Notes In The Margin #1: Producing an Audio Book - Am I Mad, or What?

When I started asking my friends if they would like to beta-read my novel 360, I didn't expect two of them to ask if I could provide it as an audio book.  One of them listens to a large number of audio books, so he knows what he likes and doesn't like and was ideal to give me some feedback on my audio offering.

My trusty ProSound microphone with Audacity
recording software running in the background
[Photo: Jack Gilbert]

Which gave me an interesting challenge.

Recording an audio book isn't as straight forward as you may think.  And for those who do already consider it a challenge, it's even more of a challenge than even you think! While it's relatively easy to record a short clip of someone speaking on a computer these days, it's not so easy to record something of a decent quality that can be anything up to twelve hours long, which is how long the second draft of 360 turned out to be when I recorded it.

Twelve hours!

And you can't rush it.  Even at twelve hours there are some stretches where I gabbled my way through certain passages.  There was just so much text to get through and so little time but a rushed audio book sounds awful.

And so many retakes.

Oh, the retakes!

In some ways reading your work aloud is a really useful exercise.  It makes you appreciate what you've written, especially dialogue, where it works and where it doesn't work.  In other ways though it is infinitely infuriating as you stumble, stammer and mangle your way through text that reads like prosaic honey on the page.

However, clumsy grammar, or cliched dialogue aren't your only enemies.