Where do you stand on audiobooks? Do you listen to them or loathe them?
How do you feel about authors narrating their own book? Would you ever narrate your own book?
These are some of the questions I’m grappling with while I push on with the current work-in-progress and read (or listen to) some fabulous fiction.
Audiobooks: 13% of the book market.
Print Books: 70% of books sales
Ebooks: 17% of book sales.
Bookbaby Jan 2019
Have you ever listened to a recording of yourself speaking?
I’m betting you have. It’s a shock to hear yourself sometimes, isn’t it? Kind of like when you unexpectedly catch sight of yourself in some random store window and in the seconds before you realise it’s you, you wonder who the hell that person is staring so rudely… (or is that just me?).
The first time I heard my recorded voice, I was at school. One of our projects was to write a short journalistic article and then record ourselves reading aloud—like a news presenter. That was back in the days of tape recorders. Remember them?
Anyway, once we’d handed it in to our teacher and she’d given them a grade, she played each of them back to the entire class. None of us had expected that. One of the girls, Caroline Anderson, had great fun laughing and picking out who was speaking.
Until they got to my piece…
My first piece of narration
I still recall the opening line of my article:
“Every year hundreds of Australians, mostly female, disappear while holidaying abroad.”
Caroline was stumped.
You see, the first time I recorded my piece and heard it back I was horrified. My voice sounded so masculine and hesitant and just so ‘yuk’. No way was I letting anyone hear that. So I worked on my tone and on my enunciation, and most of all on not sounding like my brother! I practiced and practiced until I was happy with it.
When my teacher played it to the class it sounded more than passably good, to my ears at least.
And I’d stumped Caroline. Yay. No teasing for me. Yet instead of feeling proud of my achievement I was embarrassed. In that hollow silence when no one knew whose piece it was I realised that in chasing perfection I’d put myself on the outside. I felt like a fraud.
Now, the moral to this tale should be that I learned to be myself and embrace my flaws. For the most part I have. Except when it comes to narrating my own books.
90% of audiobooks are distributed via Audible
Diane Lasek, ListenUp Audio
Audiobooks and me
These days I listen to a lot of audiobooks. They suit my lifestyle. I can download them to my phone, plug in some headphones and indulge my love of fiction while exercising or doing the ever-present housework. And I can listen at night without fear my husband will complain that my minuscule book light is keeping him up.
Audiobooks are also helpful when he insists on watching re-runs of the various iterations of Star Trek–something we’ve watched so many times I only have to hear the opening lines to know which episode it about to air.
So, I am a lover of audio books. Well, most of them. Some stories work better than others in audio. And some are enhanced by great voice acting.
Authors narrating their own audiobooks
For the last two years, being fully aware of the growth in this medium, I’ve been tossing around the idea of recording my own audiobooks.
I know, I know: you can do anything but you can’t do everything. Right?
Yet I’ve always wanted to be an actor and I’m ‘pretty good’ at accents so why not give voice acting a shot? Hmmm…
The other day I thought I’d try it out—recording myself truly acting out the story like a professional narrator. I was reading back my current work-in-progress anyway so I thought why not record myself doing it? I got all set up with my laptop and the voice app on my phone and off I went. Accents, emphasis, even acting the thing out as much as I was able while still reading from the laptop.
After several attempts at the first two chapters I felt quite pleased with myself. Yes, it took a long time. And yes, it ate into my precious writing time. But sometimes you just gotta dive in,
And I felt that I had nailed the accents.
Go me! 😉
The biggest selling genres in Audio are mysteries, suspense and thriller, science fiction, and romance.*
Publishers Weekly 2018
*The top selling audio books lists of 2018 an 2019 are dominated by political memoirs and books based on podcasts.
Then I played it back.
It wasn’t horrible. But it definitely wasn’t great. And after all the audiobooks I’ve consumed in the last twelve months, I know what great narration (and not so great narration) sounds like.
Narrator quality and audiobooks
The quality of the narration can enhance or kill a story, don’t you think?
Audiobooks are the biggest growth market at present. As a reader I’m certainly contributing to that growth! Whenever it’s available, and it’s not too expensive, and I like the narrator, I tick the audible upgrade option to my kindle purchase.
What about you? Do you do this too?
How do you feel about Audiobooks—are they a must-have or unnecessary?
