Audiobook Success with Todd Eflin: Should You Narrate Your Own Book?

329 / Have you ever wondered what it takes to narrate or produce an audiobook—and whether you should record your own? Todd Eflin shares insider secrets from his journey as a voice actor, audiobook coach, and narrator, including what authors need to know before jumping into audio.

• Common misconceptions about audiobook production
• When to produce an audiobook
• What authors should consider before narrating their own books
• Technical setup basics for home audiobook recording
• The five essentials of recording quality audio for authors

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⚡Links:

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• https://buydirectfromauthors.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The question subjectiv objectively is do I need an audiobook? And the answer, in my opinion, is yes. Subjectively, should I do it and release it at the same time, or should I wait? That's an individual question.

Jami 0:18

Welcome to the Wish Time Minute Podcast. I'm Sarah Rosette. And I'm Jamie Albright. And this week on the show we have Todd Efflin. Yes, we do. It was a fun interview about audiobooks.

Sara 0:30

Yes, he is an audiobook narrator, and he teaches authors how to narrate their own book and helps them decide if they are the right person to narrate their own book or if they should hire somebody. Yeah.

Jami 0:43

It was really good and I just appreciated it. And Todd it really has a ton of information and he's very generous with it. So have his contact information if you're interested in contacting him. I will say that.

Sara 0:58

Yeah. He talked about some misconceptions around audiobook production and what authors should think about before they narrate a book themselves. And then kind of some technical stuff, like if you're going to do it, what you need, but also just tips about your audiobook itself. Like if even if you're hiring a narrator, how to navigate that. So it was really good. Yeah, it was.

Jami 1:19

It was really great. And we should also mention that Book Funnel is our corporate sponsor this month. And we love Book Funnel. We'll talk more about them in just a minute.

Sara 1:30

Yeah.

Jami 1:31

So we don't really have anything to add. I will say this since we're talking about audiobooks, my audiobook is has gone through three of the four stages of verification before they you know ACX produces it and I mean publishes it. So I'm hoping by the end of the week I will have the audiobook. And then at that point, I'm going to put my book in Kindle Unlimited. And uh so I will say if you write women's fiction or you and you have an audience and or you write lighter rom-com stuff that you're you think your audiences will have my books and you want to do a swap, DM me. I mean touch. I have this audience, I may as well ask. And if you if you're interested, I'm happy to share your book with my audience. So yeah.

Sara 2:23

I think that's a good way to network it up with other authors and get your book seen. Well, I don't have a whole lot going on. We're recording the intro early because I'm gonna be out of we don't have have anything we to talk about because we haven't really done anything last week. I haven't done anything, yeah. But I was gonna say I'm doing and I always forget about my audiobooks for promotion. I think we focus a lot on ebooks and print books, and I'm in a promotion that an author is running. It's like the stuff your Kindle promotions. Yeah, this is going to be 99 cent audiobooks across all kinds of genres. So I think it's a pretty good deal. The author is Rebecca Hefner, and she runs Buy Direct from Authors. And I'll put a link to that site, and it's just she has a site just to help authors sell direct. And so this is focusing on audiobooks. I think she does a lot with audiobooks, which most of us don't. So I'll put a link in there and then you can kind of keep up with what she's doing if she does this again, which sounds like she does it pretty often.

Jami 3:22

Well, tell us tell everybody about book funnel, Sarah, and why we love them so much.

Sara 3:27

Well, we love BookFunnel because their mindset, I think, is helping authors help readers. And you know, they help readers get the books onto their Kindles and their reading devices. So BookFunnel, they deliver your reader magnet, they send out advanced copies of your book, they have QR codes that you can hand out at a conference if you want to share ebooks at a conference, and they help you fulfill digital sales to readers. So they just do a lot and they do a lot in the author community. They're always at conferences and events, showing up and listening to what authors want and you know, deciding if they can implement it. They're just a great company. And if you want to outsource some of your customer service for some of the things you do, definitely check into bookfunnel.com because they are super helpful.

Jami 4:14

That's great. Well, we should get on with the interview because it's great and Todd has a lot to say.

Sara 4:19

All right. Todd Efflin is a voice actor narrating audiobooks. He teaches audiobook recording to authors and alpine skiing in the winter. He loves Jesus, reading, riding, and hiking, and also home roast coffee beans.

