After speaking to many different groups about my memoir over the past seven months, one of the most frequent questions I received was if I had an audiobook. At the time I did not but I knew I needed to record one. I also prefer to listen to audiobooks primarily because I am a slow reader and my retention is much greater when I listen to the story instead of reading the story.
Different from other genre’s of books, a unique element of a memoir is that the story is about the author’s life. Many authors hire a narrator to create their audiobooks, however hearing a memoir read aloud by the author certainly makes a more memorable impact. Plus I think it would sound strange if someone else read another person’s life story. And at the end of August, I decided to record the audio version of my Best Selling book “I Almost Became Me: A Memoir”. Click here to listen to a sample of my audiobook.
Writing the 191-page book was certainly a large feat. And I thought narrating my own audiobook shouldn’t be that difficult. All I would need to do is just record myself reading the book, right? However let me share how the audiobook proved to be a challenging task.
NARRATING AUDIOBOOK MYSELF OR PROFESSIONALLY RECORDING?
Residing in a rural area has challenges for recording an audiobook. In an urban environment, I could rent a recording studio to professionally record my book, however there are no recording studios in Bryan, Ohio. Therefore I needed to create my own space and use equipment that will produce a quality product.
PROPER EQUIPMENT
“I have an iphone and my iphone headset has a microphone on it, I will just use that.” This is certainly an option, however I wanted a professional audiobook which requires specific equipment. Mainly, a proper microphone is needed that captures quality sound input. I used the Audio-Technica ATR-2100 which was a professional option for a decent price.
A tool called a pop filter which is a thin piece of foam fabric positioned between your mouth and the microphone. The pop shield removes the pop when you say words containing the letter “P”. When we say words like “pop”, air is forced out as sound waves which are then captured in the recording. This will be very noticeable in the final recording and very costly to digitally remove. I used the DragonPad Pop Filter.
And lastly, a good software program is needed to capture the sound in a professional way and also produce the necessary file types required by Audible. I used the free program Audacity.
RECORDING ENVIRONMENT
While I couldn’t go to a recording studio, I needed to create my own studio. My sister’s home in Bryan, Ohio, had many outside noises during the day including the rumble of a busy railroad, so I thought my mother’s lake home would be the perfect choice since it was August and very few people were at the lake during the day.
I converted the downstairs room into my customized recording studio. The key to the proper recording space is to make sure that the environment around the recording area is quiet. So free from air conditioning units turning on and off or other appliance noises, outside noises (like from traffic or neighbors), and pets or other animal noises.
Next I needed to ensure the noise did not echo within the space. Any hard surface will return and echo the sound so I hung blankets on all the walls around the room to absorb the sound waves.
CLICK HERE for a video of my sound studio!
CONSISTENCY
Who knew that our voice changes throughout the day? I never really thought about this but our voices are different in the morning versus the afternoon. It wasn’t possible to record my book all in the same day – kudos to anyone that can do this. My goal was to record the book in one week however it took me about 15 days of recording for 2-3 hours at a time to finish the full recording. Therefore, I had to maintain the same time of day to record my book to ensure my voice was consistent throughout the full recording.
On top of being consistent with my voice, I noticed around chapter 6 (of 8 total chapters) that I began enunciating words better. My speaking became more rich and engaging. I couldn’t just read the text, I had to “live” the text and enunciate. And after listening to chapters 1-6 and realizing that my enunciating was much more enjoyable for the last two chapters, I decided to re-record chapters 1-6 again.
GETTING TRIPPED UP
If you have ever tried to read a paragraph out loud without tripping over a word or phrase, you understand that it is not easy to read paragraph after paragraph without pausing. During a recording, any type of pause or mispronunciation will be very distracting to listeners. There were many spans of text where I would read without getting tripped up, however I typically averaged 2-3 paragraphs before something would occur. Either I mispronounced a word or phrase or just paused randomly. So I would have to stop the recording and go back to a logical restarting point to begin recording again which was typically the beginning of a paragraph to keep the consistency of the flow.
Also, there were moments when I was on a roll reading and an outside noise would occur which would require me to stop and rerecord. Since I wanted to be consistent with my voice, I would wait until the afternoon to record. I thought being at a remote lake during the week would create a quiet environment outside. But many days, it was anything but quiet at the lake. One day someone would begin mowing their yard when I began recording. On a different day, a neighbor nearby decided to begin chain sawing trees. Another day a different neighbor began riding the lawnmower outside. Another day (and this happened frequently) a neighbor across the lake would let their young dog out and the dog would continuously bark for hours at the fish in the lake. Needless to say, it took much patience to finish the full recording.
REMOVING BACKGROUND NOISE
Even when you record in a quiet environment, a consistent static noise remains in the background. To clean up the files, I hired a sound engineer on the freelancer site called Fiverr.com. The engineer merged all of my sound recordings together and produced the correct file types necessary to upload to audible. And then, the easy part was to upload each chapter to the platform that Amazon uses for audiobooks called ACX.com.
OVERALL GOOD EXPERIENCE
Now, I am thrilled to have produced a book in three formats: paperback, ebook and now audiobook. The overall experience to create an audiobook on my own was a good one. It also helped me catch some very minor adjustments to the written text. And I am happy that I recorded the book in own my voice instead of hiring a narrator. When I was younger I never used to like my voice. But after listening to my audiobook for quality control, I like my voice! Many parts of my book are emotional and many parts are humorous. My voice only adds to the overall experience of my unique and inspirational story. I hope you enjoy it.
CLICK HERE to purchase the audiobook on Audible. It is only one credit, however if you are not a current member of Audible, click the link and you can listen to my book for free if you sign up for a 30-day trial of Audible.
CLICK HERE to purchase the audiobook on iTunes.
