An Interview with the Narrator

Turning my first published book, The Mystery of Glengarron, into an audio book was easy and fun for me. But for the talented young narrator, it was a lot of work. As I mentioned in my last post, Patrick Peterson is the narrator and we collaborated via the tools available online at acx.com (an Amazon company) and email. But I was curious to learn more about him and how he works. In this interview, Patrick answers some questions about what inspires him and what it takes to be a narrator of audio books. 

Sallee:  How did you get interested in narrating audiobooks?

Patrick:  Ever since I was a child I have loved cartoons. Even into adulthood I am still a fan and am working toward my dream of voicing a cartoon one of these days. I have two bachelors degrees in English and Theatre so narrating audiobooks was something that would allow me to use both of my talents. Though my love of voice over and cartoons is what got me started. My teacher worked with me in setting up a demo and introduced me to various audiobook websites that I could work to be a part of.

Sallee: Do you have a dedicated studio? and, Was it hard/expensive to set up?
Patrick: I do have a studio that I built in my basement. It was fairly expensive spanning roughly $2,000  once complete for work, though I still add new things here and there for better quality. Setting up was not hard at all. Just a matter of finding a sizable room to sit in comfortably. I have a deep side closet. The room is laced with quiet brace, a material that helps to keep in sound, that I found a Home Depot. So with some dedication I raised the money and bought the materials and now I have my own private studio.

Sallee:  How do you choose which books you'd like to narrate?

Patrick: Well as a narrator you have to get comfortable with rejection. I'm still working on that, but I digress, for every book I land I probably have about 15-20 auditions lost. Mostly I look around in categories that interest me, fantasy, sci fi, children's, then there are some that I learn about. I work at a library as my day job and so I have a first hand kind of cheat when it comes to seeing what people are reading. Mystery, Romance and Nonfiction are the big audiobooks, those are usually the ones that will sell. So from all those categories I pick a few from each and see if someone likes me enough to offer me the job. 

Sallee:  What's the hardest part of narrating a book?
Patrick:  EDITING!!! Most people ask me how I change voices and if i do it all together, and the answer is yes, I do switch immediately between voices, it has always been fairly easy for me, ever since I would imitate Red Skelton as a child i have been good at imitation. The theatrical aspect of standing in a room by myself and talking to my self in 20-30 different voices is the most fun I have, especially when there is a character that you just love the voice you have for him/her and whenever you do that voice you smile. (For me that character was Harry in your novel) He was just so Billy Connelly over the top!!! Editing on the other hand is terrible, my least favorite part. Aside from being only ok at it which is not fun because it then affects your performance, it takes forever. For every hour you listen to this book I listened to that hour a minimum of 6 times and editing it took at least 8 hours. Sometimes it is just very tedious. You get better as you go, but my dream is to leave the editing to someone else, walk into my or someone's studio and recording and get paid and leave. HAHA that would be awesome.

Sallee: What are your long term goals?
Patrick: Well to be a cartoon voice someday is a big one. Also I would have to say work with the greats like Tom Kane, John Dimaggio, James Arnold Taylor, Jim Cummings, and Tara Strong, and if I kept going it would take forever, so many great talents out there that I idolize. Outside of audiobooks I can't wait to start a family and if my voiceover career takes off perhaps try to be a stay at home parent. If none of that pans out, or if it does I would like to do something with Shakespeare, his work is awesome!!

Producing an Audio Book

The popularity of audio books is definitely on the rise. I still read a lot. But there are times when an audio book just fits the bill. Commuting to work and exercising come immediately to mind. So it just seemed logical that I would offer my own books in an audio version. But I really didn't know where or how to start until I turned, once again, to ACX.com, which is Amazon's platform for connecting authors with potential narrators and producers. As an author, list your book and the rest is easy. Really. The rest is a matter of making a few decisions, do you want to pay the narrator a fee or split the royalties? The platform even estimates the number of hours your finished audio book will be.

You can look through potential narrators and send them a note asking if they would be interested in narrating your book. At the same time, narrators can see what books are available to narrate. In my case, a narrator contacted me. Patrick Peterson (no relation) saw my book and sent me a message. Through the platform, we communicated a couple of times, settled on a price and then ACX even had all the contracts available for us. 

The process was fun, at least for me. I know Patrick worked very hard on this book, especially since my books are set in Scotland. We had several initial discussions, via the messaging capability of the ACX platform, mostly about what these characters might sound like. After the first initial weeks, we settled into a routine. Every couple of days, Patrick would send a few more chapters for me to review. I must say that Patrick was a joy to work with. Any changes I requested were quickly and cheerfully completed. And all the communication and work was done over the platform. Really, within a few months, I had an audio book offering through both Audible.com and Amazon. Easy. 

If you are an Indie Author, I highly recommend you consider looking into producing your own audio book. There are several companies out there, but I do recommend ACX.com. Check it out. And if you love listening to audio books, like me, here's a deal for you: Audible.com is a subscription based audio book service. You pay one monthly fee and get a certain number of credits, each good for an audio book of your choice, and it is more cost effective than buying each audio book separately. But the best part of Audible is that they offer you a daily deal. Yes, you will get an email every day.....but, these are offers for popular audio books usually for $3.95 or less. They are a great way to build your library without breaking the bank. And they have really great periodic sales as well. For instance, they are offering their members a sale right now for hundreds of titles for $4.95. Great deals on audio books!

Oh, by the way, I was curious about what the audio book production was like for Patrick, so I asked him. In my next post, I'll share his perspective in an interview with him. He's really a remarkable and interesting young man.

