Karen@KarenCommins.com

Karen Commins

Award Winning

Atlanta Audiobook Share-rator™

Narrators

Voice artist and (future) Scrabble competitor

I blame the cake.

You would think that a person who has always loved words and makes money as a voice-over talent – a career built upon interpreting words — would have started playing Scrabble in childhood. I can remember the first time I ever played Scrabble. Almost unbelievably, I went through my life without playing Scrabble until last May, as Drew and I finished a cruise and wanted to do something on the last night on-board the ship.

I lost that first game but won a new hobby. We bought a Scrabble game when we got home, but we didn’t play it often.

Studio/Voice Over/Jobs Scrabble board

While watching the Ace of Cakes show on the Food Network one day, I saw a Scrabble cake designed for a person who is a tournament Scrabble player. It was the first time I ever heard of Scrabble tournaments. At that moment, I decided I would win a Scrabble championship.

I have an extensive vocabulary. I used to whip through the find-a-word puzzle magazines, and I always liked to play Boggle. Once I decide upon a goal, I achieve it. With my intrinsic love of words, I thought a Scrabble tournament win couldn’t be far away.

 

I’m sure this same kind of thought process goes through the minds of many people who suddenly decide to get into voice-over work.

 

Sometimes they see a celebrity on TV who gleefully recounts how voice-over jobs allow them to dress casually, go without make-up and pick up a massive check for an extremely small amount of time. Maybe newcomers read an interview about a voice talent talking about how great it is to do work in their pajamas from their home. In any case, so many starry-eyed newcomers seem to think, “I know how to talk. I’m going to be a voice-over star making millions of dollars while still in my pajamas!”

I wish I had a dollar for every time someone approached me with the line: “People always say I have a nice voice and that I should work in voice-over.” I always advise that folks interested in learning any new skill start with a book because it requires a minimal investment of time and money to learn whether you want to pursue the topic. I direct people interested in voice-over to my recommended list of books and previous blog entries like this one.

In my mild-mannered quest for Scrabble dominance, I didn’t take my own advice about getting a book, at least at first.

Another cruise at Christmas caused my Scrabble interest to grow, primarily because we couldn’t find a board to play all week. I decided to get serious and learn more about the game. No, I didn’t contact a Scrabble master and ask for free advice and shortcuts to Scrabble success. Instead, I bought some page-a-day calendars this year with Scrabble words and puzzles, and I also bought the book Everything Scrabble. After all, I need to get ready for my future tournament.

 

Like establishing a voice-over career and everything else worth doing, though, if it were easy, everyone would do it.

 

I admit that unscrambling the words and making the best plays on the calendar pages are sometimes impossible for me. I also confess that I have played probably fewer than 20 games in the last 9 months since this Scrabble fixation took root.

I thought maybe my score would improve if I just had a different kind of practice material. I was looking at the Scrabble-related books in a bookstore the other day and saw Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players by Stefan Fatsis. I immediately obtained the book and started reading it.

I’m still reading this eye-opening account, but, by page 30, I had changed my mind about entering a Scrabble tournament, at least any time soon.

I discovered several things. First, the tournament games are limited to 25 minutes. I am always acutely aware of my time in voice-over as the runtime is always critical. Playing a board game under a time constraint would be a new challenge.

More importantly, I don’t have the desire – much less the spare time — to put forth the tremendous effort necessary to become a Scrabble champion. The people in Scrabble tournaments spend major chunks of their discretionary time memorizing word lists, anagramming words out-loud, studying strategy books, and analyzing every rack’s play following each game.

And playing Scrabble games is something they do relentlessly. They play against others in the park every weekend and against themselves in their living rooms everyday. They play against computer programs. They plan their lives around the next tournament even though tournament prize money and prestige seems in short supply. Think about it — how often do you see news coverage of a Scrabble championship? The serious players are members of the National Scrabble Association and eagerly look forward to receiving competition rankings in the mail. In short, they eat, breathe, speak, live, and dream about Scrabble. I think those in Scrabble tournaments must play the game for the sheer love of it.

I can relate to that kind of thinking. I have wanted to be a voice-over actor since I was in 5th grade, and I do this work because of the sheer love of it. I already eat, breathe, speak, live and dream about my voice-over career, which means I have no room to add another obsession to my life. Besides, becoming a Scrabble champion looks like a lot of WORK! 🙂

 

I couldn’t help but wonder how many newcomers to voice-over take the time to read one or more books on the field.

 

Does obtaining work in voice-over seem as easy as pulling letters from a bag and making words?

