5 Reasons Nonfiction Authors Should Hire a Professional Narrator for their Audiobooks
- What if you could offer your audiobooks for free while you still earned royalties?
- My Studio in the Woods
- The future of the audiobook market is wide open because it is device independent.
- The Birth of an Audiobook: What if you just tried one chapter?
- Want to really become an expert at something? Write a book about it.
- Is your audiobook worth a credit? In other words: $14.99?
- Could audiobooks be the secret media to reach your kids’ minds?
- 5 Reasons Nonfiction Authors Should Narrate Their Own Audiobooks
- Because I’m not going to read your book like this–but I’ll listen to it.
- Looking for Audiobook Reviews? Audiobook Boom
- Your audiobook playing in a stranger’s living room? Crazy, I know.
- 5 Reasons Nonfiction Authors Should Hire a Professional Narrator for their Audiobooks
- How $14.38 confirmed my future audiobook publishing strategy.
- When the narrator is deeply connected to the author’s material.
- Why my “Every Single Day” book as audiobook is even more exciting than the print or ebook.
- If your book was available on audio, this might have happened to you.
- You read your books out loud for editing anyway, right?
- Free online tool to add meta tags and image tag to MP3 file
- Add Audible book to your purchase for just $1.99
- Possibly the easiest $50 you might never get. Introducing the Audible Bounty.
- One of my goals for my “Audio for Authors” book and course: Short, Sweet, and Done
- Which microphone to get started recording audiobooks?
- My first test with transcription and how this is going to change … everything.
- The Writer’s Guide to Training Your Dragon (Review)
- How’s that audiobook studio coming along? It might be time to get out of the house.
- Is this the next chapter of audiobooks?
- Audio for Authors: What does this teach? What does this solve? What am I giving?
- Do We Listen? (And an excellent example of newsletter marketing.)
- Audio for Authors: Can we successfully market our audiobooks?
- The Pop Pop Pop audiobook editing method
- Podcasting is the new Blogging
- Audio for Authors | Using Headliner to get your audio onto Instagram
- Audio for Authors | Even remotely thinking of recording your audiobook?
So you’re convinced you need an audiobook for your nonfiction work. Excellent. Oh. Now what?
Do you hire a pro or do it yourself?
Dear nonfiction author,
I realize that I already convinced you to narrate your own nonfiction book and you’re probably mid-sentence right now with the microphone in front of you and Audacity open. But just in case you’re the type to hem and haw or just feel like doubting yourself some more, here are 5 reasons you should just hand over the manuscript to a pro and let them narrate it.
- Pro. Because they’re professionals. It’s what they do. It’s their job. It’s not your job (at least not yet–do you even want it to be?). Do you fill your own cavities? Probably not. But could you? Well, maybe with some YouTube videos and those tools you have to fix watches … No. Just leave it to the pros. In fact, we don’t even need 4 more reasons, this one is enough said, right? Fine, we’ll do 4 more.
- Performance. Sure, you can read. You can even read aloud. Maybe you played the back-up lead performance in your high school play. Maybe. But an audiobook is a performance. It’s a show. Your book is words on a page and that’s it. The reader hears only the words on the page. But now there’s an entirely new and different element involved: voice. There are things like pause and tone. Pacing and even breathing. Can you read your book in an entertaining or at least not-cringe-worthy fashion? Engaging narrators can help turn “boring” books into engaging stories.
- Fans. Do you have fans? No, lots of them? The die-hard kind who will read anything you write? Awesome! How many? Oh, will they also listen to anything you read? Yeah, there’s that. Back in my scenario where I decided to go it on my own, I didn’t specifically mention it, but in my research, one of my responders said, and I quote, “I would read anything that Simon Vance narrated.” Did you read in between the lines there? The part about how she didn’t say “Oh, I’d also read your book.” Uh, no. She’s basically saying she’d read your book if (and only if) Simon read it. But if you read it? “Sorry, who are you again?” Fans. Some audiobook narrators have them. Lots of them. You don’t. No, really, you don’t.
- Work. It’s a lot of work. Remember the dentist in #1? Keep in mind that the dentist fills cavities every single day. You probably don’t. Do you know what -23dB means and how to fix the audio files if you don’t get it to -23dB? Audiobook narrators read and stop and start and re-record and possibly edit and tweak and cough and back up and delete and continue and … get the idea yet? It’s work. Lots of it.
- Time. Did #4 not scare you off? Do you need me to add more? How about ACX Requirements? Maybe a little head and tail time? Do you really want true silence or can you adjust it to a bit of white noise? Which is better? If you have years in order to do this, no worries. But if you’d like it done on a deadline, guess who’s going to get that done? What is your time worth? Shouldn’t you be writing anyway?
- BONUS: Next time. Still on the fence? If you’re not sure, let the pro do this book and you can do your next book. You don’t need to hire them for a multi-book contract. Just hire them this one time. See how they do. If you then think that you can do better, I’m sure we could find more reasons for you to narrate your own nonfiction book.
Oops, I may have convinced myself to hire a pro.
What do you think? Have you narrated your own books or have you hired out a pro? How did it go? Are you going to stick with that strategy or might you switch it up in the future?
Let us know in the comments.
