On 15 September 2015, ACX.com hosted a Twitter chat with Audible Approved Producer Eric Summerer. Erik has recently passed 15,000 sales on royalty share titles.
He talked about his criteria for book selection and other topics of interest to audiobook narrators.
I used Storify to compile and categorize all of the tweets on this page so that the questions and answers are together. I also added some headlines for navigation.
Every now and again, we get a Divine whisper of an inspired idea. Such was the case about a very special and exciting audiobook I created and produced earlier this year.
In 1889, Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland were female reporters in New York. Each went on a daring solo trip around the world at the same time. Nellie wanted to beat the time of Phileas Fogg, Jules Verne’s fictional character in Around The World in 80 Days. Rival reporter Elizabeth Bisland left on a solo race around the world hoping to beat Nellie’s time!
Nellie sailed east to England in the morning. That night, and unbeknownst to Nellie, Elizabeth took a train west to San Francisco. In Bly vs Bisland: Beating Phileas Fogg In A Race Around The World, I combined the narratives from both women into a single book with 1 timeline! Who will win the race?!
My journal entries tell Part 1 of the story behind the story between idea and implementation.
[Read more…] about Bly vs Bisland: The Story Behind the Story (Part 1)
On Saturday, 16 May, I read Austin Kleon‘s book Show Your Work: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered. He wrote:
When I have the privilege of talking to my readers, the most common questions they ask me are about self-promotion. How do I get my stuff out there? How do I get noticed? How do I find an audience? How did you do it? I hate talking about self-promotion. Comedian Steve Martin famously dodges these questions with the advice, “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” If you just focus on getting really good, Martin says, people will come to you. I happen to agree: You don’t really find an audience for your work; they find you. But it’s not enough to be good. In order to be found, you have to be findable. I think there’s an easy way of putting your work out there and making it discoverable while you’re focused on getting really good at what you do….
Become a documentarian of what you do. Start a work journal: Write your thoughts down in a notebook, or speak them into an audio recorder. Keep a scrapbook. Take a lot of photographs of your work at different stages in your process. Shoot video of you working. This isn’t about making art, it’s about simply keeping track of what’s going on around you. Take advantage of all the cheap, easy tools at your disposal—these days, most of us carry a fully functional multimedia studio around in our smartphones. Whether you share it or not, documenting and recording your process as you go along has its own rewards: You’ll start to see the work you’re doing more clearly and feel like you’re making progress. And when you’re ready to share, you’ll have a surplus of material to choose from.
While the book is short and easily consumed in an hour or so, its wisdom takes longer to digest.
I decided to do an experiment of showing my work with a Daily Dispatch on Twitter. Before you see all of the Daily Dispatches, let me first tell you 4 few things I learned in the experiment.
Last Monday was Ladies’ Night on the East West Audio Body Shop (EWABS) show! On 22 June 2015, I was excited to be a guest on the show and talk with hosts George Whittam and Dan Lenard about my favorite thing — AUDIOBOOKS!
My narrator colleagues Hillary Huber and Ann M. Richardson and publisher Carlyn Craig, founder of Post Hypnotic Press, joined me as guests.
In our 1.5 hours on the show, we covered a variety of topics of interest to both new and experienced narrators.
At one point, I compared the job of audiobook narrator to that of a baseball player. I summarized my thoughts in the graphic below.
Howdy, pardner! Welcome to my first stray post roundup! I don’t always confine my writing to this blog, and some of my critters have wandered off hither and yon across the ‘Net. I thought I’d rein ’em in here in case you missed seeing them.
In this roundup, I’ll link to my new magazine column and responses posted on other sites about my thoughts on setting boundaries in your voiceover business, how audiobooks allow you to read more books, which audiobooks about technology are best, and whether to read fiction or non-fiction. I’ll also unveil my latest video, which shows how to use the iAnnotate app during the audiobook corrections process.
Some people go to fantasy sports camps where they learn from their favorite All Star players. Last week, I did something similar….except the members of my fantasy All Star team are all award-winning audiobook narrators!
