Audio – Is It Worth the Effort?

 

I’ve been experimenting with audio this last week or so, and one of the results, recorded today, is embedded at the bottom of this post.

Is it worth it? That depends on your idea of “worth”. Rather than simply putting up audio blog posts I’ve adapted short extracts from my self-published volumes, and to be honest, I’ve seen a slight spike in sales.

But it doesn’t come cheap, in either terms of time or cash. The extract below, a sample reading from Flatcap on Sex, is 500 words, and runs for 2m 49s, but it took almost an hour and half to record and edit. Longer extracts would take proportionately the same time, so you can reckon two hours or so for a five minute reading and many more hours for a single chapter from a book. That’s time I could spend writing my next megatome. It’s time I could be working to let people know I’m there, especially when I have a new novel due out next week.

The equipment doesn’t come cheap either. I have a Logitech headset with built in mike, but I found that produced poor quality recordings and because it was set so close to my lips, plosives and sibilants became respectively explosive and hissing.

I now use a Samson CU01 microphone (pictured) which I stand in front of the monitor so I can read directly from the screen. It cost me about £100 but it’s excellent at its job. Plosives (the letters ‘P’ and ‘B’ mainly) can still be a problem, sibilants (‘S’ ‘Z’ and soft ‘C’) less so, but by speaking slightly to one side of the microphone, or backing off a little, I can avoid them.

The other thing you need for audio work is a good voice, and that’s where I lack. My voice tires quickly; probably because I don’t sleep too well and because I smoke too much. It leaves me croaky and sometimes so hoarse that entire syllables go missing, which by turn entails a lot of re-recording and cutting at the editing stage.

You also need a little peace and quiet in the room, and that too can be problematic. If the dog from three doors up is daft enough to walk past our house and Joe, my Jack Russell terrier, spots him, all hell breaks loose and that’s another recording for the bin.

Does it do any good?

I’ve already said, I’ve seen a slight spike in sales since I began last week. It’s impossible to say with any certainty that the audio produced those sales, but it’s a reasonable assumption based on the coincidence.

On the other hand, the stuff I’m recording is Flatcap at his most absurd, so it might be that the people picking up on it are simply looking for his deadpan, grumpy, politically incorrect humour.

Would it improve my hits/sales if I began to put out blog posts as podcasts, or would my froggy voice get on peoples nerves so much that even more of them would stay away?

I don’t know, but I do know how to find out.

Watch this space.

In the meantime have a listen at Flatcap chattering about his favourite subject.

 

listen to ‘The Purposes of Sex’ on Audioboo