This all started as an experiment. I spent about 30-45 minutes reading one of my books into a microphone to see how it would sound when read aloud. I was less concerned about creating an audio book and more concerned about proving to myself that my book would make a good movie. The plan was to add a sound design—including ambient noise and sound effects—and to act out all the dialogue as well. The sound, I thought, would better help me visualize a movie and hopefully convince me that the story could make for good cinema.
So, I recorded a few chapters and then began the editing process of adding all the sound effects. This was a tedious process, but it wasn’t long before I realized that a) my book would, indeed, make a good movie, at least based on how it sounded when spoken out loud and cut together with sound effects, and b) would also make a good audio book.
Thus, I decided to forge ahead and record the rest of the book. With sound effects. And, yes, I would act out all the dialogue to the best of my acting abilities, which are not great but are not horrible, either, as I do have some acting experience in my background.
This process took me a whopping four months to complete. I know that sounds like a long time since most publishing houses book a recording studio for a weekend and have their authors try to bang out an audio book in a few days. But remember that I was carefully editing my audio book with sound effects and was trying to make everything as tight as possible. In the end, the edited recording of my book ended up being five hours long and I also re-recorded many parts and/or did multiple takes of chapters when I didn’t like how my voice sounded, which was often, but I will actually talk more about that in a moment.
Overall, I must say that I never expected recording an audio book to be so difficult. At times, it almost drove me insane. Why? Well, there are multiple reasons.
First of all, as I mentioned before, I never realized that your voice doesn’t always sound good. You know how Uncle Jesse on Full House used to talk about having a good “hair day”? Well, throughout the process of recording my audio book, I found that it was rare for me to have a good “voice day.” I did have a few good voice days, but on most days, I found that my voice sounded either too nasally or like I had just come in from the cold outdoors or had just gotten over a flu or had just woken up from a nap or just feasted on a gallon of ice cream. I quickly realized that my voice needed to be “warmed up,” as it usually sounded like a garbage disposal for the first several minutes that I began reading. In fact, sometimes I found that my voice wouldn’t start sounding good until almost a whopping 30 minutes of recording. What I soon found myself doing was recording a second take where, after 30 or 40 minutes of recording time, I would start re-reading a section or chapter for a second time and get a nice clean second take with my nice warmed-up voice. When it came to editing, I would mostly use the second take but occasionally use some parts from the first take if I goofed up or if something wasn’t read clearly in the second take.
I tried all sorts of things to help make my voice sound better. Taking sips of cold water. Warm water. Abstaining from dairy products. Taking a hot shower, hoping the steam and humidity would loosen up the vocal cords. But I never really figured out a sure way to getting my voice sounding great. A lot of it just came down to pure luck and, again, getting my voice warmed up to that sweet spot where it would sound good for a while but then inevitably get tired and hoarse-sounding.
I was reading a blog online and somebody suggested abstaining from dairy products, not just immediately before recording, but for several days before recording an audio book. Maybe this is a good way to go but easier said than done because … well … I like my yogurt in the morning. And, since it took me four months to record my audio book, this would have basically meant abstaining from dairy products—including but not limited to yogurt—for four months! All that for a good voice day? Is it worth it? Who knows, maybe it is …
The other frustrating thing about doing an audio book is finding a quiet space and time to record. Ideally, you either want to have unlimited access to a recording studio or a well-insulated, Thoreau-like cabin in the middle of the woods where nobody’s going to bother you or make any noise. Some of you people reading this may have easy access to a quiet environment, but for most of us amateurs, we live in active, noisy environments and, for me personally, I have a dog who is older and restless and doesn’t like me speaking in loud and/or strange-sounding voices. I had to sneak in recording time while my dog was asleep or at least not walking around too much. I found myself caught in a Catch-22 where I needed to speak loud enough to get a nice clear recording but not loud enough to freak my dog out. I also needed to act out the dialogue in an authentic way but not sound too unlike myself lest my dog get freaked out even more. All this while hoping ever-so-hard for a good “voice day” and also while waiting for my voice to warm up. Agh! See why this process nearly drove me batty?
Anyway, despite all the obstacles, I somehow got the audio book done—all five hours of it. I’m pleased with some parts more than others. My voice sounds great at times, not so great at other times. Sometimes, even after multiple takes, I still couldn’t get my voice to sound all that great, at least not great enough to satisfy my standards.
The rewarding part about doing an audio book, however, is that you get to see your writing come alive in a way that doesn’t happen when it only exists as text on a page and you also get to see your story become more three-dimensional. Well, you still can’t “SEE” your story until it becomes a film or TV series, but HEARING the story is probably the next best thing, especially when you edit in sound effects like I did. I can envision and feel and even taste my story so much more when I hear it read aloud in audio form, much more so than when I simply read it as text (although good writing should obviously make us see/hear/smell the story as well, at least to some extent).
