indie author who is producing audiobooks and how to work well with a narrator and hopefully have a good professional relationship.

Tip #1: As with so many things, manage your expectations and understand what the narrator actually does. An audiobook narrator is a skilled professional, and it's not the same thing as reading a book aloud or having AI do it. A narrator has to perform the story and bring it alive (or if you're doing a nonfiction book, read it in a crisp and professional manner) and bring nuance and help to punctuate the story’s emotional beats, which is, as with so many things in life, a lot harder than it looks from the outside. Be wary of doing it yourself or having a friend or relative do it if they don't have experience and don't know what they're doing.

Joanna Penn, who is sort of an indie author guru, rather famously does a lot of her nonfiction audiobooks herself. However, I should point out that's not for everyone, and she took a bunch of classes and has practiced really hard to do it. She works hard to pull it off. If it's not something you have a passion in doing yourself and you're not willing to put in the work to become good enough to do it, then it is really better if you hire a narrator.

For myself, I would not ever even remotely think of narrating my own audiobooks. If you're listening to this podcast, if you have a regular practice of listening to this podcast, I think we can all agree that nobody wants to pay $15 or spend an Audible credit to listen to me talk and attempt to narrate an audiobook for ten straight hours. Part of the reason for this is that the audiobook community is very savvy and has very high expectations for quality and narration. If the narrator isn't good, if there are technical problems with recording, the reviews will let you know and your audiobook won't sell.

The flip side of that is a good narrator isn't cheap. Many audiobook narrators belong to the SAG-AFTRA/The Screen Actors Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA has rules for everything. Audiobook narration is no different. If you are a member of SAG-AFTRA and you're an audiobook narrator, you are expected to charge between $200 and $400 per finished hour of audiobook narration. Now this might seem very high if you don't know about the work that goes into it. Like, oh, I'd like to get paid, you know, $350 an hour for work, but quite a lot of work goes into it.

There's a lot of preparation for each individual hour. And then based on the way that ACX and Findaway are set up, the audiobook narrator is responsible for producing finished, mastered, and leveled files that will pass the quality standards of both ACX and Findaway and all the individual audiobook stores. This can be very hard if you don't know what you're doing, and many narrators will hire someone to, you know, master and level and edit their audiobook files. If they put the time in to learn the skills, they'll do it themselves. That still is quite time consuming because you’ve got to sit there and edit the files and get out any weird spaces and make sure everything sounds good and so forth.

All that said, ACX does offer a program called royalty share, where instead of paying the narrator upfront, you and the narrator split the royalties of the audiobook for the next seven years. The plus of this is you can get the audiobook off the ground for very little cost to yourself if you're an indie author. The downside of this, from the narrator's point of view, is that it's a lot of work that they're basically doing on spec and if the audiobook doesn't sell any copies, and many audiobooks do not sell very many copies, then the audiobook narrator is out of luck.

Additionally, a great deal of the very skilled narrators will not do royalty share. They will only work for payment on completion, and if they do royalty share, they will only do it as part of another deal where they're getting paid per finished hour anyway. Because of that, a lot of beginning narrators and narrators who just started out do royalty share. I'm not going to say that you can't find a good narrator doing royalty share because there are good talented narrators starting out doing royalty share.

However, it is harder to find a good narrator who is doing royalty share and a lot of the very experienced narrators will have switched to doing payment per finished hour instead of attempting to do a royalty share. If you want a professionally done audiobook, odds are you are going to be paying between $200 and $400 per finished hour. If you are paying more than that (and you really shouldn't be), that means you have hired a celebrity narrator, you know, someone who would be recognizable from a movie or a TV show or whatever, and they're doing your audiobook. If you have a celebrity narrator, you are probably beyond the level of needing to listen to me for advice. So that is our first tip: make sure you understand what the narrator does. Make sure you have a good way of paying for your audiobook and make sure you know the difference between royalty share and payment per finished hour.

#2: Our second tip is to do your homework before holding auditions. Typically the way both ACX and Findaway work is you put up the posting for your book, and then you say this is what I'm looking for and then narrators have the chance to audition. Findaway used to have a more guided process for that, but I'm not sure they do that anymore. And for the last couple of times I've looked for a new narrator, I've done it off ACX. I recommend the first thing you do before you write out your posting for your audiobook is to research narrators in your genre. Some narrators specialize in certain genres, but it's not unusual for narrators to work in several genres at once. And now the reason for this is because narrators (and I've had actual narrators actually tell me this is that) find it very helpful. The more specific you can be in your posting for your audiobook auditions, the more helpful they find it. So that to that end, it's a good idea to find short samples of narrators and books that fit the desired tone of your book. The Audible website is very useful for this, because if you've spent any time browsing the Audible website, you can play a sample of any audiobook that's up there, and you'll get a little three to five minute sample of the audiobook and the narrator that you can listen to.

