December…the time to give thanks for those things that have sustained us through the past year. For narrators, a huge part of that is YOU, the listening community! As we wind down 2016, we want to give back to you, our listeners, who help make our job so rewarding, and who travel with us on each audiobook journey. SO! Over 60 narrators have partnered to bring you FROM THE HEART – recordings of poetry, essays, stories, excerpts, songs, etc. – throughout the month of December.

I’m so thrilled to be among this group of exceptional narrators and offer you a free reading! Today, I present “The Christmas Present” by Richmal Crompton. In this short (11:55) Christmas tale from 1922, Mary learns that the best presents don’t cost a thing.

Thanks to Xe for spearheading this project and to a favorite audiobook blogger Jennifer Connor at the Literate Housewife blog for her generous publicity of this project throughout December. I encourage you to visit Jennifer’s site to catch up on narrators and their readings from earlier in the month, as well as those to come.
Happy holidays!

The post The Christmas Present appeared first on Karen Commins.

I spent the morning searching for a special item to add to one of my collections.

This prize doesn’t cost much and can be purchased for the same low price any day of the year.

I’m talking about a library card — not just any library card, mind you, but a non-resident library card.

Of course, you should start your collection of cards with one from your city or county library. Most libraries offer local residents a free card since the library is funded through tax dollars. Learn what your local library has to offer and use it.

However, you’ll discover that getting a non-resident card to a second library system may be very useful since libraries offer different digital services. You’ll want to shop around for 1 or more non-resident library cards that fit your needs.

In addition to the cost of the card, you’ll need to determine whether the library accepts on-line registrations. I viewed at least 2 dozen library sites across the country, and most libraries require you to apply in person.

The cost for a non-resident library card is usually minimal, although some places like Kalamazoo, MI charge a 3-digit figure equating to a resident’s property tax.

Once you acquire the library cards you need, their benefit to your career as an audiobook narrator can be immeasurable in at least 4 ways:

Performance

I listen to audiobooks every day. I’m not only listening to the story, but I’m critically listening to the narrator and production quality. Each one is a mini-masterclass in performance technique that aids my own interpretations.

Overdrive, Hoopla, and Recorded Books are the largest services that supply digital audiobooks to libraries. Two libraries with Overdrive accounts choose different audiobooks for their patrons to download. With multiple library cards, you’re sure to find an audiobook you want to hear.

Periodicals

I went shopping for my 2nd non-resident card this morning because I want to read Publishers Weekly (PW) magazine. Sure, I could pay the $180 subscription fee on Zinio.com to get a digital subscription or the $249.99 to Publishers Weekly for them to cut more trees and deliver the magazine to my house.

I’d rather pay much less and support a library at the same time!

I had noticed that my 2 libraries both offer magazines through their Recorded Books portal (formerly Zinio). As an aside, my libraries also have other fabulous options from Recorded Books, such as ArtistWorks for art and music instruction! Neither had Publishers Weekly in their account, so I searched Google for a library that does. I’m planning to head over to a neighboring county tomorrow and pay $30 for a year’s access on their non-resident card.

TIP: Some libraries listed PW in a PDF as an available title, but I had to look at their actual magazine page to determine whether it really was included. If they have it, be sure they are showing the current issue as I saw several sites that indicated it was limited to archives. Also, some libraries have Flipster accounts for their magazines. I don’t know whether Publishers Weekly is available from Flipster.

Polylinguist

My library cards can help me achieve my long-held goal of becoming polylingual. (Most people would say “multi-lingual”, but that word wouldn’t fit with my alliteration.) Both of my cards give me on-line access to Mángo Languages. Even if I don’t take an entire course, it’s helpful to listen to these conversations when working on accents for an audiobook.

Proficiency

I got my first non-resident card from the nearby city of Smyrna a few months ago after learning that some libraries give card holders access to the fantastic on-line training site Lynda.com.

While they aren’t audiobook-specific, the Lynda video courses are professionally created and come with a transcript and materials. You can preview the Pro Tools 12 Essential Training at this link, but classes on every popular DAW are available. In addition to courses on DAWs, Lynda offers loads of classes in marketing, social media, web site design, and other topics useful to your audiobook business.

Like the magazines, Lynda is a subscription site. You pay either monthly or yearly. They charge more for the plan that includes the exercise files. When I started with Lynda in mid-2015, I paid $34.99 per month for the courses and exercise files. Last December, I paid a discounted price of $242.89 for a year.

In contrast, my Smyrna Library card cost $50, and I get to take advantage of all the other services from the Smyrna Library as well.