Jami 4:33

That's that's awesome. That's quite a list. Yeah, you've got quite a resume there.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

I'm excited to be here, and we have a lot going on, but this is a lovely opportunity to build to visit with you.

Jami 4:42

We're glad you're here and thank you for being here. He's in the middle of a move and he's yeah, he has still decided to be here and we appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

Oh no, it's great. It's great. I every chance I get to talk to writers and authors and people in this business, then I want to take ever advantage of every opportunity to be able to do that and share with the world a little bit about audiobooks. People are exploring, they're curious, they listen, but how it all works is still a little bit of a mystery. So if I can share a few things then and be helpful with that, I I welcome the opportunity.

Jami 5:15

Tell us how you got started working with narrating books and working with writers.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

I just spent all my years in radio. I was in broadcasting up and down the dial for 30-ish years. And almost 10 years ago now, radio friend of mine in California, Dan, started talking about a friend of his, David, who was doing audiobooks. And David had done radio for a long time as well, and he was narrating audiobooks and wanted to know if I'd be interested in learning to do the same thing. And I was fascinated by that because I love story and I love telling stories, and I love speaking out loud, as you can imagine, from being in radio, so that works out nicely from both angles. So I liked that. So I jumped in, learned how to do some things from David and from Dan and from other people, and did my own setup. I've always gone to a radio studio and done my work, and so the idea of having something that I could set up at home was intriguing. And so I started configuring different things to get the sound that I needed in my own space to tell stories and narrate books for other folks. And my first book was at retail on Audible in November of 2016. So we're going on 10 years that I've been doing this, and then a number of years ago, I'd left radio behind and started doing this more full-time, more regularly, along with some other things that I have going on. And then I had a couple of people just, oh, tell me about what you do. I'd like to I've got a memoir that I'd like to narrate, would you help me set up what I need to be able to do that? And then another friend of mine, longtime law enforcement officer, retiring, wanted to be able to tell his stories. He's got a great voice and wanted to be able to do the audio work with that. So I started showing a couple of people, and you know how one thing just leads to another, and you meet somebody and somebody says something, and somebody says something. And I'd never set out really intending on being a teacher of narrating in audio. I feel like I'm still learning. So if I'm still learning and growing and getting myself better, am I really the right person to teach somebody? But people were asking, and so I put together some just easy how-to manuals that turned into a little bit of a book, a couple little video things, and then I got invited to go on it was Jerry Jenkins Writers Guild. And the guy that heads that up asked if I'd do a little webinar thing for them and a podcast with them, and so I did, and one thing led to another. And another friend of mine said, You should just put together a program that teaches this to writers and make it more formal. I don't know how to do that. So he kind of hooked me up with some friends of his that helped me put together a little bit of a program that's a coaching program, training program, and make it a little bit more formal and start reaching out to more and more authors rather than just kind of leaving it to chance, word of mouth, but actually make a little bit of a thing out of it and add that to what I do with narrating books, which is what I love to do, and tell stories for other people, but to help those who tell the stories tell their own stories in their own voice. And so that's what if you've read the book to your kids, if you give a mouse a cookie, that's what has happened. He's gonna want a glass of milk, and then one thing leads to another, another, and so here we are. And so yeah, it wasn't something I dreamed of doing. I just drifted into it, and it totally made sense as a ski instructor for me to be able to pass on to somebody else a passion that I have, a love that I have of something that they can then do themselves and learn to love it as much as I do and do this for the rest of their lives. That's my ski instructing philosophy. That's why I do it. I love teaching people to ski, whether it's for the first time or skills to get them better than last year. I love that. And they grow into it and love it as much as I do. And if I can do something similar with narrating with audiobooks, then yeah, it makes total sense to me to be able to share some of that with others to love it perhaps as much as I do.

Sara 9:40

Yeah, that's great. I think this is a good point to ask you what do you think, or what do you wish authors knew about narration, about narrating their audiobooks?

SPEAKER_00 9:50

It takes longer than you think.

unknown 9:52

Yeah.