Self Publishing with Amazon and Smashwords

Writing a novel is hard work. But if you love telling stories and you subscribe to the B-I-C (butt-in-chair) method of slogging through it, you will eventually finish it. And let me tell you, it is a wonderful feeling, after weeks or months of doubt that you actually did finish it. I'll talk more about the B-I-C method in another post. But for now, let me just say, it means actually sitting down in the chair and writing, even if you are not sure the words will come.

If you are an Indie (independent) author, now is when your phase 2 begins. Get the best editor(s) you can. You can pay a professional, but for most full length novels, that's going to cost you around $1500. Not the best decision before you've sold your first book, unless you happen to be sitting on a pile of cash. And it will also be the first of many obstacles that may make you toss in the towel. DON'T!!! Enlist the help of two friends and ask them to read it and give you honest feedback on the story. Did you leave a character hanging out to dry half-way through? Did you call a character Sue for the first half and Sally for the second. Believe me, these things happen. Don't ask them to do the spelling and grammar editing, but if they like to point them out when they see them, all the better.
Then, turn your book over to Word for spelling and grammar.

I actually took an online class on self-publishing and I highly recommend it!! You can find them at your local college or at ed2go.com.  I learned a ton about kindle formatting, MSWord editing and also book covers. My class was $99. It was the best investment I've made yet in self-publishing.
The writing and editing can all be done before you decide to publish it yourself, and if you do, which company to use.

I publish first with Amazon. They have tons of tools to help you. If you publish with createspace.com (Amazon's paperback publisher) first, you can use their cover designer to make professional covers that can be used with both the paperback and as an image for your ebook. They will step you through the whole process, including getting your ISBN (id number for books, essentially). Then once your book is approved, they will also take care of the Kindle version for you.

They are the world's biggest bookstore and nearly the world's biggest everything store now. People shop there. You can also take advantage of their lending library and their subscription service if you enter into an exclusive deal with them.  They pay authors well, pay on time, give you reports and tons of visibility into your sales and your rank. They have an author's page and will link to your blog. And they have a lot of marketing help if you search for it and follow the suggestions. They also recently bought an audio book company and now audio book production is also fairly easy. (More about that in another post.)

Smashwords is the second company I have published with. The biggest advantage of Smashwords, by far, is that they distribute to nearly all other ebook sellers, including B&N, Apple, Sony, and the smaller or international companies. They also have a list of resources of professional companies that will edit and format your book as well as do the cover. These services are reasonably priced, but certainly not free and, again, can be financially restrictive before the first book sells. The biggest disadvantage that Smashwords has vs. Amazon is eyes on your title.  Through Amazon, by book sales have been good. Through Smashwords, practically nil.

So if you're new to this, and you want to self-publish, I would recommend Amazon as your first partner!! I personally think they are great!

Why I Chose Independent Publishing

With the debate raging between Amazon and the big publishing houses over ebook publication and price, I thought I'd weigh in on why I chose independent publishing.

First, let me get the big question out of the way....Did I have any traditional publishers interested in my work? Honest answer: No. I didn't even try to find a traditional publisher. Question 2: Are you afraid of rejection? Honest answer: Yes. And I'm too old to deal with the mashugana (how do you spell mashugana, anyway?) MESHUGANA: a crazy person. I don't know what the plural is, so if you know, please pass it on!

The honest truth is that I didn't set out to publish a book. I set out to write one. To finish it. Writing a novel is a journey and it's really easy to give up half-way through. I know. I have a whole file of half written novels. But finishing one was on my bucket list. And now that I'm living my last act, it was time to start crossing things off my bucket list. Or at least try to cross more off than I add to it. So I wrote a whole book, and finished it, and it was pretty bad. But the characters came alive for me. And as I finished the first book, the characters' stories had just begun and I wanted to tell those stories. So I shelved the first one, and started the second, which eventually became The Mystery of Glengarron. And when I was almost done with it, the next one started materializing in my brain. And that's the way this series is coming together. I want to know them and live vicariously through them and see how their lives unfold..

At some point, during the writing of the second book, I started considering publishing. I looked into some traditional publishers and I did some research into self publishing. It all boiled down to my list of pluses and minuses. Traditional publisher: editing and marketing. A publisher has editors that will make sure your book is nearly error free. I say nearly, because I have read books from big publishers that do have spelling or typo errors. But for the most part, they are not plagued with the occasional punctuation or spelling error that self-published books often have. (My own included.) The biggest advantage is that big publishing houses have big marketing budgets and they will use part of that to market your books. That means more sales for the author. The big questions here, though, are how much does the author really get? (Usually around 16%) and how much marketing? And marketing for how long? (A small window of opportunity). The other disadvantage is that the publisher will usually print a small run (around 4,000) books for a new author and if they don't sell, well, sayonara. Book out of print and they still own the rights.

In self-publishing, the author retains all rights. For most markets, the author gets about 70% of the sales in e-book royalties and 40% for paperback and audio. These numbers refer to self-publishing with Amazon. There are companies that will publish your book for a fee (usually several hundred to several thousand dollars) and they will take smaller cuts or none at all.

I chose Amazon for all my books and am piloting three of them through Smashwords, an ebook company that distributes to most other ebook formats. The advantages of using these companies are that the book never goes out of print. The other advantage is that I will continue to collect royalties for my books until 70 years after my death (that is, my heirs will) when my work becomes public domain. That was a big deal to me. The disadvantages include that the author has to do formatting and cover art work themselves (although Amazon has some good tools that help here). Editing requires bugging friends and family to help read the books and having a good understand of the editing capabilities of Word. The big disadvantage is that the author has to market his or her own work. Not so easy and it takes time away from writing. But it is a learning experience. In the next post, I'll discuss the pros and cons of Amazon vs. Smashwords.

As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts or questions.