If the equivalent of an E tile was running through my previous entries, it would be that success in voice-over requires persistent training and marketing. Like any business, being a voice-over artist requires on-going expenses for classes, equipment and marketing materials. Just thinking about the potential marketing decisions and expenses in voice-over could be daunting to a newcomer:

  • demo production (after the expense of appropriate coursework in script interpretation)
  • demo duplication
  • web site construction
  • web site hosting and maintenance
  • memberships on casting web sites
  • memberships in professional organizations
  • collateral material for mail-outs

Championship Scrabble players and professional voice-over artists have more in common than just words. In both cases, those who are dedicated to their endeavor constantly practice their skills and look for every opportunity to learn something new about it. It takes time and work to become known as a player and even more of the same to stay in the game. Those who are truly successful are in it for the love of the thing.

I am reminded of the words of Charles Schwab:

The man who does not work for the love of work but only for money
is not likely to make money nor find much fun in life.

I will continue to play Scrabble at home and on vacation. I will do my puzzles and read the books because I enjoy the game and want to improve my scores. However, I guess I won’t ever be the recipient of a cake shaped like a Scrabble board. Might I suggest instead a cake that looks like a microphone?

 

Are on-line casting services for you?

Newcomers to the voice-over industry frequently ask me and other established talent whether they should join an on-line casting service such as Voice123.com or Voices.com. I think that many people are afraid to plunk down some money, especially for a service that cannot guarantee work. In the past, I have answered this question by recommending the person should search the archives of VO-BB.com, the Yahoo Voiceovers group or other Internet discussion groups devoted to voice-over as the topic is a common and hotly-debated one.

Marketing guru Jay Abraham noted that everyone in an industry tends to do everything the same way to grow and sustain their business. In voice-over, standard income-producing processes include promoting oneself, having an agent and joining an on-line voice-over casting agency.

While you don’t pay an agent until you book work, you must pay an on-line casting service for a yearly subscription. If a majority of people in your industry are participating in some marketing endeavor, like a casting service, it makes sense to participate in at least one service as well.

You have to determine a marketing budget for your voice-over business and from it, decide which, if any, services you should join. The subscription fee is an investment in my business, just I as also invest money in continuing education, equipment upgrades and other forms of marketing.

Asking individual people about their results with a particular casting service will not yield useful data. Car manufacturers will tell you that your mileage may vary depending on numerous circumstances; the same is true with one’s success in obtaining voice-over work from web-based services. Some people will never book anything through these services, while others land a steady stream of jobs.

To me, an on-line casting service is just another avenue of potential work and another way my name shows up in the search engines. With an on-line voice-over casting service, I know that I will have an on-going opportunity to decide which projects look interesting, practice scripts and communicate with potential clients. Jobs and clients gained through these services are just added bonuses.

My greatest source of work has been through my own self-promotion, in which I follow Jay Abraham’s theory:

In order to engineer true breakthroughs in those 3 areas of your business [marketing, strategy and innovation], you must travel outside your industry or your current business to look for the breakthroughs.

Abraham states that you’ve got to switch your thinking from tunnel vision — which is the way that everyone does things within your own industry — to funnel vision. Create a funnel of those success processes in other industries which you can pour into your own business.

It’s okay to be in the same place with everyone else in your industry. It’s so much better to be some place where you are the only voice talent. It’s up to you to figure out that location based on your assessment of your voice and where it fits in the marketplace.

I view each marketing activity I undertake as a test. If the test is effective, I will continue with that tactic. If it isn’t, I will do something else. A subscription to an on-line voice-over casting service can be considered a test of one of the tactics in your marketing plan. You will never know how well a service or any marketing tactic will work for you unless you commit the time and money to implement it.

 

Obtaining the audio rights of books

I received an inquiry today from someone interested in producing her own audio books. I thought other voice talent might find this an interesting topic and be able to add their knowledge to the discussion.

To obtain the audio rights on a book, you first have to learn who has the rights: the author, the literary agent or the print publisher. I have found that answering inquiries from individuals is not high on the agenda for some large print publishers. You may wish to start by querying the author about the rights. Like all other facets of your voice-over business and marketing, your research into audio rights may require persistence.

The author may need to research his/her contract. One author told me that she wanted to perform her book, so that’s another possibility that may occur. A literary agent told me that I may be able to offer the author something like $1000 for the audio rights If the author still controls them. However, I’m sure the exact amount depends on the author, the book’s popularity and each person’s skills as a negotiator.

Once you have the audio rights and are ready produce the recording, you also have to consider how you want to distribute the book. Will it be on-line, on CD or both? Books on CD require additional planning and money for the packaging. Will you pitch the book to an existing audiobook publisher who already has a distribution channel or forge your own path?

Recording and editing an audiobook to commercial standards requires a significant commitment of time. A commercial audiobook also requires time and expense for marketing. You may wish to perform books for your state’s reading service to gain experience and see how much you enjoy the process before deciding to pursue the acquisition of audio rights for a book. Also, many people gain experience and satisfaction out of volunteering for agencies that produce audio recordings for the blind and print-handicapped. You can search the Internet for locations in your area.

