The Audiobook (part one)

I'm a huge audiobook fan, so I've always wanted to coordinate creating one.

Audiobooks are not yet a She Writes Press thing, but they were kind enough to put on a presentation by Michele Cobb, who does audiobook marketing for Forte Business Consulting, and Audible narrator Tavia Gilbert.I learned a lot from it and later contacted them both directly. I wound up hiring Michele for some marketing mostly because I needed her advice.

From those contacts, they gave me names of other narrators and I went through their samples on Audible. I came up with a list of four who I wanted to hear more from and contacted them all separately.

I then looked through my book and found a short two page chapter that had five of the main characters talking. While my book does not involve other languages, or different sounding accents, it does have over ten distinct voices, so it is not a beginner narrator book by any standard.

Some basics to keep in mind. 
 - Audiobooks are billed "Per Finished Hour" (PFH).
 - There are aprox. 9300 words per hour. (9000-9500 is the actual range).
 - Every narrator uses a different PFH rate. $250-$500 more than covers the ranges I was quoted.
 - Most narrators these days have their own studios or producers that they work with. For the business nuts and bolts, you will be talking with the producer or the narrator.
 - The roles involved are narrator, producer, sound engineer/director, and Quality Control (QC) person. All of this is covered in the PFH rate.

I contacted my narrators directly through referral email. Your experience may vary. You can also contact audiobook studio instead, but I am more comfortable starting with the narrators.

So the narrators all gave me a short audition of the piece that I chose, which is Chapter 13 where Harris is scolding them for not actually successfully obtaining DNA samples.

Now it was time to agonize. There were pros and cons to all of them and each time I played them, I felt differently. I played them for my copy-editor and she picked two that worked well for her and told me to pick from there. After a lot of debate I went with a narrator who wasn't as well-known on Audible (hence not as immediately recognizable), but has immense talents as an actor and is moving more into voiceover work. She's also really easy for me to work with, and handles the range of voices well, and swears she is not considering a career change any time soon (this is a series, so it's an important question for me.)

Talented narrators can handle all the voices in your book. You are not required to cast multiple voiceover artists though you certainly could if you wished to set a lot of money on fire. If you have a book as all encompassing as "The Help", then certainly consider multiple cast member, but it will cost you.

Now the talking stage begins, as I and the narrator (I'll name her later in the process) hash out what each character sounds like - some of them I have opinions on what they should sound like, others I am leaving up to her. She is off reading the book, and I am coming up with short character sketches of several of the characters for her.

So far, this has been the most enjoyable part of the publishing experience.