Creating an Audible Book

A few years ago, I created an Audible book for my debut novel, Walking with Elephants. I had a few reasons to embark on that project as an author/narrator. Foremost, I thought it would be fun, and secondly it was a legacy for my grandchildren after I’ve passed—to be able to hear my voice. I undertook this project myself because I had become self-published after my small publisher closed shop, and I didn’t have the money to hire anyone.

Since then, I have self-published two more books, even creating the cover art. So this publishing business has evolved into DIY projects for me.

Creating an audio book is challenging to say the least because one must first become comfortable with recording software and purchasing a good microphone and headphones. After an internet search for recording software I came upon an open source (free—always an excellent option) product. Audacity is fairly intuitive to use and offers a myriad of features of which I just understand only a small subset. Enough for my needs. 

After I figured out how to start a recording, add to a recording that had been stopped, and replace a section of a recording that was garbled or had other mistakes, I was ready to start narrating. My office was my recording studio, not ideal but would have to do.

I learned how to edit out extraneous noises and the like. In fact, I could eventually tell a bad sound just by looking at it. Straight lines are clicks and waves are voice. Basically, this software is like using any document creation software. You can cut sections and copy and paste new recorded sound waves into the original. To add to a stopped sound wave is little more tricky but Audacity has an online manual.

ACX is the Amazon company that produces and sells the book on Audible and iTunes. It also pays your royalties. ACX is the quality control clearing house that makes certain your book passes their thresholds. Obviously, my first book passed. But sadly, there are scant sales.

Listeners liked the story but were lukewarm to my narration.

I am in the final stages of my latest narration project for When a Stranger Comes…. Being familiar now with the enormous undertaking with the hours needed to record and the hours needed to edit, I thought I might try a royalty share arrangement.

Most professional narrators want to be paid upfront so it’s tricky to find one willing to just share royalties, especially if the book is not a bestseller. But I put it up for audition on ACX. An unusual request was that one of my characters had a Russian accent so the narrator had to be able to pull that off. Low and behold I found a production company that was willing to share royalties and sent me a sample of the  narrator reading the audition script.

At first, I thought she sounded fine but then when she read a certain passage, it suddenly dawned on me that she sounded robotic, like your GPS. No inflection, no change of pace. Perhaps this company was using software to convert my text to sound? Maybe that was how he could get it done in just a few months. I pushed back to the producer and told him I thought the sample sounded too robotic. He immediately told me he couldn’t work with me. Now what? My husband who hears me recording when he’s home said that my recording sounded better to him than the sample.

So here we are more than a year later. And I’m nearly finished. Whew!

In this project I undertook using more features of the software by changing the pitch of the voices for different characters, male and female. I also went on YouTube and found examples of British and Russian accents. I also found pronunciation dictionaries for speaking specific words using a British accent and speaking phrases in Russian. I also had fun doing it, although at times the editing process was indeed tedious. Doing all this theatrical stuff is a big gamble. An added bonus is rereading the work in this detail makes me even more proud of how good it is.

Perhaps this finished product with all the risks I took will gain more favorable reviews for the narration. But no matter, because it is still something my grandchildren and their children might find amusing and make me more real to them along with the numerous photos of what I’ve eaten and the boomerang video clips where I look ridiculous that we all have in this era of smart phones.

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Karen Bell was a theater critic and celebrity interviewer for a weekly tabloid in Jacksonville, Fl and earned a Master’s in Mass Communication from Oklahoma State University. For 15 years she worked in corporate America as a technical editor/editor/writer. She has written three award-winning novels that are available on Amazon. She has four adult children, two boys, two girls and four grandchildren so far, also two boys two girls. Her children live in the LA area, DC area, and Germany (her daughter sings with the Frankfurt Opera). She lives far from her children in Ponte Vedra, Fl with her husband and their two furry kids who fill their empty nest.

WHEN A STRANGER COMES, Karen S. Bell

2018 Readers’ Favorite Bronze Medal Winner!

2019 Florida Author Project Winner for adult fiction

Unputdownable Faustian thriller! Greed, entrapment, and the world of book publishing.

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips