How We Made an Audiobook for Startups

By Andreas Ramos and Fawn Alleyne

An audiobook is a collaboration between two people: the author and the narrator. What’s it like? How did we do this? What was it like for each side? Here is the story from both sides. -- Andreas (the author) & Fawn (the voice talent).

About Andreas

(Illustration) Helen and me hiking at Bryce National Park.

(andreas) I’m an adjunct professor of digital marketing at CSTU, a private university in Silicon Valley. I also teach at INSEEC in San Francisco, which is a campus for INSEEC France, one of the largest European business schools.

So far, I’ve written 14 books as paperback and ebooks, so it’s time I did an audiobook.

I live in Palo Alto, Silicon Valley, with Helen and our cat. In the photo, we’re hiking at Bryce National Park. Visit me at andreas.com

About Fawn Alleyne

(Illustration) Narrator Fawn Alleyne in her studio

Fawn Alleyne started making marketing and training videos in Detroit in 1997 for GM, Ford, Kmart, and Comerica Bank. After getting married, she moved to Montreal where she continued to make content marketing videos. After her son was born in 2015, she began to focus on her work as a narrator and voice-over talent. In November 2018 she built an in-home audio booth with exceptional acoustics and sound quality. “Startup” by Andreas Ramos is the first audiobook Fawn produced and narrated in this new booth. Follow her journey into the world of narration voiceover production by subscribing to Fawn’s Youtube Channel or blog.

Connect with Fawn on LinkedIn, FawnAlleyne.com, FemaleVoiceNarrator.com

How I Became a Voiceover Talent

(Fawn) I’ve been working in the media production industry since 1997. At that time Detroit was a major video production market due to the auto industry. I worked on training, news and marketing videos for Kmart, Ford, GM and Comerica Bank. I often worked on small production teams, where everyone wore multiple hats. Over the years I worked as a producer, editor, writer, and cinematographer. But in the back of my mind I always wanted to do narrations and voiceovers.

In 2008 I got married and in 2009 we moved to Montreal - an interesting and inspiring city with an international feel. As my husband and I anticipated expanding our family, I started to think more seriously about transitioning into a career as a narrator. In 2014, I built a tabletop audio recording enclosure that could be set up in a matter of minutes. This allowed me to create voice-overs for marketing videos as well as voice translations of sign language videos.

The birth of my son was the big turning point for me. Video production can be all consuming. It can take weeks, even months, to guide a project from an inspiration on a napkin through the creative development process of scripting, client meetings, filming, editing and online deployment. You take a break when the video is done, but it’s often long hours to hit a deadline. I wanted to be there for my son, so I decided it was time to really focus on my voice-over career.

I started working with a voice coach to hone my ability to control performance style. I spent a great deal of time researching every aspect of voice-over and narration production and realized there is a big market for audiobooks. In November 2018 I started construction on an in-home voice-over recording booth. I was ready to take on my first audio book, so in December I joined ACX. ACX is related to Audible, a subsidiary of Amazon, and is a service that brings together authors, narrators, other studio professionals, and publishers to produce and distribute spoken word audio content.

Why Did I Decide to Make an Audiobook?

(Andreas) For the last few years, friends have been bugging me to turn my books into audiobooks. They like to listen to audiobooks when they exercise or while commuting by train, communing with nature, or while cooking.

Last year, I bought a pair of noise-cancelling headphones for Helen. Soon, she was listening to audiobooks. One day, she was listening to “The Kite Runner” in Chinese. She said it was very good, so I listened for a bit. My Chinese is very basic, but I could tell the narrator was extremely good: clear voice, excellent intonation.

So I began to look into doing an audiobook. I read about the process and I got some software and a microphone. The room has to be very quiet, so I turned off all the machines in the house, closed the curtains, and took off our shoes.

It was a disaster. You could clearly hear the wind, traffic several streets away, and more.

We tried several more times, but we found a recording studio is necessary.

Audiobooks by the Numbers

(Andreas) And then there are the numbers. Audiobooks are big.

US sales of audiobooks were $2.5B in 2017 and grew 23% over the previous year. Sales are up by double-digits every year for the last six years. In China, sales were more than $1B in 2018.