On 26 May 2015, the day before the annual Audio Publishers Association Conference, veteran narrator Johnny Heller hosted a Narrator Workshop in NYC. In addition to Johnny, the All Star presenters were Scott Brick, Simon Vance, Karen White, Jeffrey Kafer, Robert Fass, PJ Ochlan, Carol Monda, and Peter Berkrot. The NY Mets and Yankees could only dream about fielding 9 such talented people at the same time!
Each presenter first shared some thoughts about their work in audiobooks. We then heard terrific discussions on these topics:
The day ended with a number of personal coaching sessions observed by the entire audience.
I couldn’t possibly do justice to the entire event in this post. Also, in all honesty, I felt that the presenters shared some things that were intended only for the people who were in the room. In fact, Jeffrey Kafer said one particular thing that made the cost of my trip worthwhile. It wouldn’t be fair or right to repeat everything I heard that day. Instead, I will offer 10 of my takeaways from the workshop.
1) From Scott Brick: “In every line of text that I read, I’m looking for the teachable moment. The teachable moment is when you can reach the one who is disconnected, the one who isn’t paying attention. There’s going to be somebody in the audience who doesn’t care about audiobooks. They’ve never heard one, and they think it’s weird that someone is reading them a story. There will come a moment, somewhere in the text, where you’re going to be able to reach them. For somebody, it’s going to be their very first listen. Unless you do the very best job you possibly can…they may not come back for a second listen. ” Scott doesn’t pay attention to the genre as it tells him nothing. He approaches fiction and non-fiction the same way.
2) From Robert Fass: “You’re there to serve the text. Being aware of the difference between serving yourself or something in your spirit other than the text is something that needs to be cultivated. Cultivate your intelligence because you don’t know what kind of book you’re going to get. Every character in even the worst book has to have a full life. Go to museums. Read outside of your assigned book. Do something totally different to expose yourself to different facets [of life]. When you get in there, you’ll say you know what this is about.”
3) From Carol Monda: “I’ve been taught that good is the enemy of great. I could spend 15 hours doing an hour of recorded time! I’ve learned you can’t; you have to let it go. If you are mindful, if you are in the moment, if you are connected — that’s the most you can do. [You can make characters more interesting sounding and other technical improvements.] Ultimately, is your gut in it? Your heart in it? Are you earnest about it? That’s the work.”
4) From Scott Brick: Every successful actor creates work for themselves. Have something that you can sell through your web site, and use affiliate links.
5) From PJ Ochlan: When doing accents and dialects, phonetics only make up 50% of the language. Placement is everything. Practice mimicry and notice how your vocal placement moves.
6) From Peter Berkrot: “The inexplicable moment of truth and beauty comes from spontaneity…Sometimes the material isn’t good and you have to find a way to enter that imaginary world and bring it to life….There’s a legacy. The gifts that you receive come through the gifts you give.”
7) From Karen White: If you don’t take romance seriously, don’t do it. Let go of the judgment. To play the opposite gender, some adjective can describe the character. Think of that adjective when that character speaks.
8) From Simon Vance: Check in with yourself before you start to see how you are feeling. Acknowledge how you’re feeling and let it go because you have to be with the book when you start recording.
9) From Michael Stover: ACX has published over 35,000 audiobooks, and around 1000 auditions are uploaded every week. Audible is showing 30% growth each year and now has about 700 employees.
10) From Johnny Heller: You need to see who you’re talking to in order to pull out the emotion. We can’t speak through a horrible moment. We must live it.
The Johnny Heller All Star Narrator Workshop was a grand slam! I extend my deep gratitude to Johnny for organizing the event (complete with a wonderful catered lunch), the fabulous presenters who were simultaneously entertaining and informative, the narrators with me in the audience who asked such useful and interesting questions, and the narrators who courageously had a coaching session in front of their peers.
If Johnny or someone else organizes a similar event next year in Chicago, I hope to be there!
Do you have any questions or comments about my takeaways from the workshop? Please leave a response on my blog.
Photos: Sincere thanks go to Graeme Spicer, voice talent and managing director of Edge Studios, for graciously sharing his fantastic pictures taken throughout the workshop.