As you can see, the cost savings of the library cards over the regular price of these subscriptions is a DEAL!

Do you have a library card? Please leave a comment and let me know how you use it!

Updated 6/6/19 to change Recorded Books and Zinio references

The post A DEAL You Can Get Any Day And Is Good All Year 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.

Earlier this week, audiobook narrator Wendy Pitts interviewed me on her blog A Girl and Her Microphone.

She asked 10 engaging questions, such as #7: Are there any books, webinars, classes, or conventions you have found particularly helpful and informative?

I responded with a mini resource list of links in the following categories:

• Narration
• Pro Tools
• Voiceover books
• The best marketing book
• Time Management
• Making a Fast Decision
• How to Use a Journal
• How to Become BETTER at Anything
• Conferences

In other answers, I offered my advice and links on selecting books for audition and narration (question 4), as well as a FREE and fabulous book to help you figure out what’s important to you and get it into your life (question 8). I hope you’ll check out the interview and let me know whether you found the links to be helpful.

Do you have a question you’d like to ask me? If so, please leave a comment!
 

The post My Recommended Classes, Audition Criteria and Other Advice appeared first on Karen Commins.

I added the chat to a Storify page. My archive from that page is linked here.

The post Gary Terzza’s Advice for Newbie Narrators on ACX.com appeared first on Karen Commins.

I only applied to one college and commuted here in Atlanta. While I got a great education and never regretted my choice, hearing about this girl’s experiences both in picking and living at college have made me think about things I may have missed in my college years.

One thing I missed was going to football games. My college didn’t have a football team. I had played piccolo in high school marching band and would have enjoyed playing in the band on college football Saturdays.

A big advantage to being an audiobook narrator is that I can vicariously live through other people, even when they are fictional characters. For instance, in the fun, cozy Dixie Diva mysteries,  Trinket Truevine, the first person narrator, and her cousin/best friend Bitty Hollandale went to Ole Miss. In fact, the latest book in the series Divas and Dead Rebels revolves around a dead professor on campus.

In one scene, the ladies attend a tailgating party at The Grove. I decided to make a video of that scene for an audiobook trailer and was thrilled to do the Hotty Toddy cheer for Ole Miss right along with some students!

The post The Ole Miss Hotty Toddy Cheer appeared first on Karen Commins.

As a federal employee for over 3 decades, I was used to hearing about the bickering and being subjected to the whims of Congress. The federal government runs on an October-September fiscal year. Every summer, we would wonder when the Agency budget would be passed so that we could make our budgets for the upcoming fiscal year. Even simple things like supply orders to get more printer paper could not be submitted without funding.

Government shutdowns were threatened many times over the course of my long career. The news people say a 3-week shutdown occurred in the ’90s, but my friends and I don’t remember being out of work for 3 weeks. We only remember being furloughed for a few days, so we think our Agency appropriations bill was finalized ahead of others.

If you’ll pardon a tangent, let me just say that everyone I knew worked extremely hard and undertook their tasks with seriousness and great efficiency. Those who say that government employees are lazy and inefficient have never worked there! Most of the government employees have college or even advanced degrees and are doing highly specialized work.

Furthermore, the American public does not understand that the term non-essential employee does NOT mean that the employee does not have an important, necessary, and valuable job to do. (As the Washington Post reported last week, the term has cut deep into the morale of the federal workforce, which has been repeatedly trampled on by Congress: over 3 years of frozen pay, limited hiring ability, and numerous furlough days this year due to the Sequester.) It is really an old term used to indicate exceptions in the event of a furlough due to financial reasons or those who must report during an emergency. I saw a comment from a manager at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who is furloughed during the shutdown. He noted that your views of how essential his job is might depend on your proximity to a nuclear facility.

Anyway, while we eventually did get paid for the period we were unable to work during a shutdown, we had no guarantee of payment. We were always fearful that we wouldn’t be paid. We also wouldn’t know when we would be called back to work. It’s not like you would go on a vacation when a shutdown loomed. By the way, almost ONE MILLION people across the country are furloughed this week. The longer the shutdown lasts, the bigger the hit to the US economy from all those workers who are not getting paid and therefore not spending money.

In addition, even the threat of a shut down meant a tremendous loss of productivity, which is a complete waste of tax dollars. You can’t go about your day as normal if you think you have to shutter the operations for an undetermined period of time. I was in IT, and we had to take extra measures (which used more tax dollars) to do things like run back-up tapes early and ship them off-site before the regularly scheduled day. The fact that Congress invariably would pass a Continuing Resolution (CR) at 11:59pm on the deadline day would make you all too aware of your position as a pawn in their game.

To continue with our civics lesson, both branches of Congress have to enact a budget. However, they have not done so in recent years, instead passing successive CRs to keep the government operational.

Congress could pass a CR this time just like it has many, MANY times in the past, but certain factions in the House are insisting that the Affordable Care Act  (ACA) be defunded before agreeing to pass the CR. The ACA is a law, not a negotiation point in the budget process. If they want to change or repeal the law, they should follow established procedures like they have tried to do over 40 other times for this one law. The Supreme Court has even declared this law to be constitutional, yet some people are as obsessed over this one law as my dog is over chasing chipmunks.

Even before I left the government, I endured numerous rounds of these politically-created crises, though none seemed quite as contentious and divisive as this one. I didn’t voice my opinions to my Congress people for a few reasons:

1) I didn’t think I could make a difference.

2) I didn’t want to do anything that might jeopardize my job.

3) Just thinking about Congress not doing THE MAIN THING it is supposed to do gives me a headache.

Since I am now a freelance voice talent, one of these reasons is no longer valid. I still may get headaches and not be able to make a difference, but I’ve decided I will be silent no longer!

As I was adding my comments to the Facebook page for Saxby Chambliss, one of my US Senators from Georgia, I found this letter from The American Taxpayer in a previous response and recorded it for the Going Public Project.

No matter how you voted or what you think about the current issue, we can all find common ground over the fact that taxpayers pay the salaries of those in Congress. Perhaps it’s time we taxpayers start looking for people who can work together to get the job done. If you agree, please share this message and recording with your networks.

I have always focused this blog on the topics of voiceover, audiobooks, and marketing. I promise to get back to those topics in my next article and truly appreciate your indulgence in reading my only political post in over 7 years of writing this blog.

Just remember:

“United we stand, divided we fall”

— Aesop

The post “Dear Elected Official” Recorded for Going Public Project appeared first on Karen Commins.

One of my mentors, who is a prolific and award-winning audiobook narrator, advised me that it’s better to be working on spec than to be idle. Working on spec enables you to build your portfolio and hone your craft as a narrator.

As a result, I now use royalty share audiobooks from ACX to fill holes in my schedule. You may find that certain audio publishers also want to pay in a royalty share agreement. All of my experience with royalty share work is through ACX, so all of my comments below pertain to that system.

If you have no experience in doing audiobooks, you might want to first volunteer your time. When I restarted my audiobook career, I first recorded a book for LibriVox. I outlined the many reasons and advantages of this project in my post Reasons to Create Your Own Stuff. Note that one big advantage in volunteering is that you will be able to figure out your most efficient workflow — i.e., learning how to punch-in — under no time pressure while simultaneously adding to world literacy.

The one big downside with doing a LibriVox book is that anyone can use your work — including those who harvest your recordings to train AI speech — without compensating you because you donate the completed audiobook to the public domain. Juan Carlos Bagnell wrote an excellent article on his blog about this practice. My LibriVox audiobook A Woman Who Went to Alaska is routinely offered for sale on eBay. I no longer recommend that people volunteer to record for LibriVox.

Instead, I highly encourage you to volunteer to read for your state’s reading service for the blind or Learning Ally to gain and improve skills, as well as provide a needed service to the world.

Also, even if you are a trained actor, you’ll want to watch this video for more info about ACX and a free performance coaching session from Pat Fraley, Scott Brick, and Hillary Huber.

Method

First, you should know that creating an audiobook requires a significant investment of time. As a conservative rule of thumb, an experienced narrator/team will need 6 hours in real time to produce 1 finished hour of audio, from pre-read to file upload. The amount of time needed will vary by a number of factors, including the type of text (some require more pronunciation research than others), the narrator’s experience level, whether the narrator is outsourcing editing and proofing, etc.

Therefore, be sure to pick a book you love as you will be spending a lot of time with it. Audition for any title that interests you and for which your voice and skills are a good fit, but choose carefully!

I used to hold off on doing auditions, thinking that several offers might come at once. More often than not, though, the rights holders can be very slow to make a selection and do not communicate with narrators/producers at all during the process. Now I audition routinely as each audition allows me to continue developing my storytelling skills by reading different authors and genres.

Still, I try to stack the odds of snagging a great book more in my favor by doing additional research before submitting an audition.

You can ask the rights holder how many copies are sold each month in other formats. One of my narrator colleagues won’t consider voicing a royalty share book unless the print sales are equal to at least 1,000 copies a month. However, the print sales aren’t always a good predictor of the sales for an audiobook. Just like the stock market, past performance of a book is no indicator of future sales.

Whether doing a book in a royalty share deal or pay per finished hour, I’ve found it very helpful to read the reviews of the book even before doing the audition. Many times the reviewers will point to a TV show or movie. These hooks into popular culture give you valuable insight as you develop your characterizations and performance. Reviewers also point out things like incorrect word usage or bad grammar.

I also evaluate the book by using the Amazon Look Inside feature. I choose to narrate books that have few if any curse words (and when used, they should be appropriate to the situation or dialogue and not gratuitous), no explicit sex or graphic violence, and no vampires/werewolves/zombies. I can search the book for these things and also get a better sense of the author’s writing style by reading all of the available excerpts. Sometimes the Kindle edition is offered for free, so I go ahead and download it.

I look at the author’s web site and blog.  This step would be even more important if you’re considering a self-published title. I want to know that an author is as serious about writing as I am about narrating. I want to see that they will work to promote their work even more than I do.

I like to pick books in a series, as I outlined on my Facebook fan page.

If you are chosen to narrate multiple books, you don’t have to start all of them immediately! You can communicate with the rights holder and suggest your dates before accepting the contract. You may even build up a queue of work to perform in this manner.

Royalty share work should not come ahead of paying work. I always have 2-4 months on any royalty share contract so that I have the time to take on audiobooks and my regular voice-over work that pays up front. My view is: The rights holder can have it Fast. Good. Cheap. Pick any two.

I use Evernote during the book prep as I described in this Facebook comment.

I outsource my editing and quality review when I have a stipend. If I don’t have a stipend, I often edit the book myself.

Marketing

The publisher or author doesn’t always market the audiobook. Many of the titles on ACX are backlist and don’t have a marketing budget with them. Even if the rights holder did market the book, I still do my own marketing. I use social media extensively to get the word out.  In fact, I love marketing so much that I wrote 2 articles for the ACX blog on topic that are loaded with tips and tactics specific to marketing audiobooks. This article on my blog links to both of them.

I may also use Google+, a press release, and/or a video to promote my work. In fact, I created a book trailer for In The Shadow of Billy the Kid: Susan McSween and The Lincoln County War. I posted the video here on the blog and across social media.

In addition. I’ll create a Google alert for the topic and/or do specialized searches and comment on blogs, in forums, and any other place where people discuss it. For instance, I’ve already mentioned my upcoming audiobook on the Facebook page for the movie Young Guns, which is about Billy The Kid. Someone commented about the birthday of the actress who played Susan McSween, so it was a great lead-in for my comment about the real woman!

I don’t do all of these things in one day or even in a week. Audiobook marketing is an on-going task.

Money

It bears repeating that royalty share audiobooks are a lot like the stock market: you can have some with amazing returns and some that are under-performers.

Generally, you won’t make a lot of money on just one book. It takes many royalty share books to generate sales for a sizable royalty check each month. Also, realize that your proceeds for each book will build up over time. The royalty agreement with Audible lasts for 7 years.

My sales numbers range from 14 copies (yes, only 14 units sold) on one book to another book with 1000s of copies sold, with an average payment of $2.70-3.00 per unit sold. While you think you will receive 25% of the proceeds, your net percentage is actually less since many of Audible’s members buy the books using their credits. Audible’s very nice Bounty Program pays $25.00 for each applicable sale and has made up for the lower royalty rates in my case.

If I had narrated only that one book with 14 units sold, I probably would still be waiting for a royalty check since you must have $10 in royalties before Audible issues payment. Direct deposit payments usually come around the 17th-20th of the next month, and checks arrive at the end of the next month.

Regardless of the type of payment you choose, you will receive a royalty statement each month for sales the previous month. You can monitor units sold in the ACX Dashboard, but you won’t know how much you earned for each title until you receive the printout. Statements usually arrive the last week of the next month or first week of the 2nd month following the sales period.

If Audible is paying a stipend on your book, note that the rights holder must APPROVE the finished product within 60 days of the date you signed the contract. Once you have the approval, you must send the invoice to Audible in order to be paid. You can find the invoice template in the Stipend Terms and Conditions link on this page. The Time to Decimal Conversion is very handy when determining your finished time for the invoice.

Whispersync, the new technology that lets a reader switch between reading the Kindle e-book and listening to the Audible audiobook, could affect your royalties in two ways. On the one hand, the audiobook price is lower when the purchaser already has the Kindle edition. The royalties earned on the sale therefore would be lower as well. On the other hand, before Whispersync, people either bought the e-book or the audiobook — not both.