Sara 9:53

As everything does, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:56

Just like everything else, right? Yes. Painting your room takes longer than you think. Moving takes longer than you think. Everybody thinks that it's easy, or they imagine that it's very difficult, and they don't want to jump into it because it's so difficult, or it's too easy, and anybody can do it. So there's kind of two schools of thought, and I think that one thing to know is it does take longer than you think that it does to narrate. Just like writing. If you're the craft of developing your book, it takes time. You write drafts, you revise, you proofread, you edit, you do all the formatting, you do all these things to put it into print, audio can take some time as well. That's one of the five essentials that I teach is time. How long a couple parts of that. How long is your book, but also how and finished audio, but then also how long can you expect to take in producing this from manuscript to microphone and get it done? Right. And I wish that authors would realize, yes, it does take time because when they hire me to narrate their book for them, they're sometimes aghast at how long that it might take to do that. It's not something you just your book is five hours long, it doesn't take five hours to narrate.

Jami 11:19

No, no, it takes a lot of time.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

It's probably like 25 hours to narrate.

Sara 11:23

Yeah. With all the different things like the iceberg where you have the finished product, but you don't see all that underneath. But yeah, that's a good analogy of that.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

That's exactly right. And I think another thing, too, is writing for the ear can be different than writing for the eye.

SPEAKER_03 11:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

All right. I spent years and years in radio writing commercials, voicing commercials, 30 seconds, 60 seconds long, so they were very short-term writing. But you write differently sometimes for the ear than you do for the eye. And what looks good on paper doesn't always sound good to the ear. Example is he said, she said, he said, she said, he said, she said. Now you know as authors that readers will just kind of skim through that, maybe catch one here and there to keep the gist of who is actually speaking the dialogue. But for the ear, it sounds like a five-year-old on a drum. Rat-ta-tat, rat-ta-tat, he said, she said, he said, read, you know. And so when you're writing that, when you're narrating that out loud, it can be harsh on your ears.

Jami 12:29

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

To someone who's listening. And so I always encourage writers to read their words out loud, even if it's only to themselves, and then see how that feels to them as they say it. And maybe that's an awkward phrase. That really nobody would actually speak like that exactly. That's just that this sentence is way too long. I need to take three breaths in the middle of it.

Jami 12:55

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

And I can really so they can adjust some of their own writing as they're writing it. If they would just simply read their own work out loud at some point, maybe not that day, but the next day.

SPEAKER_03 13:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Read it back to themselves, not as a narrator, but just read it as your audience is going to read it.

Jami 13:17

Right.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

And sometimes hearing it out loud goes, Oh, that just didn't I don't like that. And you can go back and revise it.

Jami 13:22

It doesn't land. Yeah. I'll tell you something else that's that is hard for me as an audiobook listener, and I am a big audiobook listener, is text. Text in a book is uh when you have a lot of text, but there's one book in particular I'm thinking of. I love the first book. The second book starts, and the entire first chapter, I think it's the whole first chapter, but if not the whole, it's almost the whole, is all text between two people. And it's I quit listening because yeah, they're texting, but yes, they're texting each other. Yeah. And these two people are texting each other, and it's but it's just back and forth and back and forth. And it is really it was so annoying. I just stopped listening.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

And I have to, as a narrator, vary your voice enough.

Jami 14:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

So if you're narrating different characters having dialogue, you want to vary your voice enough that you can that the listener can sense that the different person is speaking, yeah. Mimicking of voice, men's voices, women's voices. You want to vary some things, but several men, several women conversing, and that can be a challenge. For voice actors, we work on that. For someone who's an author, not a voice actor, that can be a little bit more challenging. Right. But you have to be able to, in that case, where you don't want to say he wrote, she wrote, he vary your voice enough that you can begin to discern who's speaking, yeah. Yeah, because it's hard on your ears after a while.

Jami 14:51

Yeah, I was gonna say that's the thing. It's hard on your ears, and you don't really under you don't really, as an author, I think we don't understand that. And I think that's a great point. What else? What do you wish you'd known about working with authors?

SPEAKER_00 15:04

One of the things that I have discovered about authors is how all-encompassing their writing is to them. It is not a I clo I punch in at nine and I'm done at five, and I've done all these things from my work day and I'm done. You don't right, writers don't clock out like ever. When I leave the studio from a session of narrating, I'm done with, I'm just done with that until I come back to the studio. I don't necessarily think about it in between. But writers, authors, people who they're in their head and they take a walk and they come up with new ideas, or you're in the middle of a show and they don't wait for a commercial to, oh, I've got it. They just are encompassed by their the craft of things like all the time. And I love that about that, that it's not something that you just turn on and turn off that way. It can be challenging working usually when I get somebody's book to narrate as the narrator, they're done with the book and they leave me alone until I'm done narrating the book. Some, however, will get messages from them in the middle of in the middle of projects with a thought or a question or idea. But I'm not thinking about it, but they are.