For additional questions about audiobook narration, I encourage you to read this post about getting started in audiobook narration. If you have more to add on the subjects of obtaining audiobook rights, audiobook distribution and audiobook marketing, I would love to hear from you! I encourage literary agents, authors, audio publishers and voice talent to leave comments so that we all can learn from each other.

 

Michael Palin’s thoughts on integrity

Happy new year! I hope that you all had a wonderful holiday season and are enjoying this day. Each New Year’s Day, I strive to engage in activities that I want to occur all through the year. Symbolically and realistically, I can start the new year by focusing attention on things that matter to me. For instance, I went to the gym first thing this morning, and now I’m writing a blog entry before recording a script.

In mid- to late December, Drew and I took a holiday trip, which may provide musings for future blog entries. During the trip and in recent days, I have been catching up on some reading for pleasure. While I encouraged you on this day one year ago to look forward, today I want to tell you about a commercial script that was written almost 30 years ago.

The commercial in question wasn’t mine, but rather one for Michael Palin, member of the hilarious Monty Python team, fantastic travel writer, and charming TV documentary host. As a longtime fan of Monty Python and avid journal writer, I was excited to start reading Palin’s Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years. In numerous entries, he has mentioned various voice-over roles. Palin does not indicate whether the commercial discussed in his entry transcribed below was for voice-over or on-camera work, but I certainly admire his refusal to perform it.

Wednesday, April 19th [1978]

Arrival of the Pascall Bon-Bon script over breakfast. I read it and straightaway felt slightly nauseous. Jill had mentioned a figure exceeding 20,000 for this commercial, or possibly two, and what I had just read was a 30-second piece of trivia — worthless, unoriginal and banal. It looked as though it had been written in four minutes after a drunken lunch. Yet again my mind boggles at the huge discrepancy between money and talent.

I could so easily pick up the phone to Jill and say yes. Yes, I will ignore all my creative and artistic instincts. I will get an injection from the doctor on the morning of the commercial which will render me intellectually numb for the period of a day — at the end of which I will have done the horrendous deed, and be thousands of pounds better off.

Quite a temptation. But I realise that if I did this script I would be committing a crime against all the principles that concern me — honesty, value, integrity — all would be totally compromised. Helen read the script and agrees. So I have to phone Jill and withdraw my toe from the seductive waters of advertising yet again.

Fortunately Jill has seen a script and is equally unimpressed, so the problem of hurting her doesn’t arise. She phones the agency. An hour later the director calls back and asks if I would still be interested if the script were entirely rewritten.

While you may think that Michael Palin is a big name who can afford to make a decision to turn down a lucrative offer, the power to say NO rests with each of us. Palin wrote in his 4/13/78 entry some words that I hope will give you pause throughout this coming year and throughout your voice-over career:

So John has polarised his life into earning (routine, no great pleasure) and non-earning (creative and artistically satisfying). A dangerous set-up, I would say. I believe the only sane and satisfying way to live is to fuse the two and avoid, wherever possible, cheapening yourself for money. In that way talent gets eradicated.

I write in my journal almost every day, but I can only wish I had written something so profound. By sharing his journals with all of us, Michael Palin is a teacher to voice-over artists and performers everywhere.

In 2008 and beyond, may your every voice-over job and your entire life bring you artistic fulfillment, prosperity and happiness!

 

To the parents of aspiring voice talent

Since Drew and I love to travel, it’s no surprise that we enjoy watching The Amazing Race on TV each week. The show routinely starts late during football season, so we sometimes catch part of 60 Minutes while waiting for the Race to start. A story from 60 Minutes a few weeks ago has been on my mind because I have noticed a growing trend among the questions I receive about getting started in a voice-over career.

Morley Safer reported on the work habits of the generation known as the millenials those born between 1980 and 1995. The following direct quotes are points raised in the story:

  • They were raised by doting parents who told them they are special.
  • They have climbed Mount Everest. They’ve been down to Machu Picchu to help excavate it. But they’ve never punched a time clock. They have no idea what it’s like to actually be in an office at nine o’clock, with people handing them work.
  • Zaslow says that the coddling virus continues to eat away even when junior goes off to college. “I heard from several professors who said, a student will come up after class and say, ‘I don’t like my grade, and my mom wants to talk to you, here’s the phone,'” he says. “And the students think it’s like a service. ‘I deserve an A because I’m paying for it. What are you giving me a C for?'”
  • And dear old mom isn’t just your landlord; she is your agent as well. “Career services departments are complaining about the parents who are coming to update their child’s resume. And in fact, you go to employers, and they’re starting to express concern now with the parents who will phone HR, saying, ‘But my little Susie or little Johnny didn’t get the performance evaluation that I think they deserve,'” Crane says.