An audiobook can be enjoyed while doing other things, so it’s hardly a surprise to find that John Scalzi’s 2014 novel Lock In sold 22,500 copies in hardcover, 24,000 e-books, and 41,000 audiobooks.

So to keep up with technology, I saw I had to learn how to make an audiobook.

I Chose Amazon ACX

(Andreas) For the last five or six years, I’ve been publishing through Amazon, which distributes my books worldwide. I looked in Amazon KDP (the paperback and digital ebook publishing service) and found it had Amazon ACX, the audiobook production service. ACX audiobooks are distributed in Amazon Kindle, Apple iTunes, and Audible (which owned by Amazon).

How I Got into Amazon ACX

(Fawn) As a voice-over talent new to audiobook narration, I needed to work with a solid platform with structured support. From my research I could tell that ACX has made it their business to help authors and narrators find each other and make their audiobook production a success. They have video lessons, resources, ACX university and they feed the audiobooks into one of the biggest online stores on the web.

Since I had yet to narrate and produce my first audiobook I knew that I couldn’t compete with the known narrators for the high per-finished-hour rates, but as a mother and with so much experience in audio production and voiceovers, I didn’t want to work for free. My only chance was to find a best-selling author offering royalty-share compensation and hope to make my time investment back over the long term.

Gain more insights about my ACX experience by reading this blog post.

How I Looked for Voice Talents

(Andreas) Amazon ACX has 6,500 professional narrators who have their own studios, sound equipment, audio software, and most importantly, they are trained in voice narration. They’re tested and approved by ACX.

ACX lets me specify the voice styles. Startups are for young people, so I wanted someone with a young voice and a fresh style. 74% of Silicon Valley is people from around the world, so the voice should be clear and easy to understand for Chinese, Indians, Europeans, South Americans, and Africans (I work daily with people from all of these places).

So at ACX, I picked checkboxes for styles from a long list.

I also uploaded a short half-page of text from the book so the narrators would have the same text to make a sample.

How I Found Andreas’ Project and Made a Sample

(Fawn) I would spend a couple hours each day filtering the titles up for audition. I focused on genres that suited my voice style - business, technology, language, arts, health and fitness and children’s books. When I found a title that seemed interesting I researched the author and book. Especially for Royalty Share compensation titles, I was looking for an author that was already a best seller, even if it was with a different book. If the author was unknown I would read an excerpt from their book to see if they were actually a good writer. If an excerpt was well written and engaging it gave me some assurance that the audio book would actually sell.

I was immediately drawn to “Startup”. I could tell from Andreas’ website that he knew his topic. And seriously - his website is andreas.com! Who has their first name as a website? Only someone who’s been doing this since the world wide web was invented (well almost). Best of all, it’s a business/IT book that’s NOT boring!!!! The corporate and marketing videos that I’ve narrated are upbeat but pretty serious. I’m much more fun-loving and easy-going in real life, so I saw this book as an opportunity to push my work into a style that aligns more naturally with my personality.

The success of an audiobook doesn’t just depend on the audio production but also on the marketing. With my 20 years of experience in media production in the marketing industry, I bring a lot to the table for authors wishing to promote their audiobook. With his superior experience in digital marketing, Andreas was the kind of marketing partner I wanted in an author.

On January 04, 2019 I submitted an audition for Startup, the title that would become my first audiobook!

Choosing the Voice Talent

(Andreas) Within a few days, five people submitted voice samples. I listened to them both with headsets and speakers, one by one, over and over.

I asked Helen to listen to the voices and rank her favorites. Just about everyone who came to our house was asked to judge voices. I ask friends who are Chinese, Indian, French, and so on. Listen to these. Which do you like best?

After ten days or so, everyone had separately voted for voice #3. That’s how I found Fawn in Montreal, Quebec.

Making a Voice Version of the Book

(Illustration) Me and cat, proofreading the manuscript. Yes, I do it on paper. It works better than digital.

(Andreas) One of the first steps is to convert the print book into a text for an audiobook. The index obviously disappears. The table of contents too. Most of the introductory pages (copyright, acknowledgements, etc.) are also deleted.

There are lots of links in the book, and it’s much easier to click them than to listen and type them, so Fawn suggested a Supplemental Content list.