SPEAKER_03 16:26

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

But I love I love that because it just is they're passionate about what they do and they love what they do. And it's just part of not something that they do. It's really who they are.

SPEAKER_03 16:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:39

And they're putting who they are on paper. Whether it's a fiction story with characters or a nonfiction how-to, they're putting themselves into that story and pouring themselves into that, I think, and they they agonize over everything, which is the other thing I learned is that they will agonize over everything. And I I get that, I do. I totally get that.

Sara 17:01

We're gonna talk about you helping people narrate their own books in a moment, but I'm curious as a narrator, what do you like to get from an author if they're sending you a book for narration? What's helpful to you? Because I have a narrator that I've worked with for many years, and she knows my characters, she knows my stories, and it's a series usually. And so I really don't send her much because she's familiar with the world and the characters, but what do you look for?

SPEAKER_00 17:29

Yeah, when you're first uh work start working together, then you've got a lot of exploring to do. And I think it's good to be able to interact with one another before, once you've made an agreement, you want to move forward, interacting about the book itself, which is great. A couple things if I really want the whole the full manuscript right away. That's where you everything needs to start, so that I have time to sit down and look through it and go through the manuscript so I can start to get the feel, the tone, the pacing, pronunciations, yeah, how is there dialogue? Are there charts? What is the project and what is the heart of that project? And then be able to ask questions. I usually send a packet, a welcome packet to especially somebody I'm working with for the first time, so they know what to expect from me, and some ideas of what they can send to me, which would include any name pronunciations, and certainly with non with fiction books, the characters, their personality, whatever whatever the writer developed as the person's backstory or quirks or speaking style, or whatever it is that they've been imagining for months and months, writing this character, share that with me because I don't know what's in that person's head about this particular character. All I know is from the story itself, and sometimes it helps to present that character more appropriately as a voice actor, if you know from the author's viewpoint more about that particular character, how old they are, just the the details, the story, who that person is, how they dress, do they talk with slang or very precise British words, color of their eyebrows, even I don't want to go that deep, but but you get the you get more than what is ever going to come across on paper. They may not have described this person in the book that way at all, but it sure helps as a voice actor to become that character or picture being that character. Or one trick I use is I pick somebody that I know well, family member, friend, former coworker, whatever it is that reminds me of this character, and then when I'm voicing that character, it's like I'm that person.

Jami 19:56

I hope you don't do a lot of serial killer books.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

Yeah, some of my family and friends have become very sinister characters without even knowing it.

Jami 20:06

You talked about the he said, she said thing, but what are some other mistakes that you see authors making that they could maybe do differently that would help them and you?

SPEAKER_00 20:16

I think I mentioned earlier about not recognizing how long it takes for audiobooks to get done. I think one of the mistakes I see not in producing the book so much as not in producing the book soon enough. There's two schools of thought about when to release an audiobook. One is produce it while the book is being getting ready for publication and release them at the same time. And the reason might be that it makes a bigger splash to a broader audience.

Jami 20:47

Right.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

Because some people are going to hear about your book, but if it's not an audio form, they're not going to get the print book. Maybe they will get the print book and the audio later. The other school of thought is, and this is most common, especially with newer and independent authors, is I'll wait and see how the book does. And if it starts to take off, then I'll see about turning it into an audiobook. And I think that's a budget issue. It is because of investment that it takes for producing an audiobook. I've already spent all this, I've done this, so if it takes off and makes some money, then I'll take that and turn it into an audiobook. Idea behind that is then I can I can make a splash again, ramping up a brand new marketing program and campaign for that when I release it as an audiobook.

SPEAKER_03 21:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

I don't know which way is the right way or the better way. I think it depends on a variety of factors, and it's individual per writer. Do they have the budget? Can they do it? And are they ready to do it all at the same time? Or do they really, honestly, truly need to wait and develop that later? Now, that's for somebody who's really. In a new release that's yet to come out or just is coming out. I just got done narrating a book that was out four years ago? Five whatever the time frame was, it's been out several years. It's already sold a number of thousands of copies already. So I don't know that it's a mistake one way or the other, but I think it's something that authors need to think about and evaluate earlier in the process and say, the question subject objectively is do I need an audiobook? And the answer, in my opinion, is yes. Subjectively, should I do it and release it at the same time or should I wait? That's an individual question. I'm happy to help people explore that. I'm not an expert in marketing books, but I can be a sounding board for your situation and what you're after.

