Tag Archives: audiobook

50 Critical Questions
Discover Audiobook Producer

Are you an author or publisher who owns the rights to written works? Are you looking to leverage your intellectual property for multiple streams of revenue?

If so, 50 Critical Questions: Discover the Perfect Audiobook Producer (Narration & Audio Production Demystified for Authors & Publishers) is just for you.

This guide contains all of the critical questions you need to know to turn your books into amazing audiobooks.

This primer was born from the frequent questions I field from authors and publishers who want to understand this mysterious and growing industry niche.

Find the producer who knows nuanced performance, stellar techniques for recording & editing, and modern marketing & channels distribution.

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I love acting and dreaming up character voices to match an author's imagination. I love shaping audio performances through the power of recording and editing. And I wanted to share my passion and knowledge with the world...

TURN CUSTOMERS INTO RAVING FANS

In this book I will teach you 1) what makes a phenomenal audiobook producer, and 2) how to discover the perfect one who will guarantee your audiobooks are loved by fans.

Magnify your audience and massively increase royalties!

WHAT THIS BOOK HAS TO OFFER

50 Critical Questions: Discover the Perfect Audiobook Producer contains everything you need to know about creating and distributing phenomenal audiobooks.

The Art of Narration

What makes a good performance? How can you trust that what worked for one book will work for yours? What kind of experience is the right kind? You get answers, not just questions, from a unique producer who is also an author.

Audio Engineering & Editing

I share key technical questions and cover the right kind of answers so you know you aren’t being snowballed by jargon. You’ll even get enough technique to try recording and editing your own titles.

Discover Audiobook Producers

This books gives methods and resources to help you find fantastic narrators and producers. It also covers traditional versus independent audiobook publishing, and how modern audiobooks are distributed and marketed.

How to Gauge a Studio

I cover some basics of sound isolation and the audio chain (microphones, pre-amps, A/D converters, etc.) without getting too deep into the weeds.

Time & Money

You’ll get an analysis of the time it takes to properly turn you book into an audio masterpiece. You’ll also get a handle on what it will cost and how much you stand to make.

A Quick Read

At 12,000 words, this book has only the essentials, without all the fluff. Read it in one sitting, and go back to questions for a refresh as needed.

Do you have an audiobook version of your book?

Click below to get Jason’s free 1-page PDF on how to choose the perfect narrator!

Morgan Freeman Narrates

Morgan Freeman NarratesIt’s always good for everyone to be on the same page when covering a new topic.

So let’s define the different players in the audiobook slice of the book publishing pie.

 

AUDIOBOOK PUBLISHER:

Let’s ask the question, “With whom does a publisher shake hands?” A publisher usually has negotiated with a creator’s agent for the rights to intellectual property. The book (in print, ebook, and audiobook) for an author. The song for a musician. That’s a handshake (or contract).

Shaking HandsThe publisher then turns around and shakes hands with a distributor. In the print world, that distributor then shakes hands with book sellers. In the digital world, most distributors are also sellers.

Digital distribution for audiobooks is relatively new, so there is no tried and true way that this all shakes out. A publisher might cultivate relationships with digital distribution sites directly. Or it might leverage the distribution contacts of a large audiobook producer.

But the bottom line is that a publisher is usually in charge of collecting money from all the different sellers, then disburses money due to the author (and potentially others) in the form of royalties.

The publisher takes a healthy cut of each for managing all these relationships for the author.

PRODUCER:

Alpha dogA producer oversees all the aspects of turning the author’s written word into a spoken story.

This can mean leasing a studio (if they do not have one in-house) for recording. It can include hiring narrators, audio engineers, and audio editors.

It is also possible for the producer to wear everyone of these hats herself. That’s why this term can get so confusing.

If it takes a pack of players to create an audiobook, the producer is the Alpha Dog.

And a producer who can land an A-list actor, like Mr. Morgan “Gravitas” Freeman, deserves an almighty paycheck.

NARRATOR:

Jason Brenizer - NarratorThe person(s) who read the words of your book aloud, both the narrative or action, and the dialogue. One actor or performer can read the entire work, or various actors can be hired to play different parts.

There are equal parts acting and craft to narration.

It’s the actor’s job to be vulnerable, play, and perform the descriptions and dialogue with truth and non-judgement.

It’s the craftsman’s job to understand the techniques of microphone performance.  Can he maintain energy throughout a multi-hour session? Is he consistent with character voices from beginning to end of the book? Does he have control enough to avoid ugly mouth noises or heavy breathing.

AUDIO ENGINEER:

Voice Over Studio 101This professional sets up all the gear to capture the narrator’s performance through a microphone and record it onto a computer with optimum quality.

A recording is only as good as the weakest link in the chain.

A good engineer knows how all the links work together–from mic to pre-amp, from compressor to A/D converter–and can troubleshoot glitches quickly.

AUDIO EDITOR:

Adobe Audition Clean NoiseThe audio editor is like a film editor. She takes the raw performance, selects the best clips, and stitches them together.

This is where the shape of a performance can be fine tuned. A good editor will think in terms of pacing.

She can create suspense by withholding a reply longer than expected. She can create tension and even confusion by speeding up a performance.

If there are extraneous noises, those will be removed with a variety of special techniques.

The editor is often also in charge of exporting the final files in the format requested by the distributor.

DIGITAL DISTRIBUTOR:

audiobook Digital DistributorsThis business interfaces with the fans, usually through a website that makes it simple to search for titles. Audible.com is a perfect example.

Smart distributors will spend the lion’s share of their energy on enhanced marketing campaigns to maintain a strong relationship with their customers.

