My First Audiobook

Narrating my first audiobook was both exciting and exhausting. The learning curve was incredibly steep! I am very grateful to Sara Marks for taking a chance on me. I was frank with her that this would be my first book and she kindly indicated she liked working with newbie narrators. I am not sure that she always enjoyed the process but I definitely liked working with Sara.

Her book, “Northanger Parks: A Modern Retelling of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey”, is a light, fun-filled story which follows the path of Katie Merton as she experiences love, deception and redemption, while exploring the Northanger Parks theme park. In interpreting the various characters, I kept the theme park idea in mind and made the voices almost like caricatures. The villains sounded villainous and the good people sounded good – there was not a lot of gray, or even realism, in the interpretation. It was a fantasy world in keeping with the spirit of adventure, and playful drama.

I experienced a lot of “firsts” with this book. With ACX, the narrator is also the producer, and once the book is on the market, the narrator also becomes part of the marketing team. Each role comes with its own challenges. When I began working on “Northanger Parks”, I had most of the physical equipment, but little idea of how to use it. I devoured everything I could find on the internet and gradually built up some skills.

I initially oscillated between software products, Audacity and ProTools, until finally the latter won out. The rough recording proved to be more difficult than I expected. Did I want to use the punch and roll method? How did that work anyway? The editing was a nightmare, until I finally figured it out. Then, I found that the nit-picky part of me actually began to enjoy the production process.

When we submitted the final copy to ACX, it came back rejected because there was not enough space at the beginning. You need between half a second and a second of silence at the beginning. There is not a lot of wiggle-room there. Having to re-do every chapter was time-consuming, but that was only one of many lessons I learned while working with Sara on “Northanger Parks”.

Sara definitely made me a better narrator. She listened to every chapter carefully before approving them and found a few errors I missed. Thanks to Sara, I learned to listen to the complete chapter, after I thought I was done all the editing, just to make sure nothing got missed.

That extra step has now become my favourite part of the process. I can sit back and enjoy listening to the finished work, while following along with the text. It also gives me a chance to check on the length of my pauses between sentences. Every now and then, I hear a word that was missing or a voice that needs adjusting and I can make those changes before submitting.

I learned how to create a filing system. I keep my rough recordings in one folder, my first level of edited recordings in a “Q&A” folder, my second level of edits, which include any sound effects, in a “Q&A Sound Effects” folder and I have a “Mastered” folder, for the files that have been compressed and fully mastered for uploading.

I am indebted to Sara Marks for taking a chance on me and giving me the opportunity to learn and grow as a narrator and producer. For all those who are wanting to break into the market of audiobooks, I hope you are as fortunate as I was to find your own “Sara Marks”. If you already have an Audible Account and would like to listen to the whole thing, for free, contact me and I can send you a promo code. It is also for sale on Amazon. Happy listening!