Sara 22:51

There is a huge segment of listeners who want audio. They're really not interested in ebook or the print.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

It's amazing, yeah.

Sara 22:59

Basically, only audio. So when you don't have an audiobook, you are limiting your readership a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 23:05

Yeah, and that's a good point, Sarah, that I try and bring out with folks. There are some research numbers based on data about the number of print books declining in terms of sales. They're still they still outweigh audiobooks by far, but they're declining. While audiobooks are increasing year over year, there's more books being produced, there's more people listening to them, and there's more people listening to more of them. Every year you can measure those for the past five, six years. It's just been increasing, and the projections continue to increase up to 2031, I think is the last projection I saw increasing 34% between now and then. That's huge. And there are people I meet all the time that are like, oh, I prefer listening to audiobooks now. I know one woman who listens to a hundred a year. A hundred a year.

SPEAKER_03 23:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:59

That's two each week. I was like, I don't know who has time to do that, but you can multitask. And so people drive, work out, do the dishes, walk the dog, whatever it is. And when you're reading, which I love to do, I love to be able to go back and forth. I because I just I love old school books, the aroma, the pages, but increasingly, because it's so easy to access this little device in our pocket and plug something in our ear, yeah, and get the same material in a different form, that more and more people are doing more and more of that, or you're taking a family vacation. Here's something for the summer. You're going to Yellowstone for the summer for the drive. And taking your drive with your kids. How about everybody listen to an audiobook, the same book, over the speakers rather than music or earbuds where everybody's got something different? Why not have a family book for the journey? Okay.

Sara 24:54

I love that. So say an author wants to narrate their own audiobook. Maybe they can't afford to hire somebody, but they're like, I can put in the time and do it. So what are your recommendations around that? Do you need any special skills to do that? Are there times that you would say no, you're better off not doing that?

SPEAKER_00 25:13

One of the first big questions is Am I the right voice for my own book? Sometimes the answer is yes, and sometimes it's no. I, as a narrator, am not right for every book. I've auditioned for a hundred books, and I don't win the audition on most of them. The vast majority of them decide somebody else is the right voice, and I'm not. Some people who think they are the right voice probably shouldn't narrate a book. I was in an office a couple days ago, and I'm listening to somebody talk to somebody else, and as the longer I I wasn't eavesdropping, but I could hear them talking, and the longer they're talking, I'm hoping that this lady never narrates an audiobook.

Jami 25:59

I heard somebody like that the other day. Yeah. It just I mean I'm sure people are saying that about me too.

SPEAKER_00 26:04

But Jamie, you said you listened to audiobooks, and you have stopped listening to audiobooks because of you can't it's hard to track along with that. But and my mom has told me this she stops listening to audiobook if she can't stand the narrator's voice.

SPEAKER_03 26:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

That I'd really like to hear the story, but I just I just can't I just can't take this voice. I just can't listen to this for the next nine hours. I'm not gonna do it. So it's all subjective. There I hope there's nobody that's ever done that to a book that I've narrated, but it's quite possible that it's happened for sure. But you need to decide first of all, is your voice going to carry the story?

SPEAKER_03 26:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:45

Because you don't need a great radio voice to be able to narrate. What's more important is how you use your voice, how you deliver the line, and is your voice the right one to be able to do that in the way that you want that story told? And you have to evaluate and decide, yes, I I think I am. I d there's plenty of people that think they should, but but probably shouldn't. There's a whole bunch of people that are the opposite. Don't think they should, but probably can. And those are the folks I think that I want to be able to teach and help get to that particular point. It's easier with people who do podcasts or public speaking. They go to conferences and they're a guest speaker at an event, whatever it might be. I do work with pastors, for example, because they're used to standing on a pulpit week after week and speaking with people. They're very comfortable with speaking, very comfortable with their voice. They're familiar with it already. So the idea of being in a studio booth for a number of hours speaking isn't daunting. And they're comfortable with that. There's some things we have to work on from a technique standpoint, but that's easy for folks that are that way. Other folks who don't do that, perhaps a number of fiction writers who are perhaps a little shyer or introverted. I think one of the things I've learned about writers is that many times they are, they just like to be by themselves and do their own writing. So the idea of talking is daunting. It's foreign to them. But you realize that you're by yourself. Right. It's like you go into a booth and read your own words, you're talking to yourself.

unknown 28:32

Exactly.