In my experience, Whispersync does actually encourage additional sales, which brings royalties that I would not otherwise have. These sales usually earn less than $1 per unit sold. However, it’s one case where you truly can “make up the difference in volume” because you don’t have on-going costs. Whispersync sales may be a case of whether you view the glass as half full or half empty.

My best sales periods have been December/January, where people are buying presents or later using gift cards, and April-June, when people seem to stock up for their poolside and vacation entertainment.

Audible sales are the gift that keeps on giving! Not only do you rack up more units sold in a shorter period, but those sales can get your book on the old royalty escalator for a higher royalty rate if you signed your contract before 12 March 2014.

I also set up an affiliate account with Audible. I use my affiliate link each time I publicize my titles. You can find my explanation of it in this Facebook post. More helpful tips are included in this post. So far, I’ve had a lot of clicks but no affiliate sales. Given time, though, I’m sure that some of those clicks will be converted to sales. I just created an affiliate account with iTunes.

Miscellaneous

Some of the posts above were in the Facebook Audiobook Crowd group, which consists of professional narrators and industry insiders, and the Facebook ACX Narrators and Producers group. Both groups are closed and have active members. I highly encourage you to join both of these groups if you are an audiobook narrator.

My experience with ACX has always been wonderful. I was one of the original beta testers on the site and have been very excited by its growth. The support staff is nothing short of remarkable! They have been incredibly responsive to my emails. I continue to see improvements both in the site operations and the quality of titles posted for audition.

ACX also has an informative, interesting, and helpful blog. Lately, they have been educating the rights holders more about the process, and their efforts are paying off. I’ve had more communication from rights holders in the past week than in the last 6 months!

Thinking again of the advice from my mentor, let me leave you with this quote from author Neil Gaiman (you can substitute the word “narrate” where he says “write”):
I decided that I would do my best in the future not to write books just for the money. If you didn’t get the money, then you didn’t have anything. If I did work I was proud of, and I didn’t get the money, at least I’d have the work.

Original notebook image: iStockPhoto/Aania

The post Karen’s Primer on Narrating Royalty Share Audiobooks appeared first on Karen Commins.

While this WordPress blog now has a nifty new Yearly Archives index, many things about the blog still don’t work, especially links within articles. Thanks for your patience as I continue to fix the previous article links. I also hadn’t posted new articles during the conversion, which, of course, took far longer than I expected! I will post a new article after this update on my recent audiobooks.

Divas and Dead Rebels by Virginia Brown

Book 4 in the best-selling Dixie Divas Cozy Mystery series

Trinket and her pals are, once again, caught in the middle of a murder scene. What Trinket thought was an untidy pile of clothing tumbling out of Bitty’s sons’ dorm room closet turned out to be a professor with whom Bitty had just quarreled that very morning. At 13 hours, this book is the perfect, light-hearted, fun companion to take to the pool or beach!

I love narrating this series! The Divas are like old friends, and the banter between Bitty and Trinket makes me laugh out loud! They remind me of Blanche Devereaux and Dorothy Sbornak on the TV show The Golden Girls.

You might think this type of book wouldn’t require preparatory research, but it does. In addition to looking up pronunciations for places mentioned in the book, I had to learn the Ole Miss Hotty Toddy cheer. I didn’t go to a college with a football team, but as an audiobook narrator, I was able to pretend I was a fervent football fan and cheering with the best of them!

Available at Amazon   Amazon   iTunes

Indispensable Party by Melissa F. Miller

Book 4 in the Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller series

In the name of science, an international team of researchers creates a deadly virus capable of killing untold millions. While the U.S. government quietly stockpiles a vaccine, a militaristic group of doomsday preppers begins to mobilize in response to the economic collapse they’re convinced is coming.

Then the Doomsday virus is stolen, and a researcher is murdered. Attorney Sasha McCandless and her boyfriend Leo Connelly, who is now chief of security at the pharmaceutical firm making the vaccine, are in the middle of the action and racing against time to find the missing virus before it is unleashed on the world.

This audiobook can give you nightmares! As usual, Miller wrote a fast-paced book that reads like a movie script, with scenes primarily in Washington, DC and Pennsylvania.

While I was on vacation, I read the text version of Dan Brown’s latest thriller Inferno. Even if I didn’t narrate Melissa Miller’s books, I must tell you that her plot and action seem much more realistic and likely to happen than did Brown’s. I look forward to the day when her name and work is as well-known as his!

Available at Audible   Amazon   iTunes
 

The post May 2013 Audiobook Releases appeared first on Karen Commins.