Once we finished the production, we were inspired to create a 2:28 video to describe how we met in the style of the interviews from the popular movie When Harry Met Sally. Enjoy!

The post How I Met the Love of My Life appeared first on Karen Commins.

I had such fun in creating this 2:01 video, which premiered today on the Audiobook Community Facebook page. I hope you enjoy it! If you also love audiobooks, please tell me your favorite audiobook in the comments. I’m always searching for my next good listen!

The post I #LoveAudiobooks! appeared first on Karen Commins.

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.

Here’s the video with the full replay. You can read the show notes at this link.

Thanks again to George and Dan for inviting me to be on the show and to my wonderful colleagues for the most delightful conversation!
 

The post Audiobook Roundtable on EWABS appeared first on Karen Commins.

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.

Big news!  

I am thrilled to announce that my friend and fellow audiobook narrator Ann M. Richardson and I are now writing a monthly column about audiobooks for InD’tale Magazine! InD’tale is a gorgeous and well-established on-line magazine that, to borrow Ann’s perfect phrasing, offers great information for anyone interested in writing, reading, or now listening. We call ourselves Narrators Helping Authors. Our goal is to help indie authors and publishers learn about the industry and inspire them to create successful audio editions of their books!

Our column is called InD’ear, and we’ll alternate authorship each month. I wrote the first one, which appeared starting on page 30 in the June, 2015 issue of the magazine.

In Other News

If you run a voiceover business, chances are great that other people constantly ask you how they, too, can become a voiceover talent. I shared my thoughts about unpaid consultations in this update on LinkedIn titled Setting Boundaries in Your Voiceover Business.

I’ve answered a few questions about reading and audiobooks on Quora.com:

Here’s my answer to the question How can some people read so many books, do they actually read and understand or just briefly browse? You’ll note in the comments that a previous respondent took issue with my interpretation of the question.

As a former IT professional, I was happy to reply to What are the best audiobooks for computer science and programming?

I also responded to the question Are there any benefits to reading fiction over nonfiction?

Finally, audiobook narrators, this video is for you! I show you how my editor and I use Branchfire’s iAnnotate PDF app on our iPads instead of a spreadsheet during the corrections phase of the project.

Please leave me a comment if you found useful info in this article or have ideas about other topics you’d like me to address. My work is my passion, and it’s a joy to sit a spell and share it with you!
 

The post Stray Post Roundup appeared first on Karen Commins.

Last fall, I spoke at the Georgia Romance Writers annual conference to help authors get started with creating audiobooks. I recently created a 41-minute video from that presentation which:

• explores the audiobook landscape (beginning at 2:43)
• explains reasons every author should produce audiobooks of their books (beginning at 7:23)
• demonstrates Amazon Whispersync capability between an audiobook and Kindle ebook (beginning at 10:19)
• offers specific tips about ways to write with audio in mind (beginning at 12:09)
• advises the viewer about the audiobook production process and gives concrete information about using ACX.com to create an audiobook, including payment for production costs and distribution options (beginning at 22:04)

If you have questions or comments about the video or the audiobook production process, please leave a note for me on the blog!
 

The post Setting Sail In Audiobooks: A Video For Authors appeared first on Karen Commins.

Perhaps it caught my attention because I have my own story about the quiet beginnings for a new business:

Date: 10/6/06
Time: 10:10am
Place: 10634, the cabin number of a cruise ship docked in Mykonos, Greece

Becoming an audiobook publisher has been a rough road, full of potholes, downed trees, and diverging paths that didn’t necessarily lead me in the direction I wanted to go. Only by trudging forward and refusing to give up was I able to eventually reach the destination.

I offer this post as a road map for becoming an audiobook publisher on ACX with a public domain book. If you want to publish a book still under copyright, you may want to skip down to the end for more information.

Initial Obstacles

I recently wrote about how ideas love speed. I did take several immediate actions 7.5 years ago when I had the idea to create an audiobook publishing company. I read several books that hadn’t been made into audiobooks and contacted the authors about obtaining the audio rights.

One author was interested, but the idea seemed to be squelched by her agent’s lawyers, who were reluctant to be involved with a start-up. Another author wanted to narrate her book. It took her several more years, but I see on Audible that she did narrate her audiobook. A third author was someone rather famous. I didn’t receive a response to my inquiries, but I see that her book is now on Audible, too. Perhaps I gave her the idea.