Sara 28:33

So you are alone. You are alone. Yeah. Most of us are okay if we don't have an audience.

SPEAKER_00 28:38

You go talk in front of a crowd of people, you're fine by yourself, but all of a sudden you put 10 people in a room and they freeze up. I developed a technique in radio that if I was going to interview somebody before we got anywhere near a microphone, I would just ask them a question or two about whatever it was, and they'd share. And then I'd say, Okay, we're gonna we're gonna go on here in a moment, and I'm gonna use my microphone, but I'm gonna ask you the same question that I just asked you. Okay. And you just tell me what you just told me. Does that sound okay? And they'd go, Oh, yeah, I can do that. And then we get done, and they're like, Wow, that was easier than I thought it was gonna be, because they've already rehearsed their answer. They've already thought about it in their head and they've already heard it come out of their mouth. And so when I ask them the same question, they deliver it even better than what they did when they told me the first time. You can rehearse your own copy before you hit record or record it and then listen back to it and record it again. I do that plenty. I'll record five minutes of something and then go back and listen to it all and then delete it and do it again. Yeah, I do that all the time.

Jami 29:37

So well, so a lot of I have heard of some authors doing this, and they inevitably are in their closet doing it with their clothes around them and everything. What kind of setup would someone need if they were gonna try to do this by themselves?

SPEAKER_00 29:52

Closet works great for a lot of a lot of this. Is it professional? Are you going to win an audition for a national Ford commercial? Is Disney gonna call and say, we'd love your voice on some? No. Yeah, you're not competing in that kind of arena in that world where you have a $1,500 microphone and a $10,000 studio that's professionally soundproof and tuned. I love their studios. But for what I do as an audiobook narrator, it needs to be better than an empty room, but it doesn't need to be $15,000 studio setup. It doesn't need to be anywhere near that. A walk-in closet can very often be a great place to record an audiobook, as opposed to your bathroom. Record in your walk-in closet. And that's because sound acoustics are more built into a walk-in closet than they are in a bathroom. Bathrooms usually full of hard surfaces, right? Except maybe some towels. Everything else is hard. And sound is energy and it bounces everywhere off these walls, and you get that reverberation, that echo. But in audiobooks, we're trying to achieve a particular quality level that audible and other places are looking for. And you have to design a space that you can utilize on a regular basis while you're getting your audiobook done, because you're not going to get it all done in one day. You want to be able to come back to it over a number of days, or go on vacation, come back a week later, and it's still all set up that way. So a lot of people start in a walk-in closet for sure, or design a space that has blankets and curtains and things that they can put in place on the walls to help make that absorption around them there all the time when they just walk in and hit record. I have a space that this is the only thing I do in here is record. So I walk in, I shut the door, and I can hit record, and it will sound today like it did yesterday. So authors can certainly do the same kind of setup, and that's what I teach people to do. First of all, is to get a setup in your storytelling space that you can use consistently with a decent microphone. The microphones I'm talking about are 10 times the one I use in terms of cost. You don't need, but don't get a gaming microphone that people use for gaming headsets and that kind of thing. They just won't want to produce more quality than you need. And if you don't have a good sounding room, it'll sound bad, even though you have a really good microphone. And the other is too cheap and won't achieve the quality that you need.

Jami 32:21

What's a base level type mic that somebody might consider?

SPEAKER_00 32:25

The one I use the most, and I have several, but the one I teach people to use with, because I've had this microphone that I'm using right now for the 10 years I've been doing this, and it's a Audio Technica AT 2020. And you can get a USB, so it just plugs straight into your computer, or you can get the what's called an XLR. You've seen the big cables that have three prongs at the end, and you plug them in. You have to plug it into an interface, like a Scarlet or a Persona's interface, then to your computer. It's a little bit more expensive to do it that way than with a USB, but yeah, either one of those will likely work. Different mics will have different sound. Some will sound brighter and cleaner, and some will sound warmer. And it just depends on the materials that they have in inside and what they were built to sound like. And a lot of people like those warm, dulcet tone sounds. And so it works well for female voices, especially, because if you get a microphone that sounds bright and shiny and you have a higher pitched voice, it can be a a little too high when it comes out on audio. So it varies, and you can practice an experiment with a couple different ones as well, and you don't have to keep the same one, they're not that expensive, but don't get a Neumann or Sennheiser right off the bat that's a thousand dollars or fifteen hundred dollars.

