I’ve decided to bite the bullet!
Hi all! Well, I’ve jumped straight into a new project since the completion of STAND, and in the last three weeks have produced about half of the audiobook recording for FLEE. It’s been a fun project, and has provided a unique challenge quite unlike anything I’ve attempted before.
I’ve come to realize that audiobook readings are less reading and more performing. It demands a lot more energy than writing the original story, and can take quite a few takes to get just right. Often, a single line of descriptive writing or dialogue can be read in a multitude of ways, and picking the right take can be challenging. In addition, performing this particular story, with its varied cast of characters, has meant performing various accents and ethnicities, requiring some amount of research (ie, watching videos of various speakers on YouTube) to capture. I’m not completely sold on my own performances, but I’m certainly learning from the experience, and it’s forcing me to improve in my reading skills. (This is particularly useful for me, since I’ve been in a foreign language field for the last twelve years and rarely read aloud in English.)
Since I’m enjoying the audiobook process so much (and there seems to be significant interest in full audiobook versions of my books), I’ve bitten the bullet and purchased a professional-grade condenser microphone. I’ve also purchased the materials to build a small acoustic box for my home office to dampen out any ambient noises. This has been a real pain for me in previous recordings, because our apartment building is right beside a busy highway, and the traffic noises inevitably seep into the audio. (Please excuse the occasional honks, beeps, and screeches!)
Once the new microphone arrives (an Audio Technica ATR2500, if anyone’s interested), I’ll use it to record the rest of the chapters, uploading them as usual to my YouTube channel. Then, once that’s done, I plan on going back and re-recording the initial chapters. With the experience and practice I’ve gained from the last few weeks, I know I’ll do a much better job the second time around, and the audio quality should be much higher.
When all twenty-one chapters of FLEE are completed, I will be uploading them to ACX, Amazon’s audiobook publisher site. Once that’s done, the full audiobook will be available for purchase on Amazon, Audible, and iTunes. I have not determined what I will set the price at, but it will likely be a few dollars more than the paperback version of the book. After doing some research online, I feel this is a fair and affordable price, as audiobooks can range from $20-60. While I’ve never primarily been focused turning this into a career, I do need to make it worth my time investment, and those who would prefer a lower-quality version can always listen for free on YouTube.
After FLEE is released, I will see about doing other books, likely starting with STAY and STAND. Many readers have expressed interest in having the entire collection of this series in audiobook form, so we’ll see if I can set that as a goal for myself.
I’ve come to realize that audiobook readings are less reading and more performing. It demands a lot more energy than writing the original story, and can take quite a few takes to get just right. Often, a single line of descriptive writing or dialogue can be read in a multitude of ways, and picking the right take can be challenging. In addition, performing this particular story, with its varied cast of characters, has meant performing various accents and ethnicities, requiring some amount of research (ie, watching videos of various speakers on YouTube) to capture. I’m not completely sold on my own performances, but I’m certainly learning from the experience, and it’s forcing me to improve in my reading skills. (This is particularly useful for me, since I’ve been in a foreign language field for the last twelve years and rarely read aloud in English.)
Since I’m enjoying the audiobook process so much (and there seems to be significant interest in full audiobook versions of my books), I’ve bitten the bullet and purchased a professional-grade condenser microphone. I’ve also purchased the materials to build a small acoustic box for my home office to dampen out any ambient noises. This has been a real pain for me in previous recordings, because our apartment building is right beside a busy highway, and the traffic noises inevitably seep into the audio. (Please excuse the occasional honks, beeps, and screeches!)
Once the new microphone arrives (an Audio Technica ATR2500, if anyone’s interested), I’ll use it to record the rest of the chapters, uploading them as usual to my YouTube channel. Then, once that’s done, I plan on going back and re-recording the initial chapters. With the experience and practice I’ve gained from the last few weeks, I know I’ll do a much better job the second time around, and the audio quality should be much higher.
When all twenty-one chapters of FLEE are completed, I will be uploading them to ACX, Amazon’s audiobook publisher site. Once that’s done, the full audiobook will be available for purchase on Amazon, Audible, and iTunes. I have not determined what I will set the price at, but it will likely be a few dollars more than the paperback version of the book. After doing some research online, I feel this is a fair and affordable price, as audiobooks can range from $20-60. While I’ve never primarily been focused turning this into a career, I do need to make it worth my time investment, and those who would prefer a lower-quality version can always listen for free on YouTube.
After FLEE is released, I will see about doing other books, likely starting with STAY and STAND. Many readers have expressed interest in having the entire collection of this series in audiobook form, so we’ll see if I can set that as a goal for myself.
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