| The Voice in Their Ear: Audiobook Narration

Break into the lucrative market of audiobook narration

The audiobook market is growing faster than any other publishing sector, increasing its audience share by at least 30% annually. The vast amount of work creates a great opportunity for actors, voiceover artists, and others interested in the wildly fun world of audiobook narration. 

Production platforms like ACX.com and FindawayVoices.com allow narrators to connect easily with authors and publishers in DIY fashion. Many large publishing houses like Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster have followed suit and created their own platforms for narrators to audition for work.

It’s an easy time to break into audiobook narration, but there is much to learn. And within the past year, AI and artificially-generated voices have begun to change the ballgame. 

Our focus is on building an audiobook career that we can control and sustain. Over the course of this week, you will develop and hone your distinctive and irreplaceable read.

This intensive will dive deep on the creative work of audiobook narration. We’ll also dig into the practical work of audiobook production – we’re all producers now! 

• Practice reads daily on mic, to develop the technical aspects of your close-mic work; 
• Explore and record across a range of genres (and styles within genres); 
• Receive constructive critique of your work, and learn how to give yourself insightful self-direction;
• Discover how to analyze text for cues on tone and genre delivery;
• Learn to identify POV (and how to handle shifting POVs);
• Learn to delineate character in a way that best suits a particular read;
• Express the emotional content of the work in a way that’s truthful to you. This is what powers the best narrations in both fiction and non-fiction work; 
• Create compelling auditions.

We’ll also explore:

• The essentials of setting up an effective home studio environment for audiobook recording at minimal cost;
• Recording equipment options and DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) software; 
• The production requirements for the major online audiobook platforms and how to meet those standards; 
• Creating your online profile to book work through ACX, Findaway, and other audiobook platforms;
• Negotiations and contracting with individual authors/”rights holders” and with the large publishing houses (and everyone in between);
• Where/how to find audiobook narration work.

By the end of the week, you’ll have recorded a range of compelling samples for your audio portfolio on the online production platforms.

This class is for anyone interested in pursuing work as an audiobook narrator, as well as for any authors interested in narrating their own work to be sold in audiobook format on Audible/Amazon and other audiobook platforms.