 

Audiobook Producer - Jason Brenizer

Jason has produced and narrated a variety of top selling audiobooks, including titles in Mystery, Science Fiction, and Fantasy.

Tell Me More>>

“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow.

Since I started producing and narrating audiobooks, I’ve been asked a lot of questions by authors and publishers who know very little about how best to get their books into this amazing format. I’ve fielded questions at local author meet-ups, answered email queries, and even participated on a panel at the Bouchercon crime, mystery, and thriller writers convention. How does an author or publisher discover the perfect audiobook producer or narrator?perfect audiobook producer 1

I’ve been a little surprised about how foreign this form of media is to the book world. But then I’ve been playing and recording music since the mid-90’s, so the complex mixture of art, technology, and science that makes for quality recorded sound is almost second nature to me now. And I’ve acted in film and theater, so I have a feel for—from trial and error—what rings true and what sounds flat and false.

Over a post-Bouchercon, convalescent lunch, a publisher friend suggested I take some time to write down everything I know about audiobooks. Since I had very few brain cells firing after the four days of non-stop networking and partying, I said I’d think about it later. Then I promptly forgot about it by the time my plane landed back in Austin. I had a novel coming out in a month’s time, and another to outline, and this, that, and the other thing. In other words, life happened, as it happens to all of us.

perfect audiobook producer 2Fast forward a month and half. I found myself replying to another query about an audiobook that I wasn’t planning on adding to the production schedule. The book looked amazing, but I had too much on my plate already. The timing for me was off. Yet I wanted to help the author find another producer who would do her book justice.

And that’s how 50 Critical Questions: Discover the Perfect Audiobook Producer was born.

The words poured out of me. I hand’t realized I had so much to share. So while I put on the finishing touches, I thought I’d set the stage and give a little hint of what’s to come. The following introduction may still change a little bit in the edit, but you’ll get the idea of what’s in store.

I have a goal to have this new book published in ebook format by December 31, 2015. Maybe early in the new year, I’ll turn it into an audiobook about audiobooks!

INTRODUCTION to 50 Critical Questions: Discover the Perfect Audiobook Producer

This primer is for people who own or control rights to works of the written word—authors and publishers. If you wish to leverage your intellectual property, you can increase your income by reaching a totally new audience through audiobooks.

A little history lesson is useful here. I promise to keep it short.

We all know the music industry was one of the first to be disrupted by shifts in digital technology. CDs initially gave way to mp3 delivery, and now we have streaming subscriptions to the world’s entire music catalog.

Hard media continues to go the way of the dinosaur. No longer do you need a DVD or BluRay to watch a movie at home. (Let’s skip the discussion about the merits of going to the movies or seeing a band live. That’ll take us on a tangent, and I want to hold to my promise.)

Now, consumers of entertainment subscribe to Netflix or buy whole seasons of TV shows from iTunes or Amazon. These digital titles are saved for you on your Cloud account. Not too long ago, we used to be tethered to a physical location for our entertainment. These days we get to watch and listen On Demand, wherever we are.

Print media has gone digital as well: magazines, newspapers, and of course books. Your friend can tell you about the latest Stephen King book and you can jump onto your smart phone, order it, and start reading it immediately. Hooray for eBooks!

The barriers have been removed, and so, more and more, we expect immediate gratification. In the early years of the new millennium you had to drive to a bookstore and browse. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy that experience even today. But more often than not I couldn’t remember the title or author of that amazing book my friend told me about when I walked through the doors..

Next came the online bookstore. Searching and filtering made finding just the right book that much easier. I could order it and have it shipped to me in a matter of days. This got us used to partially delayed gratification.

Then the eBook was born and the publishing industry spun on its head.

We have a nearperfect audiobook producer 3ly infinite library at our fingertips anywhere on the planet. Yet modern societies are on the move like never before. More than ever, I hear people complaining, “I don’t have time to read.” Life is too fast. Their daily commute—whether by car, bike, bus, or subway—eats up hours of their day.

These are the people who need your audiobooks. The people who multitask as a way of life. Do they clean house or train for marathons or walk the dog? Well then they are your perfect customers.

It seems that everybody and their grandmother knows about eBooks. But strangely, they don’t all know about the modern audiobook. Sure, they vaguely remember “books on tape” and that old image is stuck in their minds like a discolored Polaroid photo. (If you don’t know about Polaroids, just know that there used to be physical, chemical printing for photographs too. The leader in this space was a company called Kodak, which was bigger than Apple is today, but they didn’t shift with the times and were disrupted right off the face of the planet.)

Books on tape—or books on CD for Gen X—were expensive and cumbersome and people mostly bought them for big road trips.

Smart devices changed everything.

To the current generation, “owning” media doesn’t make much sense. Growing up with both a pacifier in your mouth and a smart device in your hand naturally shifts the way you interact with the world. The concept of ownership gives way to the concept of paying for instant access. The new breed purchases a license to the content.

Legally, that’s what we’ve been doing with print books all along, but we got confused because we were holding a physical product in our hands. We thought the transaction was the same as buying a head of lettuce.

The latest media to enter the “Wild West” stage of digital disruption is the audiobook. It’s a rapidly growing market, but still in its infancy. That means there is no better time for authors and publishers to do all they can to enter this space now. It’s not that crowded yet, so getting your titles into the ears of your listeners can massively increase your income today. And don’t forget, digital media is forever. Your audiobook will never go “out of print”. The royalty tail is a long one indeed.

If you can shift your thinking from “I write books” to “I tell stories”, you’ll be on your way to expanding your fan base and growing your revenue.