If I do another audio book in the future, I will definitely use a better microphone. I recorded my audio book on the microphone of a 2019 iPod Touch and I did this because I thought the portability of the small iPod would enable me to record in different environments, basically whatever quiet place I could find at the given time. But I soon learned that it was better to record in one environment to keep the acoustics consistent. For me, this “one environment” became my kitchen/dining room because it had juuust the right level of reverb, not too much but not too flat either. Recording in a (parked) car is a nice quiet (and, of course, pet-free) place to record, but the problem is that the acoustics are super-flat, not to mention it can be too hot or too cold recording in a car for long periods of time.
But, yes, next time I will upgrade the microphone. Rode has a nice and simple one for about $100. There is also a podcast mic kit made by MAONO that costs around $60, which looks like a nice option as well. I haven’t decided on one or the other yet, but either one I choose would be better than the iPod mic, which I’m almost ashamed to admit I even used to record an audio book on.
To sum things up, here is a quick list of things to keep in mind before you record your first audio book:
1. Find a quiet environment if you can, ideally one that you have an unlimited amount of time to record in. It helps relieve a lot of pressure if you don’t feel you’re in any rush to get your recording session done, like if you only have your house or apartment empty for a finite amount of time. Also, if you have a nervous pet like I do, you may want to choose a pet-free environment. This way, you will feel more relaxed in talking at any volume you want to or in any kind of voice if you’re acting out dialogue.
2. Warm up your voice before you record. Maybe try doing some voice exercises or even sing “Do-Re-Mi” or something like that. Loosen up those vocal cords. In my case, I needed about a half hour of good warm-up time but hopefully your voice is not as high-maintenance as mine. Perhaps only a few warm-up exercises will suffice.
3. Although I didn’t eliminate them completely, I did try to limit my dairy products. Dairy coats the vocal cords and hampers vocal clarity. Actors and singers avoid dairy, don’t they? If you’re doing an audio book, it’s probably a good idea to avoid dairy as much as you possibly can.
4. Don’t mess around with a sub-par microphone like I did. For about $60-100, you can get a decent mic that plugs right into the USB port of your laptop.
5. One thing I haven’t mentioned yet is that I would recommend looking up Audible’s ACX (i.e. “Audiobooks Creation Exchange”) formatting requirements for audiobook uploads or for whatever platform you choose to upload your audio book on. Audible is strict about its audio formatting. For example, your audio can’t have a peak value above -3dB or have a “noise floor” (whatever that is) higher than -60dB RMS. You also need to have each chapter as a separate .mp3 file, you need to have chapter identifiers (i.e. say what chapter it is at the beginning of each file), leave a certain amount of room tone at the beginning and end of each chapter, have a separate book intro file (where you state the title of the book and who is narrating) AND outro file (which, at the very minimum, should at least say, “The End”), and yada yada yada.[i] Here is a great article that will tell you everything you need to know about Audible’s audio book requirements. It’s best to familiarize yourself with this formatting before beginning your audio book so you know what to do and what NOT to do before you start recording but especially before you start your editing.
Most importantly, it’s imperative that you have fun while you’re doing your audio recording. A good rule of thumb is that, if you’re not relaxed and having a fun time recording, the listener of your audio book won’t be having fun, either. And, again, the more relaxed your environment is, the more relaxed YOU will be. I sound like a giant hypocrite right now because, in all honesty, I was rarely relaxed while recording my audio book, but I did the best I could with the recording space I had available to me. Even if you don’t have the ideal recording space, don’t let that stop you from doing the recording. It will get done one way or another, even if you have to record in between nervous dog barks (like I often did).
Hope this helps!
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Here is a handful of sample chapters from my audio book. The book is a novel set in Hollywood called JOHNNY CRUISE (available HERE on Amazon), a Jekyll-and-Hyde-like story about a very famous movie star who is at war with his abusive public persona, which has literally taken on a life of its own.
John Cruise (the person) stays secluded inside his mansion high up in the Hollywood Hills while Johnny (the persona) leaves the mansion and does all the movies, premieres, press events, charity events, interviews and talk show appearances. John desperately wants to leave the house and show the public the REAL him, but Johnny abusively makes him stay inside, warning him that the public won't like what it sees and his career will be ruined.
Overall, JOHNNY CRUISE is a dark comedy about an extremely insecure man who'll do anything to look good - or at least stay - in the public eye. Even if it means killing off his real self in the process.
Listen to the sample chapters below (CAUTION: there are intense and potentially offensive language, themes, drug use, sexual content etc. in the audio clips, although I did censor some of the language via bleeps):