I find a good practice to be is when you're putting together an audiobook is to include a list of the kind of narrators and narrator styles you want. The last time I did a posting for a new audiobook, I said I am looking for something a bit similar to the way Michael Kramer narrated Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson and the way that Jonathan Davis narrated the Revenge of the Sith novelization by Matthew Stover. Narrators do find that kind of thing very helpful, because that helps them dial in on what you are looking for. It's also a good idea for you as the author in producing this audiobook to know what you are looking for, because some narrators try to have a different voice for characters.

Probably one of the more famous examples is Marc Thompson, who does a lot of the Star Wars novels. If you listen to them, like if you listen to his narration of Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn, he does a pretty good impression of Luke Skywalker. He does a pretty good impression of Han Solo and Lando Calrissian and all the other classic Star Wars characters and he tries to give distinctive voices to all the other characters in the book. When you're auditioning narrators, you also have to post a short excerpt of your book in order to give the narrator something to audition with. I found that it's best to keep this under 1,000 words or so. Auditions should not really be more than 5 minutes, I think. Remember, the narrators are doing this on spec. They don't get paid for auditioning and it's good to be respectful of everyone's time and not waste anyone's time.

What I usually do is I pick for those 1,000 words (though sometimes it goes up to about 1,500 words) is pick three different scenes from the book. What I try to do is pick a dialogue heavy scene. I try to pick an action scene and then maybe a more emotionally heavy scene to see how the narrator handles each one of these different tones. That would give the narrator something to work with and show off their chops and then they know what I'm looking for, an audiobook that sounds like, you know, these other sample audiobooks I've mentioned. Here is about 1,000 words of the book for you to try it with and give it a try and we will see what happens.

It's good to be very clear with what you want when you audition audiobook narrators. I think this is important. Not everyone does this, but I think they should. It's very good to have a specific deadline and a specific deadline by when you're going to make a decision. The last couple of times I've auditioned new narrators, I've said usually something along the lines of, the posting is live now, it's going to be open for a week (which will be the 12th) and I will listen to every audition I get before the 12th. By the time I close the auditions on the 12th, I will make a decision and make an offer by the 14th or 15th. That way no one's kept in suspense and is waiting forever. They know if they haven't heard from you by the, you know 14th or the 15th or the 16th, that they're not going to get the audiobook.

I used to reply to every audition I got, but unfortunately that was just not possible. The last time I auditioned a new narrator, we got nearly 100 auditions, and it did take a lot of time to sort through them all, and I'm afraid there just wasn't time to respond to everybody. That said, I think it's also important when you put up the audiobook posting and say this is what I'm looking for, it's also important to be as open as possible during that process, so if narrators have questions for you, you can answer them. I've had narrators during this process email me and say, does this book have like explicit adult scenes or explicit scenes of, you know, violence or cruelty against animals or women or children, or anything of that nature? It's important to be open and you don't want anyone to narrate who's uncomfortable with that. I think being as open as possible during the audition process and answering any questions from narrators is important, but I definitely didn't have time to respond to nearly 100 different auditions, and you may not as well.

#3: So we go on to Tip #3 now: actually choosing a narrator from the auditions. If you get a lot of auditions, it may take some time to sort through them all. Like I said before, the last time I held open auditions for a narrator got nearly 100 auditions for the book, and sorting through them would take some time. There are easy ways to eliminate, you know, potential auditions quite quickly, like if you specified an American accent and you got a British accent or if you specified a female narrator and you get auditions from male narrators and that kind of thing. Usually, I’ve found you can narrow it down to about maybe 10 or 12 of the best ones for the for the book, and then at that point you look a little more closely at them.

What I usually do is look at how much they charge and how many Audible credits they have (by that mean how many audiobooks they've done). The more audiobooks a narrator has done, the more likely they're able to be reliable and that you can expect confidently that they'll be able to finish the work. It's less of a gamble to hire a narrator who's done 150 audiobooks as opposed to one who has done 3. This isn't to say that you can have a good result with someone who has done 3, but there is a different track record and potentially a different level of expectation there.

Also, and this is just Due Diligence 101, it might be a good idea to Google the narrators and look over the search results. Make sure that, for example, they haven't been convicted of serious crimes or are wanted in a different state or expressed strong opinions that you yourself are not comfortable with. Like I said earlier in this episode, you want the narrator to be comfortable working with you and you want to be comfortable working with the narrator. If the narrator is expressing very strong opinions on social media that you happen to find personally distasteful for whatever reason, it might be best to choose someone else.

Once you have narrowed it down and found a narrator who has the style you're looking for and the kind of track record in terms of completed credits that you're looking for, that is the time to make an offer. The offer will also include a deadline for when you want the audiobook done by. I’ve found it's best to be a little flexible in that deadline, if possible. Maybe extend it out two or three months into the future. That way if you've chosen a narrator who can't do it right away but it has time in that time space, they can do it. It might also be a good idea to go back and forth a bit and pin down the schedule exactly.