Life intervened. With the loss of my mother and changes on my day job, I put my dream of becoming an audiobook publisher on the shelf. While ideas love speed, some ideas can’t be implemented immediately and often take years to develop.

All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.

— Victor Hugo

With the advent of ACX, I knew that I could finally see this idea through to fruition!

Rather than start with a book from a contemporary author as I originally envisioned, I decided to start Jewel Audiobooks with what I thought would be a simpler project:  a book from the public domain (PD).

On 1 January 2013, I decided to publish the audiobook of The Heart of the New Thought by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, originally published in 1903. I wanted to produce a shorter work that would be new to audio and had a message I want to share. I often find myself in conversations about the power of our thoughts and words, so this little volume seemed perfect.

Detour: Public Domain Books Ahead!

Even though Audible has countless public domain titles on its site, I didn’t realize that Amazon/Audible/ACX had created procedures to discourage people from using public domain titles to create audiobooks.

They did have valid reasons for thwarting use of public domain texts. First, Audible’s customers have complained about paying for titles that are available for free elsewhere, such as on LibriVox. Also, sales — and therefore your royalty payments — may not be very high for a public domain work where multiple audio editions exist.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Before you start an audiobook project, you must exercise due diligence to determine whether a work is under copyright or in the public domain. The links I’ve compiled in this article will aid you in your research.

An outline of the steps I followed to publish my public domain audiobook through ACX is shown below.

1.  First, I created a publisher account on ACX and tried to claim the free Kindle edition of the book.

ACX is set up with a connection to Amazon’s book database. The rights holder must have a print or ebook edition of the title already listed on Amazon.

For this reason, I might choose a different distributor than ACX if I were creating a new audiobook from a public domain text. I don’t want or need to be associated with ebook publishing; I only care about audio publishing. If a book is truly in the public domain, a narrator can record it without making any changes to it. The narrator then will hold the production copyright on that audio edition. You can learn about 2 other distribution options in this comment.

When I asked ACX to associate the free Kindle copy of my public domain book with my publisher account so I could upload the audiobook, ACX support responded::

In order for us to accept your public domain title, you must upload your version of the book on Amazon. The title needs to be uploaded by you with a distinct introduction or dedication in order to make it your own.

Since they are set up for this 1-to-1 match of print and audio editions between Audible and Amazon, I could see why they needed a different version. In addition to the reasons stated above, Amazon and Audible are adding WhisperSync technology so that customers can switch between the Kindle and Audible editions of the text. Therefore, the editions have to match.

2. I then spent considerable time in creating a new ebook edition of Wheeler’s book with a personal introduction and linked table of contents to make it different from the existing free version.

As I explain in this comment, you do not necessarily need to create your own edition! If you want to request permission from a rights holder of an existing edition, you can adapt my email template. I’ve found that providing too many details such as discussing audio rights or “claiming the book” only causes confusion. If the rights holder wants to license their audio rights to you or doesn’t respond, you can ask a different rights holder or create your own edition as I have done.

If you do create your own companion ebook, formatting the ebook and choosing the cover are beyond the scope of this article. Plenty of resources exist to help you with those tasks. In fact, fellow narrator Andrea Emmes has created this fantastic guide (PDF)  that documents her approach and offers links to other resources.

2A. I narrated the audiobook from my ebook BEFORE uploading the ebook so I could fix any typos in the text that I found in the course of narration.

When I uploaded my perfect Kindle version to Kindle Direct Publishing, it was immediately rejected because it was not differentiated enough from the free version! The KDP form letter response stated:

We offer our customers free editions of public domain titles in the Kindle Store. In order to provide an optimal customer experience, it’s our policy to only offer differentiated versions of these freely available books…

We consider works to be differentiated when one or more of the following criteria are met:

• (Translated) – A unique translation
• (Annotated) – Contains annotations (unique, hand-crafted additional content including study guides, literary critiques, detailed biographies, or detailed historical context)
• (Illustrated) – Includes 10 or more unique illustrations relevant to the book

….While it’s possible that other features may make books unique, we only consider the criteria noted above to be differentiated. Examples of some features we do not consider to be differentiated include a linked table of contents, formatting improvements, collections, sales rank, price, and freely available Internet content. Please note it is considered misleading to customers to have your title claim differentiation when your book is not sufficiently differentiated.

3. I wrote to both ACX and KDP multiple times asking for a 4th way to differentiate a text — as the companion to the audiobook. 

