Why You Need a Professional Audiobook Narrator for Your Audiobook and How to Find One.
- melissachambersvoi
- Aug 5
- 7 min read
A definitive guide for authors.
Fresh out of drama school in the early aughts I realised what all the clever theatre actors were doing. Audiobooks. Between shifts at the coffee shop diagonally opposite my house (not great thinking in the end. Never be able to see your sad ass day job from your bedroom) I started talking to older actors I’d gotten to know about how they were making ends meet between jobs on stage. Many months of badgering later, Robert at Vision Australia gave me a job recording my first Audiobook.
20 years later I’ve recorded hundreds of books across genres. Everything from kids books to self help, serious literature and bodice rippers to non-fiction and instruction manuals.
I’ve worked for major publishing houses like Vision Australia, Bolinda Audio and Podium and lately, due to the appearance of self publishing platforms like ACX, self publishing authors. Alongside being an avid audiobook listener, over this time I’ve learnt a lot about what makes an audiobook worth the long listen.
In this article I’m going to talk about what a qualified audiobook narrator will bring to your self published audiobook project, why it’s important to hire a professional, and, where to find one.
What do professional audiobook narrators do?
Audiobook narration is an acting job. The ability to handle language, build tension, create and distinguish characters and channel the spirit of the writer is what actors spend their (usually 3 years of) training doing.
These things are sometimes easier to identify when they’re missing. The proliferation of synthetic voices hitting the marketplace for instance have given us a really handy way of testing the importance of all of them.
When a story is narrated badly (or by technology), you aren’t drawn into it. Simply put, you hear it, but you don’t listen. In the case of badly or non-trained narrators, you usually don’t want to. A professionally trained (or deeply experienced) audiobook narrator is trained in the art of capturing and keeping your audience’s attention. In some ways, book narration is the most fundamental acting job around.
The voice is the most cultivated part of a professional performer. At my acting school (The Victorian College of the Arts in Austalia), where voice-work was considered to be interchangeable with the art of acting generally, we did about 8 hours a week of vocal training. We did breath work, built musculature to make the voice more resonant, worked on our articulative apparatus (everything from the neck up, including the nose and forehead), worked on how not to just do, but embody accents.
We did all of this for years, until it was instinctive. And, 20 years later, it still is for me. If you want to dip into the extended universe of vocal expertise for performers and people alike I refer you to the work of the late Kristen Linklater to whom we all owe a great debt.
Essentially, at drama school we learned that our vocal technique was our core skillset as storytellers. For your self published audiobook, this skill set is your secret weapon.
The risks of DIY narration.
I get it, it’s tempting. Like all… cheaper things are. But trust me, just because you’ve read out loud to yourself in the past, does not mean you can sustain an engaging narration for over 6 hours, or more. As your tone deadens, your characters lose distinction and your pace ramps up in a blind search for the finish line, your audience will not forgive you or worse… will have switched you off hours ago.
In terms of authors narrating their own work though, there’s often a more insidious (and more interesting) problem at play. Have you ever retold something hilarious that’s happened to you without drawing a single laugh? Have you wept while explaining the most moving thing you’ve ever seen to awkward onlookers? It can be the same with your writing. When you’ve written it, it’s in some way already happened to you. Without the skill set of a professional narrator the meaning, the emotion, and the impact of it can become trapped in the close feedback loop you're in with the
work.
A professional narrator knows how to make your writing happen to other people. They bring an objectivity, and most importantly marathon style endurance skills that mean the last word of your book will be as impactful as the first.
Also, if it makes you feel any better, many great writers, are TERRIBLE narrators. I refer you to the New Yorker Fiction Podcast for all the evidence you need of this.
The importance of a pro recording environment.
On a practical level, unless you’re otherwise a professional broadcaster you won’t have access to a pro recording environment without significant costs attached, and trust me, recording environment / quality is the bottom line of a good audiobook. 8 hours of audio with your kids in the background or the cavernous sound signature of the inside of your closet is not an experience many people will pay for, or stick around for.
Where do I look for an audiobook narrator?
Ok, so you’ve (wisely) decided not to narrate your own book. Where do you find the person who can? A good place to start are online marketplaces for VoiceOver. Here I refer you to this article I wrote on What a Professional Voiceover Artist Charges which you should read before you then look at this article about Online Marketplaces for VoiceOver and how to use them.