I’m sure every generation thinks that it is the one with hard-working folks, and everyone younger is lazy. I also believe that 60 Minutes targets an older crowd. Many of the statements are generalizations that don’t apply to an entire group of people. Still, I found one kernel of truth in the report: some parents are entirely too immersed in their adult childrens’ lives.

I receive a steady stream of e-mails and calls from people who want to start a career in voice-over. I frankly was shocked when I received the first message from a mother who asked for advice for her son, who was in college. It was the first such message, but it wasn’t the last.

My first thought when receiving inquiries from parents is:

Why doesn’t Johnny or Susie contact me on their own, or, better still, read a book about voice-over?

I am a firm believer in doing your own research and making your own way in this world. If you’re not motivated to discover and learn those things essential to advance yourself, why should I or anyone else be inclined to help you?

In one case, the language of the e-mail made me wonder if the child was old enough to be making career decisions. If the young person is of an age to work, s/he should make the decisions about the course of their life, including their work. However, if a parent is asking about voice-over on behalf on a young child, I question whether the parent is trying to live their own dreams instead of pursuing something that the child has wanted to do.

Johnny and Susie also need to face the cold reality that voice-over or any career in the performing arts is tremendously competitive. In fact, I think all career paths are extremely competitive among the people interested in that type of work. Voice-over has the added perceived attributes of glamour, simplicity and wealth to incite even more people to flock to it as a career choice.

Most people have no idea of the amount of training and equipment needed to become financially successful in this career. Dedication and perseverance are essential character traits. Through countless auditions, you will hear ‘no’ exponentially more than you will ever hear ‘yes’…if you even hear anything. Like any profession, it can take years to go through the appropriate education and become fully established.

In addition to the performance aspects, the voice talent must become proficient with managing a business. Even when you hire staff to perform duties such as accounting, engineering, IT support, marketing and shipping, you are the CEO of the business and must make all decisions related to your business.

Finally, I can’t imagine any scenario in which queries from mom and dad present a professional image of the prospective voice talent.

If you’re a parent who is eager to help your child start a voice-over career, the best help that you can give is to cut the cord and step out of the spotlight.

Johnny or Susie should be the one to investigate their chosen field. It’s a perpetual cycle to contact people, take classes, make a demo, and perform the marketing activities needed in this career.

The Amazing Race is like voice-over in that people must use their wits and skills to overcome obstacles and challenges while competing with others who are after the same prize. While the show observes the competition between 2-person teams, voice-over by its nature is a solo competition. Certainly the aspiring voice talent will need and want a good support team which may include mom and dad. However, the aspiring voice actors are the only people who can take the steps necessary first to become a working voice talent and then to sustain a career.

 

A page from my book

I treated myself to an early Christmas present by purchasing Rodney Saulsberry’s book Step Up To The Mic. It was a present in more ways than one. Saulsberry is a well-established voice actor who attributes his success to a positive attitude. It’s the sort of uplifting book that I would have liked to have written.

A positive attitude is not just about thinking nice thoughts or being nice to people. As Saulsberry explains, a positive attitude encompasses all of your thoughts about yourself and your abilities in voice-over work. While The Secret brought the ideas of the Law of Attraction to the masses, it’s an age-old principle that, to quote Ralph Waldo Emerson,

We become what we think about all day long.

Chapter 8 is my favorite chapter in the book because Saulsberry presents “Empowerment Exercises”. I particularly enjoyed the affirmations on page 82-83, perhaps because I used one and was delighted when it came true!

One thing that I don’t recall seeing in this book is the firm advice to write down your goals although Saulsberry does mention the steps used in goal-setting. I am an advocate of writing down goals, especially after reading the book Write It Down, Make It Happen: Knowing What You Want And Getting It by Henriette Klauser. Klauser wrote about dozens of examples of people writing their goals as a roadmap to their lives.

However, with multiple computers, journals, a smartphone and various scraps of paper in both the studio and office, it wasn’t always easy for me to remember my great ideas and plans. I had wonderful ideas for marketing my voice-over business, but I couldn’t find them.

After listening to David Bourgeois on the Voices.com Voice Experts podcast a few months ago, I decided to follow his method for creating a business plan. I bought a Moleskine notebook and tabbed it with headings about everything related to my voice-over business.

I currently have 10 sections in my voice-over planning book. If I see a promotional product that I want to send to people, I clip out the picture from the catalog and put it in the Marketing Ideas section. If I have an idea for a blog entry but don’t have time to write about it (as is so often the case), I make notes in the Blog Ideas section. I also have ideas for podcasts and e-books that I want to create. I carry the book with me everywhere and find myself constantly adding to it. Just looking at my voice-over journal makes me happy!

Given the books that I read and the one I am now writing in, it’s easy to maintain a joyful outlook and positive attitude about my voice-over career!

V-OJournal.jpg