Last updated 12/31/24
Narrator Pamela Almand recently wrote to me about images in a public domain book from a deceased author that she plans to narrate and produce as an audiobook. She kindly gave me permission to re-publish her question here so that more people can benefit from this discussion.
[Read more…] about Copyrighted Images in a Public Domain Book
As far as I know, iAnnotate software doesn’t have a way to automatically highlight all your search results.
However, good ole MS Word — even my 2004 copy for Mac — has that option under Find and Replace. This article has instructions.
In addition to or instead of highlighting the text, the Find and Replace formatting box lets you make font changes like underline and bold to the search results. You can even change the font, its size, and color on each search result.
Of course, you also can change the font type and size for the entire document in Word, which you can’t do in iAnnotate. PDF means “portable document format” and was devised as a method to present the text in the same way to all users regardless of their software or hardware. As long as a document is a PDF, you have no ability to change the size, color, or type of the font.
If Word can’t open your PDF, you can cheaply and easily convert it to a Word file using Adobe Export PDF.
Once you’ve made all the global changes you want in Word, iAnnotate automatically opens Word files and converts them back to PDF.
By the way, you can pretty quickly manually highlight your iAnnotate search results if you don’t want to transfer the doc to Word and back. With the search results showing on the right side of your iAnnotate screen, tap the Highlighter tool on the left side with your document. Then, tap on each search result to go to the next instance, and highlight the word.
Members of my NarratorsRoadmap.com site can watch my 12-module video course on iAnnotate to learn how to use this software to its fullest advantage in prepping audiobooks.
At my previous house, we constructed an additional 16′ x 19′ room in 2005 for my studio. I bought a 6′ x 8′ WhisperRoom which fit well in that space. I happily used it for 15+ years.
After moving to this house in 2018, my WhisperRoom seemed a little too large for the room I chose for the studio. I bought a 6′ x 7′ Studiobricks booth earlier this year. It was delivered in 2 large boxes on 11 May.
Drew and I had watched several assembly videos of standard booths and looked through the instructions from Studiobricks. We thought we were prepared and that the two of us could easily and quickly put the booth together. After all, we’d built the WhisperRoom at each house and disassembled it twice. In fact, Drew almost single-handedly disassembled it this last time for its sale.
Reader, we were not prepared, in large part because Studiobricks (SB) did not send the correct instructions for my booth! This article will outline things we learned through the trial and error method over several weeks and tips for assembly of custom-size Studiobricks booths.
Before I continue, I do want to say that SB has been extremely responsive to our messages. However, I would have expected that a company that’s been in business for over 10 years would have all their documentation ready and wouldn’t piece-meal it to the customer as they run into problems. If we’d had all the correct guides at the beginning, we could have saved a lot of time and frustration. I do recognize, though, that the company is greatly expanding its US sales and continuously improving its products and service all the time.
[Read more…] about Assembly Tips for Custom-Size Studiobricks Booths
Last week, the Audio Publishers Association held its annual conference (APAC), which was skipped last year due to COVID-19 and was virtual this time. They ran it on a site that gave us a virtual meeting space, networking areas, and an exhibit section like an in-person event.
The planning committee had asked me to be one of the experts meeting with small groups of narrators to address their particular questions in the Business Diagnostics session. I had the great pleasure of talking with 6 groups of narrators about time management and marketing/branding topics.
One participant’s question took me by surprise: I narrate. I write. I create content for a membership site. I have a full life beyond work. How do I get so much done?
I say I was surprised because I’ve often wondered the very same thing about other people!
You don’t have to be a student of American history to know about the Donner party.
In the 1840s, this group of around 90 people had heard about the wonders of California and decided to travel west to seek their fortune.
Rather than following the rutted road of the hundreds of settlers before them, they took an unproven shortcut given by a person who had not actually made the trip he proposed and therefore had no business in directing others to go that way. None of the Donner party had traveled the route before, either, so they had no experience or knowledge to measure the shortcut against.
As a direct result of taking the disastrous advice about the shortcut, most of the party didn’t live to tell the tale. Those who did live endured unimaginable and grisly hardships in camp.