Neither organization offered any accommodation. I also suggested that ACX allow the first publisher to claim the free Kindle version. That suggestion wasn’t adopted, either.

4. I found and bought 10 (count ’em, 10!) lovely vintage images from iStockPhoto to illustrate my ebook.

It took some thought and time to find appropriate images that could be inserted throughout the book and in places where they logically should appear. Simply putting 10 images in one place would not differentiate the book. Also, you don’t want them all at the front because that’s all a prospective buyer would get in the preview. I didn’t mind buying the images as I will re-purpose these illustrations to create a video to promote the audiobook.

5. I uploaded my ILLUSTRATED Kindle edition to KDP and was thrilled when it was accepted for publication!

I had to note the manner of differentiation from the free text in both the title and the first line of the description.

My ebook is now available for sale in the Kindle store. Yay!

6. I logged in to my ACX publisher account and claimed my edition, which was still flagged on ACX as being a known public domain book.

I clicked the link to claim the book and wrote the message explaining that I had created a different Kindle version.

If I had bought the audio rights to a contemporary book, I believe I would start with this step on ACX. All of the steps before now to create and publish a Kindle version were required only because I published from a public domain text.

7. WAIT for the email from ACX stating that your edition has been added to ACX.

This step is very important! I didn’t do this step and claimed my book as soon as I saw it on ACX. If I had waited, I would have known about the next step and saved myself some aggravation and a few days’ delay.

8. Fill out the title profile carefully. Choose whether to use exclusive or non-exclusive distribution.

I updated this paragraph on 8/19/22 because ACX has removed the requirement for non-exclusive distribution. You can choose either one.

When I published the book and wrote this article in 2014, ACX didn’t allow RHs of public domain works to choose exclusive distribution. In order to change my contract, ACX had to remove my title from the system and add it back, so, of course, everything I did had to be re-done, further delaying me by several days.

You also will need to choose your territories of distribution and enter information such as the name of the narrator, name of the publisher, and print and production copyright dates.

ACX provided some additional guidelines about public domain audiobooks:

• You can’t post the title for audition or contract a narrator to create the audiobook. The audiobook must be recorded outside of ACX. See this ACX help article for details.
• You can upload the audiobook to ACX and use it for distribution as long as your audiobook meets the ACX Audio Submission Requirements.

9. Upload the audio files chapter by chapter in the ACX interface, and click “I’m Done” when you are satisfied.

10. REJOICE when you receive the email from ACX stating that your audiobook is now available on Audible, and start marketing it!

When I started Jewel Audiobooks, it didn’t have a web site. It still doesn’t have business cards. I imagine many of the companies profiled in the Dell ad also didn’t have those things when they started. I look forward to the same sort of exponential growth in my publishing empire as Dell has had in computers!

Now that Jewel Audiobooks is a dream come true, I’m already planning the publication of my next couple of public domain titles. I’m also planning a follow-up contact about obtaining the audio rights to the first author in my previous search because I still would love to narrate her book. I think it’s another idea whose time has come!

Bonus info about publishing contemporary books:

In August 2016, I held a webinar so narrators could learn about acquiring audio rights for books still under copyright. My guest speaker was Jessica Kaye, who has over 25 years of audiobook and publishing experience as a Grammy-award winning audiobook producer, director, and distributor. She’s also an attorney in the firm Kaye & Mills and specializes in intellectual property, publishing law, and licensing. I wrote this article to inspire and encourage other narrators to license the audio rights to favorite books. If you’re interested in this topic, you can purchase the webinar recording, complete with sample licensing agreement and an exclusive list of links, on my Shop page.

8/10/21 Update

In the 7 years since this article was published, I’ve learned a LOT about producing and publishing audiobooks of public domain works! I distilled much of that knowledge in a video course called Create Your Own Path that I developed exclusively for members of my NarratorsRoadmap.com site. In the first module, I show how to find good books that may be in the public domain and research their copyright status. I discuss publishing options in module 3. As you might expect from the Queen of Links, I’ve added lists of specialized resources to accompany each module.

8/19/22 Update

In addition to the changes to paragraph 8 above regarding distribution, I want to add a link to my Public Domain Narration Headquarters. I link to my other articles about publishing PD works and answer Q&As in the comments.

The post How I Started My Audiobook Publishing Company appeared first on Karen Commins.

I laugh each time I see this ad because I relate a lot to Dave these days!