Overall, think carefully about whether you want to actually run the project through a marketplace, or just use it to listen to different portfolios and narrow down your shortlist. As per the article above, marketplaces take a huge cut on the talent side, that in most cases goes directly to a tech bro's treasure chest (one word UBER, now you know what I’m talking about). Most professionals subscribing to these marketplaces also have their own off-platform contracting process.
Good rule of thumb, when talking to a talent over a marketplace, always offer them your direct contact details in the chat (they can't offer theirs as it breaks the T&Cs of their subscription). If you’re satisfied with their contract process and track record, deal direct.
Another route is to approach dedicated voice talent agents, like Sue Terry in the UK for instance. Most of whom will have audiobook savy agents. Bear in mind that agents will add their own fee which may push the budgets out of reach if you're just starting out. What you can guarantee with agencies though is serious people with track records, so the higher fees are usually worth the investment.
What should an audiobook narrator cost?
The most important financial practicality to know about with audiobook narration is that it’s charged per finished hour. This means per mastered and edited hour, not per studio hour. Bear in mind it can take over 2 hours for a narrator to produce an hour of finished work. They’ve done prep work like mastering an accent and learning how to pronounce local place names. They’ve also done retakes because nobody, not even the best of us, sits down and records a whole chapter perfectly in one sitting. Their pfh rate takes this into account.
A reasonable pfh rate for professional audiobook narration is between $200 and $300. This will vary depending on the narrator’s age / experience and the complexity of the text (books with a lot of technical language / lesser known pronunciations.)
To put this cost in context, there’s about 9,000 words in one hour of narration. So if your book is 60,000 words long, your narration will come in at about 6.5 hours. At an average rate of $250 pfh, the overall budget will be $US1625.
You won't be able to unread that now. Like most professional services involving many hours of work, audiobooks don't cost hundreds to produce, they cost thousands. Glad we had this talk.
Note: there is such a thing as Royalty Share contracts for Audiobook narration. Which means you pay the narrator a basic fee, or sometimes no fee to record and share the profits with them for a period of up to 7 years. You are unlikely to attract a professional with this sort of deal unless you can demonstrate a behemoth marketing strategy that will ensure they come away with at least the PFH rate… someday.
If you’re not hiring through a marketplace or agent, I recommend you have a clear contract in place the covers the fee, delivery timeline and revision agreement. Here’s a good example.
How do I audition narrators?
Put together an “audition script,” selections from your book and ask prospective narrators to record it. Most professionals will have no problem recording up to 3 minutes for you free of charge to showcase their voice. Help them out by telling them about the tone and pace you’re after, perhaps indicate a demo of theirs that you have heard that matches what you’re looking for. Don’t suggest they read your whole book to understand what you want, they’re not being paid yet.
Remember, this is going to be a long collab. The narrator is also auditioning you. If a talent has gone to the trouble of making their portfolio available online, they'll be more inclined to engage your offer if you're listened to what they do. Your ability to pitch your project to them clearly and passionately matters.
For your audition script, it’s important to choose representative excerpts from THROUGHOUT your book too, containing both narrative / basic prose and various character voices.
Here’s a basic checklist of what you’re looking for with a narrator:
They’re trained or have a breadth of experience in narration. Can you listen to demos? Listen to more than one.
Get a ‘dry studio sample’ this is an unproduced short track of them normally stating their name and then a minute of studio silence so you can hear their recording environment.
There pfh rate is within the reasonable range for their level of experience. Also be wary of cheap rates. Golden rule, you get what you pay for. No professional works for $50 an hour. We just don’t.
If you’re dealing directly with them, make sure there is a signed contract governing the timeline, fee and revisions policy. Make sure that the contract is ‘non residual’ as in, the are not owed any take of future earnings from the book.
Get a demo read of both prose and character voices.
Am I the right narrator for your self published work?
Get in touch. If I’m not the right narrator for you, odds are, I’ll know the person who is (we all know each other). Meantime, head to the AUDIOBOOKS PAGE on my website to have a listen to some of my own finished work.
Happy publishing.
Comentarios