Questions Authors Ask
I’ve been asked the following questions by authors - many of them new to the audiobook world. Since being an author is very different from being a narrator, it’s natural that authors don’t understand what we do and might have questions like these.
Q: Some narrators charge upwards of $250 PFH. That seems so expensive. All they do is read into a microphone, right?
Q: Why do you need to hire an editor/proofer?
To answer these questions, let me tell you what I do after I receive an audiobook contract from an author. Every narrator has their own process, but it generally goes something like this:
1. When I receive the manuscript, I read it – the whole thing! I take notes on characters, voices, accents, and anything else. I spend time with each character and work out who they are and how I can best represent them. Time spent: as long as it takes to read a book. Let’s say it’s going to be a 10-hour audiobook. Maybe with any luck it will take 10 hours to read it, including writing down all of those notes. (Some narrators pay a “prepper” to read the book for them and present them with all the info. Preppers charge around $25-$35 PFH.)
2. Then I record the first 15 minutes of the book. I send that to you, or if we’re working through ACX I post it there. If you have any specific changes you want me to make in terms of characters, voices, accents, or anything else, I make those changes and send them back to you.
3. When the first 15 minutes are approved, I get cracking and record the whole thing. Since If I’ve prepped the book already, it generally takes me at least 2 hours to record each final finished hour. This doesn’t include fixing mistakes or packaging the whole thing for you. It doesn’t include editing or proofing or mastering, because I outsource that. I outsource it because it’s very hard to fix one’s own mistakes; you don’t hear them. Most pro narrators hire out this step.
4. I send the recorded book to an editor/proofer to go through all my work, note any misreads and then send them back to me to re-record. I send my fixes back to them, after which they check it one more time and then master the whole book to ACX specs (or whatever set of specs is needed, depending on where the books is to be sold) so that it sounds amazing. People who do the proof/edit/master usually charge around $100 PFH.
5. Then the book is done! Hopefully you love it. It has taken me around 35 hours of work, including the initial read and prep, the recording, and the mistake-fixing, and $1000 (to the editor/proofer) to produce your 10-hour book. Your fee of $250 PFH has earned me $2,500 minus $1000, or $1,500. That works out to $42.85/hour.
6. But wait, there’s more. I’ve been training for this career for several years. I’ve spent thousands of dollars and many, many hours on learning acting, recording, and the tech and business side of all things audiobook. Any good narrator has also done this. Many narrators have full-on MFAs in acting and have had a whole acting career before this. I have a graduate degree in Theater Production. Oh, and I have a sound booth with a professional microphone, interface, and sound treatment, which it’s taken me a lot of trial and error to get to sound good enough to do audiobooks. I pay monthly subscriptions to various educational organizations to help me in my career and keep my chops up. I also spend time building my business, which includes marketing and auditioning for all of those books that I don’t get. That takes a lot of time, which I am never paid for. However, hopefully I learn something new with each new audition practice opportunity. Also, once narrators start working for publishers, we don’t have to pay for the editor/proofers anymore, because the publishers pay for that. So that’s a step up for us.
I hope that you understand now that audiobook narration is a career choice that many actors have made and that we love it because we love bringing your work to life, but that it’s a very involved process that takes a lot of knowledge and training, and that we also have to make a living at it.