There are photos in the book, so I wrote text to describe each one. When Fawn reached a photo, she would say, “Here’s a photo of a Chinese restaurant in Palo Alto…”

I also used search-and-replace to turn “VC” into “venture capitalist”, “SV” into “Silicon Valley” and many other acronyms.

This also included the math in the book. Those have to be read out but often, that’s too much to expect for a listener. In many cases, we moved the numbers to the supplemental content.

It took a day or two to clean up the text. Yes, that means I read the book once again. I think I’ve read it 15-20 times by now.

The Agreement, Royalties, and So On…

(Andreas) Amazon ACX offers several possibilities:

• I can offer a flat fee to the narrator and I keep all of the royalties
• I can share the royalties on a 50/50 split with the narrator
• Amazon ACX sets the sales price. In KDP, I set the sales price of paperbacks and ebooks, but in ACX, Amazon sets the price and that starts at $16.
• Amazon ACX distributes the audiobook via Audible, Amazon, and iTunes
• ACX pays me 40% of the sales price. The audiobook sells for $19.95, so I get 40%, which is $7.98.
• I split the royalty 50/50 with Fawn, so we each get $3.99 for each book sold
• Both of us use ACX to manage the contract so ACX pays the shares to each of us. When a book is sold, Fawn automatically gets her share.
• Amazon ACX does everything: hosting, distribution, payment, royalties, and so on. At the end of the month, royalties are deposited into our separate bank accounts.

This means we produced the audiobook with no up-front costs. We didn’t pay Amazon or ACX. If the book sells, we make money. If it doesn’t, we lose only our time.

How We Worked Together

(Andreas) Fawn knows far more than me about how to make audiobooks, so she was the leader.

First thing was to copy the book to Google Docs. We don’t use Google Docs very much in Silicon Valley companies (mostly because Google can read what we write), so I had to learn how to use that.

How We Worked Together

(Fawn) As a script writer and video producer I was experienced at adapting content for vocal delivery. Text intended to be read silently differs from information heard auditorily. Things like font formatting, punctuation and layout help a reader follow along. A narrator should adapt and interpret the visual information so that the listener is able to follow along effortlessly. Andreas intuitively understood this, so he had already spent some considerable time adapting the text. But some necessary adaptations are only discovered once you attempt to read it out loud, so we worked through these sections together via a collaborative cloud document. Google Drive and Docs was the simplest solution for sharing information and tracking communication. In this way I was also able to ask questions about pronunciation and describing illustrations.

It was also important to him that the information be accessible to users of English as a second language. This resonated with me due to my experience in translation and interpretation. For this reason the book is narrated at a reasonable pace.

For anyone authors curious about the types of adaptations Andreas and I made to the text subscribe to my blog. I’ll be posting about that soon.

How I Made the Audio

(Illustration) Fawn in her recording studio.

(Fawn) Before recording a chapter, I try to read a few chapters ahead to get a feel for how concepts are developed in the book. As I go I make comments on the Google Doc so that Andreas can clarify my understanding of the text.

Sometimes it’s easy to read visually over an error without noticing, but when you have to read out loud, you notice little errors. It’s important for the narrator never to assume. Sometimes what seems like a typo at first glance is actually reflective of the author’s style. When a narrator understands the intent, he/she can retain the author’s true voice.

After getting feedback on a chapter, I was ready to record. I recorded each chapter as an individual project in Logic Pro X (audio recording software) . I like to record voiceovers mid-morning when I’m most alert. I tend to settle into my booth about 9am, after my voice is warmed up, with a bottle of water and my tablet, and read for two or three 30-40 minutes blocks. In between I take a walk and look out the window to reset. After some lunch I edit what I recorded that morning.

I uploaded edited chapters to Google Drive for Andreas to review. This allowed him to download them and play them in the app of his choice. Andreas reviewed them in an app that had more speed and playback controls than the ACX platform.

Replying to Edits and Changes

(Andreas) Fawn asked questions. Hundreds of questions. Well, thousands. She’s in Quebec and didn’t know Silicon Valley, which was actually a good thing: I’m so used to it that I don’t know what others don’t know. Pretty much every page had two or three (or more) questions, notes, and comments. Because she narrated the text, word by word, she also found hundreds of missing or misspelled words.