Do you think it’s better when an author narrates their own book or does a professional voice actor enhance the experience for you?
I love audio books. I do a lot of long distance driving and a great story keeps me awake and relaxes me so that I can accept the speed limits. Music tends to make me speed.
Hi Anna,
me too. Audiobooks are perfect on a long drive, or even a short one–unless I don’t know where I’m going. Then I need silence. Cause we allknow that helps us see better 😉
Since I don’t have a fancy phone I don’t have the option of reading or listening to it. My other choice would be to load to my laptop. That wouldn’t be very conducive to my love of reading in bed. I have pretty well left the audible market to others. I don’t know that I could have a book read to me. I read very quickly and I think I would feel like the story was moving too slowly. I also wonder if a narrator would change the perception I have of the book. Would another voice change the images in my imagination? Is there a Kindle with audible? I guess I could check into that and see what I think. If everyone sounded like Morgan Freeman, then maybe I would be more willing to give it a try.
Hi Deb,
That’s a good question. I listen on my iPad, but I’m not sure about the kindle reader having audible. I have found I read a lot faster than the audio version. Mostly that doesn’t worry me. Sometimes it does. One book was so slow I upped the speed because it was so frustrating.
Audio is a very different experience to reading, more passive but I still find myself transported to that world. I always listen to the audio sample before I buy. A good voice makes all the difference. Pretty sure you can find a book narrated by MF lol.
I have only tried fantasy, which was awful, a high pitched whiney voice. Not good. I only listened to a few sentences then turned off. Not sure either about romance as the voice might influence the way I look at the Hero/heroine. Maybe a thriller or suspense would be a better choice. The jury is out.
Hi Alanha,
The narrator makes all the difference. One of my recent books (Sophie Ranald’s Sorry, Not Sorry) had one the best voice actors I’ve heard. She did all the accents flawlessly and really captured the character and her emotions. I always listen to the sample before I buy–just in case.
Hope you have better luck if you try audio again.
Hi Rowena,
I’m an avid reader and used to burn through 2 – 3 books per week. That’s until I started getting into jogging and to keep myself from getting bored, started listening to audiobooks. Now it’s my favourite distraction also from chores (cleaning!), and as Anna mentioned long distance driving, and I listen to around 2 audiobooks per week.
I agree the narrator is such a big part of making an audiobook a success. On few occasions I have stopped listening as I couldn’t stand the voice or intonation. I also find it very important that the voice can make a distinction between the different characters.
Why don’t you make a sample of a narration of one of your books available on your website and let your readers judge?
i do listen to audio books from time to time. I started many years ago when mounting an art exhibition and had a lot of boring mounting for work to do so audio books were a blessing! I still enjoy the sometimes now. The narrator makes a huge difference. You don’t want someone to read too fast or unclearly. There cant be strong accents you want to enjoy the story not get tied up with the voice. I have stopped listening to books that have too many sound effects or music where I don’t want it! So you can get too ambitious.Obviously I don’t know your voice so I cant tell you if you are good to record or not, you need to get some feedback from people on that fact, people you trust to tell you the truth. You maybe the best person ever to record your own books- Stephen Fry does!
Hi Claudia,
Great suggestion, the fact that I go into a panic when I think of doing a sample narration for public consumption probably answers my question. LOL
Yes, the narrator is so important. I’ve quit listening because of the narrator and I’ve kept listening when I might have quite reading. I recently read a rom com where the character was so annoying it would definitely have been a dnf had the narrator not been an excellent voice actor.
Enjoy your running and audio. I don’t know how you keep those earbuds in! 🙂
Hi Fiona,
Oh Stephen Fry has such a distinctive voice and his command of English… Wow. The man could read the ingredients in medications and make them seem interesting. I’m definitely NOT in that league. I think performance anxiety will do me in. Happy sitting in my ‘attic’ making things up.
Interesting that you say that about music and sound effects. Years ago, when ebooks had just taken hold (circa 2009?) I was at Writers Week here in Adelaide and an English boutique publisher mentioned that they had realised the potential to add music and sound effects to ebooks. I don’t recall him mentioning narration, merely effects to give that extra layer of experience of the story. They got quite excited about this and went for it with some of their newer titles. The upshot of it was that readers hated it.