Once you have chosen the narrator and you’ve extended an offer and once the narrator has accepted it, this is the point in the process where you do need to get them the book. They obviously need the manuscript of the book if they're going to read it, and I've also found it's best to send a spreadsheet with all the major character names and locations and a pronunciation guide. If you're just doing thrillers or mystery or contemporary romance, you probably don't need a pronunciation guide. You do need a guide for the characters and how they sound. For example, Julia is a middle-aged woman with a raspy voice and a thick Midwestern accent.

I write science fiction and fantasy, and I frequently have names like Xothalaxiar, Agrimnalazur, and Seziravorna. Obviously the narrator is going to want a pronunciation guide, so what I usually do is I also read aloud the names in each in the location spreadsheet and the character spreadsheet and send that along to the narrator.

#4: Let's move on to our fourth tip, which is understand that narrators all work differently. I've had some narrators who will send me the chapters over right away when they're done, and so then we tend to listen to the chapters in clumps of three to four the time until the book is done. I’ve had other narrators who wait until the entire book is done and send that all over at once, and then we listen to it. It's important to respect someone else's workflow in a way that you are hiring an expert and there's no point in hiring an expert if you don't listen to the expert’s advice. Some narrators may have questions or want suggestions, while others may not have as many. It's always a good idea to answer these questions promptly so that there aren't delays in recording. Again, that's part of maintaining a good professional relationship with someone where if they have questions, you're available to address them promptly and as quickly as is reasonably possible.

#5: Now on to our fifth tip: how to be a good collaborator. First, don't micromanage and don't ask for updates before the agreed upon deadlines. When you set up the book through ACX or Findaway, there's a default contract in there, and there's supposed to be a 15 minute sample by the first date and the finished book by the 2nd date. And if it's still not up to the deadline, that's not the time to send pestering emails. If you haven't gotten the book by the deadline, that's the time when you ask if anything is everything's going okay, if there's any questions, and so forth. Don't micromanage before that. Don't micromanage at all, and don't pester the narrator before the initially agreed upon deadlines. Additionally, don't be too picky. The time to be picky is in the audition process. Once you have gotten through the audition process and made your offer, you have hopefully selected the narrator you think will work best with what you want, and that is when you let the narrator get on with it and don't be overly critical. I've heard horror stories where the authors would reject the book because like the Welsh accent wasn't Snowdonia enough. It's before you choose a narrator during the audition process, that's when you're picky.

Treat the narrator like a fellow professional and trust their judgment. Be willing to accept their suggestions. If you listen this podcast quite a bit, you know, my vocal performance skills are not necessarily the best, so if someone who has more experience with vocal performance than I do is going to make suggestion, I'm going to seriously consider it.

Once you have received the finished audiobook, ideally you are supposed to have listened to it within seven business days, and by then you can either approve it or ask for changes, and ideally you want to do this as quickly as possible because the narrator doesn't get paid ‘til you finish and until the narrator’s paid, you can't post the audiobook and sell it. You should only ask for corrections and changes if you have a very good reason for doing so, like there's something actually wrong, like a sentence was dropped, or a paragraph is missing, or the chapters are in the wrong order and that kind of stuff, you know, the usual kind of glitches and small problems that prop up in any major projects like this. Sometimes the software just derps and a sentence drops out, that kind of thing.

You should not ask for changes that are not for good reasons, and by this I mean if you don't like a character's accent or you don't like the pronunciation of something. You should have addressed all of this before, when you sent over the pronunciations and when you sent over the character list and any other information. This kind of information needs to be shared before and the proofing process is not the place to address it. It should have been done before.

Be quick when responding to questions, if possible. If you do find things that need to be fixed, like a missing word or a character has the wrong name, that kind of thing, the best way to send that to your narrator is to give a timestamp of where precisely where it is in the chapter. And then probably the sentence before and the sentence after that. That will let them quickly zoom in on any errors in the recording and fix it promptly. So be precise as you can with the requested changes. Give the chapter numbers and time stamps, and probably the sentence before and after that sentence.

#6: Our sixth and final tip: once the audiobook is done, be sure to acknowledge the narrator's work. I believe the requirements for ACX or Findaway is that the narrator's name has to be on the audiobook cover, but I occasionally hear stories where the narrator isn't credited, which strikes me as absurd because the narrative put a lot of hard work into this audiobook. It might cost you a lot of money, but it was still a lot of hard work. The narrator should be credited for that. Be sure to make sure that you have read by or narrated by, and then the narrator's name on the cover for the audiobook. Also when you mentioned it on your social media and your website and your blog posts and so forth, you want to say this is the audiobook of whatever as narrated by the narrator. Because the audio narrator, in my very strongly held opinion, does deserve very strongly to be credited for the work on the audiobook.

So that is it for this week. Those are my six tips for working with audiobook narrators. I hope you found them helpful. I suppose this episode by its nature is a rather limited episode because of the large mass of indie authors out there, only a small subset of subset of us are currently doing our own audiobooks. If someone is thinking about doing their own audiobooks and wondering about how to approach it, I hope this podcast episode was helpful.

Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. I remind you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. A quick note of thanks to my transcriptionist for helping me to organize my thoughts for this episode. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.