Jami 33:41

Yeah, right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:42

And try and make that work.

Jami 33:43

So and you stand, right? Or do you stand?

SPEAKER_00 33:46

I do here in in this particular space. I've sat before. I've gone back and forth, and I don't know that there's one better than the other in terms of your sound. Plenty of people sit. There's all kinds of people that sit in a chair or in a bar stool. I have a bar stool right behind me, and I rarely use it unless I'm editing and I know I'm gonna be standing a while. I think my energy is a little better when I'm standing than when I'm sitting. I'll tend to slouch when I'm sitting at some point, and I'm always adjusting how I'm straightening my back or when I'm standing, I don't do that. I remain in a more static position in terms of my spine, but I talk with my hands, I'm all over the map, I use facial expressions, and sitting is just almost feels like it's restricting rather than liberating. When I'm standing, I can move. So I don't know, it's just preference. It's just preference.

Sara 34:41

Talk to us a little bit about editing, because that's a huge part of this, is once you get done recording, or do you edit as you go, or do you edit all at the end?

SPEAKER_00 34:51

I will edit as I go because if if you if somebody were recording it for you and producing it on the other side of the glass, you went to a one side of the booth and read it and they did all the equipment handling, then you might just do all that and they're going to piece together, keep track of the files and and put it all together after you've gone for the day. But I use the digital audio software that will allow me to. There's a couple different methods. One's called punch and roll, that's very popular. A lot of people use that. I use I was taught by my instructor to use a slightly different method. The result is that you edit as you go. So if I make a mistake, like I've just been stumbling my way through that, I would stop, because that's all wrong from the script, and I would start over at a point, I would stop that particular sentence, and then pick back up at a place where I could just before that, and then continue on narrating. And I would do that as I go, so that at the end your entire chapter or your is one file, and it has a minimal number of editing changes that you need to make. There are some people who will revoice and revoice this because they wanted to say the dialogue this way, or they know they mispronounce a word, and they'll save that in another line, and then they go back and try and copy and paste and put that in there, and it just it's so tedious to do that, and you'll lose your place. The stair step method I like because I stop, I hit record, it starts recording on a new track. So you'd have all your tracks, the recording track would be at the top of your software. And then I stop and start, and it starts a new track right under that, but at that particular point. Then I can go work from working from backwards to front. I can take each file and then stitch them together manually. So for a 15-minute audio, it takes me a minute to stitch them all back together, depending on how many there are. If there's 50 mistakes, it's going to take a while. But if there's five, it takes me seconds to stitch them together. There's another method called punch and roll that all the software will do as well. And when you hit the stop and record, it goes back to a pr you click a point to start again, you hear the last 10 seconds of what you did read that was correct, and then it starts recording at the at that punch and roll point on there, and you can just keep your recording going.

Jami 37:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:22

The end result is the same. There's another part that when you're going back and you're listening to it, and you find just like somebody proofreading your writing, we proof listen our audio. Oh, I said that word wrong, or I forgot that sentence, or that paragraph is in here twice because I did it again and I didn't edit correctly on my punch and roll, or whatever it is, we do what are called pickups and we go back and fix that, those areas as well. And there's a method of doing that where you're going to re-record it and then I copy and paste over the mistake, similar to what you would do with writing. It's a cut and paste operation, and then save that file.

Jami 38:01

Excellent. Excellent. This has been so interesting. Tell everybody where they can find out more about you and your narration, but also about your is a book, right? And not a course, it's a book that you did, so that they can learn this if they want to.