These queries showed up as notes in the margins of Google Doc. I had to answer every note and make change. Often, there was back-and-forth as we discussed a point.

There’s also the pronunciation of words. North of San Francisco, there is a place called Marin County. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, it rhymes with “US Marine”. But it’s a French personal name and in French, it rhymes with “baron”. The same with Silicon Valley place names in Spanish, such as “Milpitas” and “Camino Real”.

(Illustration) Example of a pronunciation query. How do you say “Evvia”?

To talk, we used WhatsApp, text messages, email, and the comment boxes in Google Docs. We had to use text messages and WhatsApp because I’m often teaching at a university and those made it easy for quick messages.

(Illustration) Examples of the chat messages while editing.

This may sound odd, but I don’t think Fawn and I have ever spoken by phone. Have we? Fawn is in Quebec, Canada, and I’m in Palo Alto (California) with a three-hour time difference.

I checked: I signed up for ACX on Dec. 24th and began working with Fawn on January 6th. We’ve exchanged (so far) 471 emails. I have no idea about the number of text messages, WhatsApp, thousands of Google Docs comments, and so on. (Yes, it’s a LOT of work.)

Stuff about Audio...

(Andreas) You think, how hard can it be to record your own voice, right? Just shut the door and use a microphone.

Go ahead and try that. And then listen on good headphones. You’ll hear all sorts of noises, clicks, squeaks, and so on.

But the audio can’t be totally silent, because that sounds odd. There has to be “room noise” that fills in the space between sentences and paragraphs.

After a few days of learning about this, I realized I didn’t have the time to become an expert in audio recording.

The Tools I Use for Audio

(Fawn) Since the building I live in was built a century ago, it’s not soundproof to say the least. I can hear the snow plows two blocks away and my neighbours television. While other narrators can just apply acoustical treatment to the walls and ceiling of a room, I had to actually build a soundproof booth(approximately $1600CAD in materials). Professional microphones range in price from around $200 to $2000. The Blue Spark microphone is well suited for women’s voices and audiobook recording. I was able to pick one up second hand for less than $200CAD. I already had a pair of Sony MDR-V600 headphones that I used for video production. They do the job quite well from an audio perspective, but I will upgrade to a more comfortable pair soon. To get the audio signal from the XLR Blue Spark into the computer requires an interface. Since I’m just recording one track of voice I use the Focusrite Scarlett Solo($150CAD). It’s sufficient for audiobooks and voiceovers for online marketing video. I use Logic Pro X as a recording platform on an iMac. I have a video screen in the booth that mirrors the iMac’s screen so I can control the recording. I have a wireless mouse and keyboard that I can use inside the booth when I record, and at my desk when I edit.

Take a tour of my booth here: https://www.femalevoicenarrator.com/voiceover-blog/2018/12/27/voiceover-booth-finally-completed

For those of you out there hoping to create your own home recording environment be sure to subscribe to my Youtube channel where I’ll be posting behind the scenes and DIY tutorials.

Photos of Fawn’s in-home voice over recording booth. Burlap is a common material for diffusion panels. Fawn used coffee bean bags from around the world to make her diffusion panels. One hails from Columbia - Andreas’ home country .

The Hardware, Software, Soundproofing...

(Andreas) You see now how complicated this can get? There are microphones just for women’s voices?

Still think you can do it? Remember to set Options = Constant, Bitrate to 192 Kbps, Input Vol Setting = 0.75, Threshold -3, Floor noise -.70, Ratio 3:1, Attack 0.2s, Decay 1.0s, Normalize, Max Amplitude -3.0DB...

Yep, time to call in the experts. Fawn knew how to do all of this.

Listening to the Drafts

https://soundcloud.com/fawn-alleyne/startup-written-by-andreas-ramos-narrated-by-fawn-alleyne

(Andreas) After we finished the preparation work, Fawn started narrating, chapter by chapter. Every few weeks, she sent me a chapter to listen.

I downloaded the file, copied it onto my Samsung Note 9 phone, and listened with my Sony headphones.

