Audiobook Narrator Tips & Strategies | Amateur Hour or Professional Production?

About this video

Dale interviews Wes Ingram of Findaway Voices, who advises narrators and authors on meeting audiobook production specifications, about what separates amateur from professional production. Ingram frames production as three parts — the performer’s talent, the equipment used to capture the recording, and an engineer who makes it sound good — and says you need two of the three: good talent with good equipment lets the engineer relax, a weaker performer needs great equipment and an engineer, and a great performer with weaker equipment can still succeed with a good engineer. He advises recording in a small, compliant space rather than an echoey room, keeping the environment consistent across the whole book because a change is obvious to listeners, and controlling noise yourself — recording at night and distancing traffic and other sounds — rather than relying on others to stay quiet. A noisy, fuzzy noise floor is presented as the most common sign of an amateur recording. Post-production can address some problems, but a bad recording limits the engineer and risks over-processed audio, and listeners decide within the first seconds whether they can tolerate hours of it. Ingram stresses that pre-production is the most important stage: knowing what an engineer can and cannot fix tells you what must be stopped and re-recorded at the time.

Key takeaways

• Professional audiobook quality requires two of three elements: performer talent, good recording equipment, and a good engineer
• Record in a small, suitable space and keep the same environment for the entire book so the sound stays consistent
• Control noise yourself — for example by recording at night — instead of relying on other people to be quiet
• A fuzzy noise floor where the room is audible is described as the clearest sign of an amateur recording
• Pre-production matters most: know what post-production cannot fix and re-record those problems on the spot, rather than expecting an engineer to rescue a bad recording

Episode details: published October 29, 2019 · 8:01 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dale L. Roberts’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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