Karen@KarenCommins.com

Karen Commins

Award Winning

Atlanta Audiobook Share-rator™

narration

4 Keys to Becoming a Successful ACX Audiobook Producer

Last updated 8/24/19

 

One of my friends is a well-established and highly successful audiobook narrator with years of experience working in commercial studios for traditional publishers. For the longest time, he had absolutely zero interest in setting up a studio and recording at home, largely because he is not comfortable with technology.

I often talked with him about the many merits of using ACX, including the:

Futhermore, traditional publishers are increasingly employing narrators who are experienced in home recording.

Once he was finally convinced that establishing a home recording studio would be an empowering career move on all levels, he decided to create one and asked many questions while implementing his plan.

The thought occurred to me that anyone who is new to home recording and working through ACX might benefit from the 4 key areas of practical advice and information that I gave to my friend about becoming a successful ACX producer.

 

4 keys in locks that look like puzzle pieces

[Read more…] about 4 Keys to Becoming a Successful ACX Audiobook Producer

6 Weeks of Showing My Work

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.

[Read more…] about 6 Weeks of Showing My Work

National Tell A Story Day 2015 — DIXIE DIVAS

Today is National Tell A Story Day! In honor of this special day, I want to share the back story about one of my favorite books to narrate.

Like a lot of people, I often download free Kindle books so I can try a new author or genre. My Amazon order history shows me that I downloaded DIXIE DIVAS by Virginia Brown on 15 October 2010.

On Friday, 16 September 2011, I wrote in my journal that I had recorded 3 auditions on ACX.com, one of which was for DIXIE DIVAS. I wrote:

When I read this book, it was a freebie on Kindle. It’s set in Mississippi, and I remember thinking of the character voices for audio when I read the book. I was excited to see this title pop up today. I think it was a new listing and hope I was one of the first in line to audition. I feel I did well.

Two days later, I wrote:

WOOO-HOOO!!!! I was chosen to narrate DIXIE DIVAS from Friday’s audition on ACX!!!

I was (and still am!) so thrilled to see the message! It’s a royalties-only deal, but I’m okay with that. It relaunches my audiobook career in a big way!…I have a message from my book’s rights holder, which says:

Karen! Hello! Author Virginia Brown loves your voice, and we do too! She says your “Bitty” is perfect.

I’ve always said there’s no better praise in this job than when the author loves your interpretation. 🙂

Narrating this book has truly been a life-changing experience!

First, I had not narrated a commercial audiobook for several years, and my soul was yearning to return to audiobook narration. As I wrote in my journal, this book relaunched my audiobook career.

Perhaps even more significantly, I was returning to audiobook narration with a book that I had wanted to narrate even as I read it for pleasure! The story is interesting and funny, and the characters are very real people to me who have become dear friends!

In the intervening 3.5 years since that fateful audition, I’ve voiced 5 books in the DIXIE DIVAS series and eagerly await the next book! One reviewer commented about book 4 that I have:

“…expanded and fleshed out Bitty and Trinket way beyond what even the author had in mind. To read the text of the Divas would only be a shallow and two dimensional personification of Bitty and Trinket, whereas listening to Ms. Commins, they explode into your mind and come to life. Each book in the series is very long with a great deal of detail, again, to read the text could pall and become dull and lengthy but Karen Commins is such an extraordinary reader with true storytelling talent that time flies and you’re totally engrossed listening and visualizing.”

My narration of DIXIE DIVAS and then the other 4 books in this best-selling series has led to a wonderful, ongoing relationship with the publisher, for which I’ve narrated at least a dozen other great books.

The DIXIE DIVAS series also prompted me to have a fun trip last year to Holly Springs, MS for the annual Pilgrimage.

When I first announced the audiobook here on my blog, I wrote:  What could be more fun and intriguing than a murder mystery that starts with a pot of chicken and dumplings?

What happens at a Divas meeting stays at a Divas meeting….unless you pick up one of the audiobooks in this series, starting with book 1, DIXIE DIVAS!


 
DIXIE DIVAS is available for immediate purchase, download, and enjoyment from Amazon and iTunes, or get it for FREE when you start a trial subscription at Audible!
 

Fall 2013 Audiobook Releases

Kitty Kitty Bang Bang. the third audiobook in Sparkle Abbey’s Pampered Pets series, is now available!

If you like fun, cozy mysteries and/or light-hearted stories about pets, you will really enjoy this book!

Caro Lamont is a pet therapist in Laguna Beach, CA. Her next-door neighbor Kitty Bardot is the publicist to the stars and owner of 2 Bengal cats who paint. Yes, you read it right!

When Kitty Bardot is killed on the way home from the cats’ art exhibition, Caro is left to follow the clues. Meanwhile, one of Carol’s clients is also found dead, and Caro is trying to figure out the cause of both murders.

This was a fun book to read, and I’m looking forward to recording book 4, Yip/Tuck.


 
I also want to announce an audiobook I directed: Plague by Buzz Bernard, narrated by Drew Commins.

This gripping thriller is about a lone-wolf terrorist who plans to unleash the Ebola virus in Atlanta. The horrific descriptions of how the virus ravages its victims are definitely NOT what you want to hear at bedtime!

CDC virologist Dr. Dwight Butler finds instances of the virus at local hospitals and begins a frantic search to find the source before a terrible pandemic can occur.

Meanwhile, Richard Wainwright, interim CEO of BioDawn, learns that the plane crash that killed all of the company’s executives may be tied to the threat. He is stalked by a hit woman and becomes the main suspect in the murder of his assistant.

Buzz Bernard is a former weather forecaster who lives nearby, and we particularly enjoyed his unique and clever metaphors to weather terms throughout the story. Also, since we’re both Atlanta natives, we appreciated the accuracy of his references to the places around town.

While this is Drew’s first solo narration, he is no stranger to audiobooks! He has directed all of my audiobooks and voiced the male characters in our super fun Blue Suede Memphis cozy mysteries. Switching roles for this book gave us a great appreciation for the different skills required in our normal capacities!

This audiobook is 9 hours and 41 minutes and is sure to make you break out in a sweat (and start looking over your shoulder) on these cold days!


 
My latest release id Dirty Harriet by Miriam Auerbach, the first book in a funny chick lit series.

Former Boca Babe Harriet “Dirty Harriet” Horowitz is now a Biker Babe. Go ahead. Make her day.

“Dirty Harriet” had it all. Money. Plastic Surgery. Servants. Then her husband raised his fist one time too many, and she shot and killed him.

Now, she lives in the South Florida swamps, rides a Harley, and owns a private eye agency to investigate scams. When the Countess von Phul asks her to solve a murder, will Harriet escape with her life?

I had a great time narrating this book and was delighted to receive a lovely note from the author, quoted here with her permission:

Just recently had the chance to finish listening to your narration of my book and would like to give you a big THANK YOU!  I am so delighted with your voices!  I will say that Lana the alligator was my favorite voice.  Pitch-perfect, as they say.  You really captured that gator’s attitude!