Audio too slow for me; reading is faster (but many of my friends say reading is too slow for them!) I mentioned this to Fawn and she said, get software that speeds up the audio. The software also adjusts the frequency so she won’t sound like a chipmunk :-)

I downloaded Audipo (a free app), played around with the settings, and finally started listening at 1.51X speed, which is as fast as I can listen but still proofread (proof listen?). I listened to the audio on the commuter train to San Francisco.

After so many reviews, edits, and checks, you’d think there can’t possibly be anymore errors. Ha! Welcome to publishing. You can proofread a text five times and still find errors.

When I listened to a chapter and found no mistakes, I figured that was a mistake and I listened again. I found two or three minor mistakes in each chapter, usually a missing word or a duplicated sentence. I made a note, sent a text message, it got fixed, and I got a new version.

Correcting Errors

(Fawn) After editing a chapter, I listened to the entire chapter again with the text in front of me. This is so essential. Your eyes play tricks on you in the booth and all of a sudden “some” becomes “many”, “100,000” becomes “10,000” and “problem” becomes “problems”. After my initial review, my ever supportive husband listened to the tracks while following along on his Kindle. Even after all of this Andreas found some errors. Sometimes I had to laugh at myself. I pronounced Yosemite as “YAZ-MIGHT” even though I know it’s pronounced “Yo-SIM-i-tee” as in “Yosemite Sam”!

So that mistakes wouldn’t get missed, they were all logged as comments in the Google Doc. When I corrected them I marked them as “Resolved”.

Listening to the Voice

(Andreas) Okay, it’s a very odd experience for me to hear my own book. As I said, I’ve read my book perhaps fifteen times (likely, much more) while writing, editing, and proofreading. I know how my book sounds in my head, where I put the emphasis, and so on.

But when I hear someone else narrate my book, the book is totally different. Fawn did the book in HER style. She added enthusiasm and warmth. The first time I listened to each chapter, I just listened. It’s like something you know very well but you suddenly see it from another point of view.

And here’s another thing: I told Fawn at the beginning she had the freedom to do what she thought best with the narration. She knew narration, not me, so she should do what she wanted.

Production Suffers a Major Setback

(Fawn) We agreed on a contract that would give me a little over a month and a half to produce the book, which I thought would be plenty of time. Ah, the best laid plans...

Like everyone else I get the occasional cold, and every year a flu or two catches up with me. When I get sick I usually bounce back quite quickly, and I don’t remember ever having laryngitis. Unfortunately I caught a terrible flu in early February that took me out for three weeks. I completely lost my voice. Talk about bad timing! It took a full month after the flu passed for my voice to recover. Every few days or so I sent Andreas the sad update that I didn’t have my voice back. So that he’d know I wasn’t blowing him off and truly didn’t have my voice back, I’d send him apologetic voice messages on Whatsapp. I expected him to be really upset and disappointed, but to my relief, he was very understanding.

My voice slowly became stronger and I was finally able to start recording again in late March. Now that you know the back story, you may notice my voice changes a bit from chapter to chapter. Certainly narrators and audio technicians will notice, but hopefully the average listener will just hear my sincere enthusiasm for a well-written book, written by a passionate expert and teacher, who believes that your Silicon Valley Startup just might have a chance.

Final Production

(Fawn) It’s one thing to be called into a recording studio operated by an extremely competent audio engineer to read a script. Recording, editing and mastering your own audio files requires learning the ins and outs of a complicated workflow and software program. Audio editing and mastering applications like Logic Pro X have deep functionality for composers who do multitrack recording. So at first it can be overwhelming and difficult to find your way to the few specific functions you need for voice-overs.

One to ten minute voice-overs can be recorded, edited and mastered in a couple of hours. Producing an audio book requires recording levels be consistent for weeks on end. You really have to up your game. I learned the importance of this the hard way. After the long delay resulting from my sickness, I was relieved to finally submit the audiobook to ACX in mid April, only to be disappointed a few days later when it got rejected by their Quality Assurance Team. I wasted a week watching Youtube tutorials trying to figure out how to do some really simple functions. If you are interested in how to record singers, make beats and compose music there are plenty of YouTubers out their ready to help. But if you just want to learn how to record and master a basic voiceover in Logic Pro X, most of the tutorials are totally irrelevant. Finally I found an excellent Youtuber who focuses exclusively on training and tutoring for Logic Pro X - Darren Burgos of https://www.logicproexpert.com/. In just 40 minutes he helped me re-master the entire audiobook to ACX’s specifications. Soon Startup was on it’s way back to ACX, sounding even better than before. Several days later, Andreas and I received the good news that the book was headed for retail. While we waited for it to show up on Amazon and Audible, we got busy preparing the marketing.

