Choosing the Right Narrator for your Audiobook

by Thomas A. Burns, Jr.

OK, you’ve decided to enter the audiobook market, currently the fastest growing segment of the publishing industry, with your novel. What’s next?

Once you’ve decided which company will produce your audiobook, you must find a narrator. This may be the most important choice you’ll have to make.

As a writer, you determine your story’s tone. If it’s a mystery, is it serious (traditional mystery), light-hearted or off-beat (cozy mystery), or does it take the reader on a breakneck ride (thriller)? You’ve chosen the structure of your story and the right words to convey the desired tone, but if you choose the wrong narrator, all of that may be for naught.

I suggest you go to the audiobook section of Amazon and listen to narrators of books in your genre. Identify a tone that you like, and more importantly, learn to recognize that tone from a different narrator than the one you’re currently listening to. You can always try to hire a narrator that you’ve heard, but that person may not be available.

Another important consideration is the gender of the voice. If you have a female protagonist, you don’t necessarily need a female narrator, but you’ll probably want the narrator’s voice to at least sound somewhat feminine. Yes, there are men who can do a believable female voice. How old is your protagonist? Again, you’ll probably want the voice to suggest the proper age. Finally, for dialogue, you’ll want the different characters in your novel to sound like different people. Do any of your characters have an accent?

You can always choose to narrate your book yourself, but think twice. Do you have experience in public speaking, story-telling, or voice acting? Do you have a soundproof area in which to record, and professional recording equipment, or access to a recording studio? Can you envision yourself producing an audiobook that’s 8 to 10 hours long? If the answer to any of these questions is no, I suggest you go with a professional.

I chose ACX, Amazon’s audiobook production company, to produce the audio version of my first novel, Stripper! ACX has nearly 100,000 narration samples on their site, but you don’t have to listen to all of them. You can narrow the list with filters such as genre, gender, language, accent, vocal style and age, as well as how the narrator wishes to be paid. The more filters you choose, the smaller the pool of narrators is.

Each narrator has posted one or more samples of their work for you to listen to. If you have a clear idea of what you’re looking for, you can go through them rather quickly, and send a message to each narrator whom you think might fill the bill.

ACX suggests that you create an audition script to post on your site for prospective narrators to download. It should be roughly 10 minutes long, and be a representative sample of your novel. You can include a descriptive passage, dialogue, especially with your protagonist and any other important characters speaking, or characters with accents, and maybe a thrilling or climactic excerpt. Once a prospective narrator has recorded an audition, you can review it to see how well the tone of your book has been captured. If a narrator is good but not quite perfect, you can suggest changes to bring the narration more in line with your vision. The thing to avoid at all costs is a narrator who drones, never changing their tone, like that college professor you hated. You want your readers alert and involved in your story, not going to sleep.

If you’re working with ACX, once you’ve approved the audition, the narrator will record the first 15 minutes of the book for your review. Up to this point, you can reject a narrator for any reason with no obligation incurred. You can make another round of suggestions, and disapprove the 15-minute sample asking for revision. But remember, if you come off as too demanding, the narrator may decide not to work with you.

Once you’ve approved the first 15 minutes, you’ve entered a contract with the narrator to produce your work.

Depending on how you’ve decided to pay the narrator, that contract may be broken. Mutual agreement always is appropriate. For Stripper!, I had my first narrator quit because of personal issues. Luckily, it took me only a couple of weeks to find someone else, whom I think is even better than the first narrator.

I can’t begin to describe the feeling that I had when I heard my story and my characters come to life for the first time. You’ll know it when it happens, though, and you’ll know that you’ve found the right narrator!

Thomas A. Burns, Jr. is the author of the Natalie McMasters Mysteries.

Natalie McMasters is a detective for the new millennium.

In the first book, Stripper!, Nattie is twenty, short and blonde (OK, it’s bleached!), way cute, and a pre-law student at State. She’s also straight, or at least she thinks so. To put herself through school, she’s moonlighting as a private detective trainee at her uncle Amos Murdoch’s 3M Detective Agency, where the most exciting thing she does is sit in a car, staking out people who’ve claimed workers’ compensation to be sure they’re hurt as badly as they say. It’s the perfect gig for a college student, because she can study on the job. But one day she directly confronts a subject on a stakeout, and Amos fires her.

Then she meets another student who bears an uncanny resemblance to her, and everything in her life changes. When her new best friend is brutally murdered and Amos is critically injured, Nattie immerses herself in the seamy world of webcams and strip clubs to hunt the killer. Her investigation forces her to reassess many of the ideas that she’s lived by her whole life and do things she’s never considered before – strip on a stage, question her sexuality, and rediscover the meaning of love itself. Nattie eventually exposes a drug ring, police corruption, and an assassin-for-hire online. Then she stumbles upon the true face of evil, and her encounter does not leave her unscathed…

The audio version of Stripper!, narrated by Lisa S. Ware, will be released on Amazon, Audible and Itunes in November, 2019.

Photo on Visualhunt.com