Thanks for sharing this experience! I've always wanted to hear about the author's experience in reading their own book for the audiobook. Can't wait to read the book and perhaps listen to the audiobook as well. Thanks for sharing!
I have always intended to auto-narrate my book. When I've read it aloud to myself, there's a few sentences I always switch the word order within (e.g. "there's a few sentences I always switch the word order within" vs "there's always a few sentences I switch the word order around"). I just notice that orate ever so slightly than what I see on the paper. Did you do a verbatim narration of your book? Also, when you ever so slightly stumbled into words, did Cat stop you right then and there? Or did you finish the paragraph/page at the allotted time, review the audio, and then go "that wasn't so bad - we can continue recording"?
Congratulations on making it through, and liking the result! I recorded my memoir (Carrying the Tiger) last January at my own desk in a homemade recording studio, with sleeping bags hanging from hooks around me and using basically every pillow in the house to muffle echoes. It took me five long days, about 40 hours total, and I agree those were five of the most intense and exhausting days of my life. In my case, my memoir includes learning to live with (my wife's) cancer, helping her die at home beside me, and then emerging from my own deep grief, heavy memories indeed, and I found the recording process to be deeply emotional. After all those months of craft work - editing and polishing the manuscript, worrying about every word and comma - now I was back in the mode of experiencing it, almost as if someone else had written it. So many feelings came flooding back! But I wouldn't trade those days for anything. And I think my emotional involvement helps the final product.
Congratulations on your audiobook! I just released my memoir audiobook and it was a learning experience. I used a local studio and completed it in 10 two hour sessions over a month and a half. My voice couldn’t do more than two hours. Because it was a memoir I felt I needed to narrate it- and there are words in Spanish which I speak. The producer was great to work with. As for future books, I may use Eleven Labs voice cloning. I’ll look into that soon.
As a former audiobook producer/director (in the days of cassettes!), it warms my heart to read this. Recording an audiobook should be challenging. It should be a grind. It should feel like a marathon. Because you’re doing it the right way — with a good director, in a proper studio.
I have directed scores of authors reading their (mostly non-fiction) books, and each one presented its own challenge. There was the writer whose reading voice sounded odd until I convinced her not to try and suppress her Southern accent. There was the memoirist who mispronounced “chiaroscuro.” I once even caught a mistake in the text (the writer referred to a David Lynch film as “Black Velvet.”) I got into a bit of an argument over saying “a” and “the” with long vowels, which to my ear sounds stilted. And so on.
The point is, every writer who plans on self-narrating their audiobook needs a director — someone they trust to catch these things. What saddens me most about the self-publishing industry is that most authors don’t do this. They go it alone, with what I can only imagine are sometimes cringey results.
This is great - something I'm passionate about, even though my day job is an audiobook narration agency (we DO NOT use AI). For anyone interested, we recently designed a course to guide authors through the process of narrating their own audiobooks. I won't put a link here, but if anyone wants it, please give me a shout. The authenticity of the voice reading the book is absolutely key! Excellent!
This is great! I recorded my first audio narration of my work on here after I discovered that the AI, auto-voice, Skynet narrator on some of my work. It's a steep learning curve, of which I know I'm just leaning in to, but man has it been fun. Semper Fidelis!
I love that I am the voice of my memoir in the audiobook, but damn it was *hard* work. I'd done voice over work before as an actress but never for so long at a time, for three days running.
Thank you for answering my questions about this process. It seems so mysterious! I’m most interested in the role of the producer… does she give performance notes? How do you handle “punch ins”? This is the most distracting part of really high end fiction recordings. They don’t EQ between takes, or wild line is inserted inside a prose paragraph. Also, so many mispronunciations (see Lessons in Chemistry) As a video producer I’m just trying to get a handle on who’s responsible for what. Thanks again for this window into an equally important part of the craft
Thanks for sharing this experience! I've always wanted to hear about the author's experience in reading their own book for the audiobook. Can't wait to read the book and perhaps listen to the audiobook as well. Thanks for sharing!
Your writing style belies your age!