The past 2 months have been wonderfully busy. I’ve done full production on 3 audiobooks; the finished time of each ranged from 9.5 hours to almost 13 hours. I also worked with my web designer in creating a new audiobooks site to showcase my work in this area.

With all of these big projects, I haven’t had much time to write articles here on the blog.

I am developing several ideas and expect to post a new article in the next week or so.

Thanks for your patience during my absence. I’d love to hear from you about your projects, so please leave a comment on the blog!
 

The post Where does the time go? appeared first on Karen Commins.

Consequently, 99% of my 200+ neighbors must pass my house every time they enter or leave. To make matters worse, we live at the top of a hill. The neighbors step on the gas to get up that hill. I constantly had to stop my recordings every time a car passed.

Moving to a walk-in closet across the hall helped to alleviate some of the car traffic noises. However, it didn’t help with the air traffic, leaf blower, lawnmower, and other noises around here. The county airport is not far from our house, so planes with small propellers are constantly flying overhead.

In 2005, we decided to take drastic measures to reduce the noise. We started by replacing all of the windows on our house with triple-pane, casement windows. Instead of the common double-hung windows, which have 2 pieces that open by sliding them up or down, casement windows are one piece which opens outward. The movement forms a better seal to the house, and the 3 panes of glass with krypton gas between them significantly buffer outside noises.

We also built my stunning soundproof studio employing the following techniques:

• 2 layers of ceilings with R30 insulation between them
• 2 layers of 5/8″ drywall (instead of the usual single layer of 1/2″ drywall) in each of the ceiling layers and all 4 walls
• 2×6 studs instead of 2×4 to provide additional space for insulation
• sound barrier insulation under the siding and R30 insulation in the walls
• air pocket between the garage and the studio
• 2 entrances, each with an air pocket between 2 doors
• no windows
• built on a concrete slab

I bought a 6’x8′ WhisperRoom sound isolation booth. The WhisperRoom adds more density and air pockets in my quest for silence. Since the floor is on wheels, it can eliminate the low, rumbling noises that could be generated by passing trucks.

What a joy to record in this room! I can’t remember a time when I had to stop work due to a noise outside the studio.

I thought you might like to see and hear a short demonstration of the effectiveness of my studio. Using my iPhone4, I made a little video today after Drew started his motorcycle. I deliberately left the video in one continuous, unedited take, so I apologize in advance for any jerky movement. Turn your speakers up to really hear the difference!

PS. If you’re considering a room addition on your house, you’ll want to absorb my lessons learned before you hire a contractor. Download your free copy of Karen’s Crash Course in Avoiding Ca$h-Poor Contractors.

The post A Demonstration of My Soundproof Studio appeared first on Karen Commins.

I’ve written about this theme in the past, but today, I want to show an example and talk about the marketing advantages available to voice talent who choose to cast themselves and develop their own work.

As a service project, I’m narrating the audiobook of A Woman Who Went to Alaska on LibriVox.org. May Kellogg Sullivan wrote the book in 1902 to recount her adventures during the Alaska gold rush at the turn of the 20th century.

Obviously, the audiobook itself is a form of creating my own work. Rather than watching fluff TV shows like American Idol, I choose to spend my spare time this way because:

• I am improving my skills, both in long-form narration and audio editing.
• I am being of service to others in offering a free audiobook.
• I can use the credit in discussions with audio publishers about paying gigs.
• The free audiobook will be helpful in developing a loyal fan base.

Marketing is a HUGE part of any business. It is especially important when the commodity offered by the business is one’s voice. Not only am I creating the audiobook on my own, but I also decided to market it by creating a trailer for it!

Early in my voiceover career, I did a lot of direct mail marketing with imprinted products. While my campaigns were extremely memorable and attracted voiceover jobs to me, they also were extremely time-consuming and expensive to produce.

Here are some immediate marketing benefits of creating this trailer:

• The book is in the public domain, so most of the images had no cost. I only had to spend a few bucks to obtain the stock images that I used. The music came from my royalty-free library, which requires no residual payment.
• The video is another method of advertising my voice to people who haven’t heard of me or listened to my demos.
• The trailer demonstrates to clients and prospects that I could assist them beyond voicing their scripts.
• We live in culture obsessed by and immersed in video. Tell the truth — when you saw the video in this post, did you immediately click on it before reading any of the text? People say they don’t have time to read. Many would watch my trailer who would never read my description of the audiobook.
• I cross-posted the trailer on Facebook, some LinkedIn groups devoted either to audio publishing or Atlanta businesses, LibriVox, AudiobookCommunity.com, and BarbaraSher.com. Note that most of these postings are targeted directly to 1000s of members in niche markets who may be interested in hiring me for their projects!
• I received more responses in a few hours than I ever received from a single mailing.
• The trailer gave me material to add to my blog, which helps my search engine rankings.
• Once the book is done, I will update the trailer from “coming soon” to “available now”.