People today have heard about the gold rush in audiobooks, leading many to decide to become a narrator. While mistakes in audiobook narration don’t carry such severe consequences, they do have repercussions. Therefore, narrators participating in online forums need to be careful about the advice they give and take.
I think it’s safe to say that every professional, no matter the occupation, constantly undertakes training to improve their subject matter knowledge and learn new ways of doing things.
When I worked my first career in information technology, I had to stay current on software and hardware releases and understand how each component could affect the overall operation. In addition to taking specialized classes from vendors, I continuously read forums and magazines devoted to technology.
I would also experiment with new software in a lab environment. The worst thing we could do was install unproven software on our live system and then deal with the fallout from unhappy/downright angry system users who were thwarted from completing their tasks, or worse, lost work due to our changes.
While my job as a narrator doesn’t immediately affect other people, I still prefer to get training and experiment with my narration in a safe space.
Last fall, I undertook 6 masterclasses from the Deyan Institute. Narrator PJ Ochlan hosted guest casting directors Jesse Bickford (Blackstone Audio), Gabrielle de Cuir (Skyboat Media), Guy Oldfield (Macmillan Audio), Caitlin Garing (Harper Audio), Khai Dattoli (Deyan Audio), and Linda Korn (Penguin Random House Audio) in separate 3-hour sessions in which 20 narrators performed a passage of our choosing.
Prior to 2020, I’d only been able to attend one of these masterclasses because they necessitated a trip to LA. With COVID-19 causing everyone to stay home, I was thrilled when I saw these classes would be offered over Zoom.
In each session, the industry director and PJ would give us guidance about ways to make our read better. We’d try a take 2 and sometimes 1 or more additional takes to incorporate their direction. With the slightest changes, a read can go from serviceable to superb.
They would point out areas in the text that were rich with clues about the underlying subtext that could lead to more nuanced acting choices. I can’t overstate the importance of developing the skill of taking the notes given to you and doing something that expresses you understood and are incorporating the direction into your read.
Each director had a different style, but all tried to help us approach the text more authentically — in other words, to be able to present the scenes as though they were really happening to us. Not only did we improve our performances, but listening to the feedback given to others proved highly valuable.
For instance, when thinking about your listening audience, it’s more helpful to envisage the exact type of person who would want to listen to THIS book instead of a general person close to you.
I’ve signed up for 4 more masterclasses over the next 2 months and am looking forward to the first one this Thursday with Iris McElroy (Harper Audio).
Meanwhile, I’m in my 6th week of Joel Froomkin’s Acting for Audio 14-week intensive course. Outside of a 10th grade speech class, I’ve never had an acting course. I’ve heard and read about many of the topics we’re discussing each week and enjoy seeing how they apply to acting in front of a microphone.
Only 10 narrators are in each section of the 3-hour classes to give us time for our performances and Joel’s lecture.
We have to plan and practice a short scene each week to meet certain criteria. Even though we normally work off camera in the booth, doing these tasks on camera helps fire the imagination to better visualize scenes and add physicality as we narrate.
Knowing that I’ll be performing over Zoom means I have to decide what to present, work through the logistics of doing it for an online audience, and practice a number of times before I’m ready to go live for the class.
Many of the exercises have come with a written assignment. In answering the questions, I’ve been surprised at some of the things I’ve never considered and learned about myself.
In both the masterclasses and the acting class, it’s been very interesting to observe the performances. Even without the text in front of us or knowledge of the scene beforehand, we can tell when the narrator wasn’t being true to the emotion of the scene or was otherwise unconvincing, like when an attitude crept into a character voice that didn’t match the author’s intent.
As we immerse ourselves in the characters and story during our narrations, we must allow ourself time to make the discoveries and feel the emotions as the characters would in that moment.
If a director and other colleagues can detect a narrator’s disconnection during these classes, our listeners likely will also hear it in our audiobooks.
I think of the Deyan masterclasses like an appetizer and Joel’s classes like Thanksgiving dinner. I don’t want to give too many specifics about each because doing so wouldn’t be fair to my colleagues who paid for these experiences.
I’m grateful these wonderful instructors have held these classes online and know that my narration skills have improved with each one. I highly recommend both the Deyan Masterclasses and Joel Froomkin’s Acting for Audio course for audiobook narrators who want to take their intepretation and acting skills to a higher level.