I have always intended to auto-narrate my book. When I've read it aloud to myself, there's a few sentences I always switch the word order within (e.g. "there's a few sentences I always switch the word order within" vs "there's always a few sentences I switch the word order around"). I just notice that orate ever so slightly than what I see on the paper. Did you do a verbatim narration of your book? Also, when you ever so slightly stumbled into words, did Cat stop you right then and there? Or did you finish the paragraph/page at the allotted time, review the audio, and then go "that wasn't so bad - we can continue recording"?
Congratulations on making it through, and liking the result! I recorded my memoir (Carrying the Tiger) last January at my own desk in a homemade recording studio, with sleeping bags hanging from hooks around me and using basically every pillow in the house to muffle echoes. It took me five long days, about 40 hours total, and I agree those were five of the most intense and exhausting days of my life. In my case, my memoir includes learning to live with (my wife's) cancer, helping her die at home beside me, and then emerging from my own deep grief, heavy memories indeed, and I found the recording process to be deeply emotional. After all those months of craft work - editing and polishing the manuscript, worrying about every word and comma - now I was back in the mode of experiencing it, almost as if someone else had written it. So many feelings came flooding back! But I wouldn't trade those days for anything. And I think my emotional involvement helps the final product.
Congratulations on your audiobook! I just released my memoir audiobook and it was a learning experience. I used a local studio and completed it in 10 two hour sessions over a month and a half. My voice couldn’t do more than two hours. Because it was a memoir I felt I needed to narrate it- and there are words in Spanish which I speak. The producer was great to work with. As for future books, I may use Eleven Labs voice cloning. I’ll look into that soon.
Excellent piece! Thank you… and I love your dilemma about wanting to rewrite everything.
As a former audiobook producer/director (in the days of cassettes!), it warms my heart to read this. Recording an audiobook should be challenging. It should be a grind. It should feel like a marathon. Because you’re doing it the right way — with a good director, in a proper studio.
I have directed scores of authors reading their (mostly non-fiction) books, and each one presented its own challenge. There was the writer whose reading voice sounded odd until I convinced her not to try and suppress her Southern accent. There was the memoirist who mispronounced “chiaroscuro.” I once even caught a mistake in the text (the writer referred to a David Lynch film as “Black Velvet.”) I got into a bit of an argument over saying “a” and “the” with long vowels, which to my ear sounds stilted. And so on.
The point is, every writer who plans on self-narrating their audiobook needs a director — someone they trust to catch these things. What saddens me most about the self-publishing industry is that most authors don’t do this. They go it alone, with what I can only imagine are sometimes cringey results.
This is great - something I'm passionate about, even though my day job is an audiobook narration agency (we DO NOT use AI). For anyone interested, we recently designed a course to guide authors through the process of narrating their own audiobooks. I won't put a link here, but if anyone wants it, please give me a shout. The authenticity of the voice reading the book is absolutely key! Excellent!
Congrats, Kate! I love that you are recording your book in YOUR voice. Your human voice.
Bravo and thank you for sharing this experience with us.
#authorgoals for sure! :)
Congratulations! Love this inside peek of the process.
Congrats! But I wonder how AI voiceover technology will change our industry. Certainly it will help those of us who sound a little like Elmer Fudd : )
This is great! I recorded my first audio narration of my work on here after I discovered that the AI, auto-voice, Skynet narrator on some of my work. It's a steep learning curve, of which I know I'm just leaning in to, but man has it been fun. Semper Fidelis!
I love that I am the voice of my memoir in the audiobook, but damn it was *hard* work. I'd done voice over work before as an actress but never for so long at a time, for three days running.
Thank you for answering my questions about this process. It seems so mysterious! I’m most interested in the role of the producer… does she give performance notes? How do you handle “punch ins”? This is the most distracting part of really high end fiction recordings. They don’t EQ between takes, or wild line is inserted inside a prose paragraph. Also, so many mispronunciations (see Lessons in Chemistry) As a video producer I’m just trying to get a handle on who’s responsible for what. Thanks again for this window into an equally important part of the craft
This is extremely cool, Kate. Obsessed with the detail about your teeth hurting! Bodies are so weird.