Marketing the Audiobook

(andreas) I’ll promote the audiobook in the same way that I do for distribution of the print books and ebooks:

• Keyword Research to find the best keywords and #hashtags
• Webpage at my website startup-book-audio.html
• Article in LinkedIn (what you’re reading now)
• Post a copy of the article on my blog
• Youtube videos (made by Fawn)
• Email newsletter via Mailchimp to several thousand subscribers, plus my students
• Ads in Google Adwords, Twitter, and LinkedIn that point to the LinkedIn article, Youtube videos, the webpage, Fawn’s videos
• Postings in Twitter, LinkedIn, and WeChat groups (per Google Analytics, my audience uses these two) every day for five days
• Ads in Twitter that are targeted to lists of relevant persons, #hashtags, #hashtags of events, #hashtags of conferences
• Free copies to reviewers, bloggers, etc.

All of this is prepared several days in advance and rolled out over the release week.

Marketing the Audiobook

(Fawn) The first step was to prepare updates for my website and social media accounts. I updated my profile photos and bios. I created audio samples that appeal to different audiences and posted these on Soundcloud with relevant tags and embedded these on our websites. I filmed some behind the scenes videos in order to create teasers for the book. Andreas and I collaborated on articles and blog postings in the hopes that our journey could help other authors who want to provide their fans with a narrated version of their book. We spent long portions of four days working in tandem - writing, tagging, keywording and designing - all the while communicating live by chat, and video calls when necessary.

Conclusion: Making an Audiobook from the Author’s Side

(andreas) It’s been a very interesting experience. I thought I could record this myself. Oh, no! You need expert knowledge and experience about the recording process, plus a trained voice. Luckily, the Amazon ACX platform makes it very easy for me and Fawn to collaborate. As you saw, we used a bunch of software (sound recording, file sharing, messages, etc.). Fawn is in Quebec and I’m in California but that was no problem.

It was very good for me to learn how to work in a new technology. It’ll make Fawn blush, but I’ll say it anyway: I deeply appreciate her experience and knowledge. It was very good to collaborate with her on this. All of my future books will be paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

If you have written a book, you MUST look into audiobooks.

Conclusion: Making an Audiobook from the Narrator’s Side

(Fawn) Select books that you really like, by authors you respect. Give yourself a couple extra weeks for unexpected things like sickness, drilling outside your window and other emergencies. Communicate with your author. Be available - by Skype, Facetime, email, Whatsapp. Collaborate on a shared document. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, it’s the only way to discover and convey the author’s true voice. Don’t spend a week watching YouTube videos of guys in their garage mastering rap songs hoping to find the little tip you need to fix a simple problem. Call a tutor like Darren Burgos who can direct you to the right functions in a matter of minutes. Ask ACX. Surprisingly they are very available to help you be successful. Don’t be shy! Feel free to contact me. And subscribe to my blog and YouTube channel where I’ll be posting tutorials and behind the scenes videos that I think are useful to other aspiring narrators.

What’s Next? The Next Audiobook!

(andreas) We’re nearly finished with the first one and we’re already talking about the next two audiobooks. One will be the audiobook of my book about Twitter. The other will be the audiobook for… a major book that’s coming in July. We’re still writing the first draft; second draft starts in ten days. That draft will be sent to Fawn to start the audiobook. (Yes, I’m working on a draft of a book while working on an audiobook. Did I mention that in the last three months, I also wrote courseware for a university class?)

Thanks for reading this! Andreas in Palo Alto & Fawn in Montreal

Links

If you're a journalist, we can send you a free copy of the audiobook. Contact us with your work email and URL for your newspaper/magazine and I'll send youi

Go to the webpage for the Audiobook.