SPEAKER_00 38:15

Sure. I have a couple of things. I did do a it's a glorified manual, more than anything else. It's called Write It, Record It. Learn the Five Essentials of Recording Good Audio, and it's on Gum Road. Just called Write It Record It. And so that's my basic book that goes over the five essentials of recording good audio, which I mentioned one earlier is time, and then also your the terminology. Every industry, whether it's doctors or automobiles, every industry has its own terminology and acronyms that are unique to them. Audiobooks and recording are no different. But it's really easy to get lost in the weeds with all kinds of terms you don't need to know. So I've tried to narrow it down to just the essential words that you do need to know so that you speak the language.

unknown 39:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:02

And then we talk about the tech. We've talked a little bit about the microphones and the software that we want to use to record on. So the technology part of that, which is intimidating for some people, and you can make mistakes buying the wrong stuff, as we mentioned. So those are the three T's, the time, the term, and the technology. And then I have two S's that are the essentials as well. And one of those is the space, the storytelling space. And we've talked about studio setup, finding a closet or a corner of a room and setting it up with some soft materials and utilizing that. It's not soundproof, by the way. You're still gonna hear the dog bark or the lawnmower, the airplane, or the doorbell, and those kinds of things. It's not soundproof. We're not you can do that, but you don't have to. You just need a place that's gonna be quiet during the time you need to record. And then the fifth is another S. It's the sound. We're gonna work on getting the sound that you need. And there's really two parts to that. One is making sure that the sound quality that you're producing will pass the quality control checks for audible. And then the other part of that is just your speaking. How far away from the microphone, or how close to the microphone, how loud do you need things to be, and then your delivery with that as well, the pace that you might want to talk, inflection, how to warm up your voice, how to relax, how to smile when you're speaking, how to use your hands and facial expressions and all those little things that voice actors do that nobody sees.

SPEAKER_03 40:32

Right.

SPEAKER_00 40:32

How to turn that into a writer, not into a voice actor, but somebody who can speak in a way that people want to hear. Using your voice not as a tool so much as think of it as a musical instrument. Like a piano has 88 keys. We our voice has the same range typically, but most of us in our speaking only use a very narrow window of range of our speaking. We have all these things that we can do. We can talk higher, we can talk lower, we can talk faster, we can talk slower, we can talk louder, we can talk softer. We can combine all these things in our speaking and not come across so flat or boring. And most people have never ever not been a voice actor studied any of that or learned any of that. And so I go over a number of those things and give them some exercises to to work on and play with your voice a little bit and record it and find out what you can do and what you like and how it sounds when you do this and what it feels like when you do that and when you sound this way. So there's a whole area that we want to talk about with that, and that's not necessarily detailed in in the book, but I do have a newsletter.

SPEAKER_03 41:44

Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:45

DIY. Do it yourself, DIY audiobooks, and it's dot substack.com. So diy audiobooks.substack.com. And I've got gone on a couple hundred articles in there about audiobooks, narrating, my five essentials, and then my coaching and teaching program as well, which I do some one-on-one or one on three or four or five small groups because I've done seminars and webinars with people. And I go through about four weeks of teaching with some hands-on material through the five essentials, and then spend time helping you with the actual setup. So I'm just gonna have you watch a video and then leave it to yourself. I'm gonna help people get to and because I want to test your sound. I want you to record something and then and then send it to me so that I can test it. I can hear it in my studio, I can hear it with my equipment. And if it passes the quality check, because I don't want you to record three hours of a nine-hour book and then find out that it's not gonna work and we have to do it.

Jami 42:46

But your stool was squeaking, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:48

Yeah, oh, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Jami 42:50

Where can people find out about all of that?

SPEAKER_00 42:54

My uh my newsletter has uh pages, the homepage has things about my coaching program and about my write it recorded book as well. They can go there. They want to hear some of the work that I've done is on there as well under the tab audiobooks, available through there at todflin.com. So it's real simple. I'm not that sophisticated. Everybody tells me, oh, you should do this, you should do the setup and do this thing and record these video things. And I wow, maybe someday, but I'm just trying to keep it simple.

Jami 43:23

Very good. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 43:25

I appreciate what you two do in your podcast. I've been enjoying it the past couple of months, learning some things from other people who have learned just by going through the process as well and growing in their own ability and expanding their talent. So I'm glad to be on and help pass along some things to somebody else thinking about not just writing, but also the audiobook part of it and get them started on the right road. So, yeah, anything I can do to help encourage that, facilitate that. I'd love to see somebody's book that I got to help with, whether it's I narrated it or they narrated it. I'd love it. Either way.

Jami 44:00

That's awesome.

Sara 44:01

Thank you for being here. We appreciate it so much. Well, thanks for listening today. If you want to support the podcast, you can go to wish I'd known for writers.com slash support, or you can also find us on Substack. And don't forget to check out BookFunnel, and we will see everybody next week. Bye, everyone. Bye.