In addition, the subject matter of an audiobook can point to even more opportunities for marketing it on-line. In this case, a flurry of TV shows are about Alaska, so I know the public has a lot of interest in that state. One show is even about a group of people currently mining for gold in Alaska — a perfect tie-in! Fans of these shows gather in discussion forums where I can post my trailer. I also can post it in forums for people who are considering an Alaskan cruise.

Aside from all of these reasons, perhaps the biggest reason to create your own stuff is that it is fun!

I hope that these examples of my spare time projects give you inspiration to create and market your own stuff. I’d love to see your work, so please leave a comment on the blog!

10/30/21 Update:

I previously suggested that people volunteer for LibriVox. Be warned that LibriVox releases its recordings into the Public Domain, which means someone else could sell your recording and/or harvest your voice for AI without any compensation to you. For that reason, I no longer recommend that narrators volunteer there.

The post Reasons to Create Your Own Stuff appeared first on Karen Commins.

You see, Washington Roebling was an engineer — not just any engineer, but the chief engineer behind the famous Brooklyn Bridge. I recently read David McCullough’s fascinating and extremely well-researched novel The Great Bridge, which describes the people, risks, relationships, political environment, and long processes involved to build that bridge. It’s the sort of sweeping, satisfying book that I would love to narrate, but these historical books are usually about men and therefore narrated by men in the audiobook. But I digress …

Part of the story that is so remarkable is that Roebling fell seriously ill and wasn’t even on-site during much of the construction, yet he pressed on until the Brooklyn Bridge was completed and his dream realized. With his wife’s admirable and steadfast assistance, Roebling wrote such an incredible collection of notes and designs that his assistant engineers were able to complete the work to his specifications without his supervision.

The on-line Merriam-Webster dictionary defines vitality as physical or mental vigor especially when highly developed. I can’t agree too much with Roebling’s assessment that vitality is necessary to accomplish anything of importance, especially a voice-over career.  However, I would also add time to the equation.

Many people jump into voiceovers with the expectation that a lucrative and easy career awaits them. Unlike an engineer, they don’t study the landscape or make calculations about the best way to proceed. They may give up before achieving the level of success that they seek.

I have often heard that entertainers and sports stars who are considered to be an overnight success usually have been working diligently and learning their profession for 10 years or more. This passage in John Maxwell’s book Put Your Dreams to the Test: 10 Questions that Will Help You See It and Seize It better explains that theory:

I thought again about the time and energy needed to complete a dream while we watched Macy’s July 4th fireworks on the Hudson River. We were treated to a spectacular 30-minute show, but the tremendous planning and coordination, including the actual fireworks manufacture and testing, must have started as soon as the festivities were finished last year, or perhaps even earlier. I created a short video of some highlights from the fireworks and added music from my royalty-free library. I am posting the video here for your viewing pleasure.

[KGVID width=”480″ height=”272″]http://www.karencommins.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/NYC-Fireworks-7-4-09.m4v[/KGVID]

Time and vitality have been necessary ingredients in my voice-over business since its inception. Like anyone, I have had and continue to have personal challenges, like the losses of my dad in 2003 and my mother just 2 months ago in May. In the past couple of weeks, Drew and I were shocked to learn that his position as a lead software engineer has been eliminated after 12 years of employment with his company, so we unexpectedly are starting a new chapter of our lives.

I don’t bring up my personal obstacles to gain your sympathy but to point out that vitality is needed to sustain the momentum in my voice-over career while time marches on. You may have noticed that even my blog entries lately required an unusual amount of time and energy to complete. Many days, I have to judge my progress on my voice-over dreams based on incremental forward movement. However, like Roebling and his bridge, I continue to focus on my vision of success, counting my blessings and victories as I go along.

What kind of correlation do you notice between time and energy in pursuing your voice-over goals? I’d love to hear from you with comments on the blog!

The post Voice-over career requires time and energy appeared first on Karen Commins.