Recording Audio Books - Books on CD with great Voice Over Talent
Posted: Thursday, April 23, 2009
by Tom Gauger
Reelmusician.com
Through the years as a former talent booking agent with the William Morris Agency and as founder of ReelMusicianPro.com, I can tell you that there are miles that separate audio book production and planned marketing that make both the production and planned audio books a success. If you are planning to record your own book or you are a publisher looking to record one of your writers books, you will want to make sure that you have these principles in play.
One of the biggest misconceptions out there is trying to record the audio oneself. While recording an audio book is not rocket science, in some ways it's much more difficult to obtain and sound professional then you would think, unless you're ok with hearing the computer fan noise and rumble along with bassy, boomy artifact sounds within the recording, because "Well I've got a computer and a USB mic" so I'm ready to go theory. It's that much more important to have a very quiet system with vocal booths, proper equipment with gating and compression, etc along with using the right mic on each talent coming in to record, when you're listening to a 6 10 hour audio book. While you might save money, you will not win over your audience, credibility with future publishers, and have a production that helps to spring board your writing future.
Music is key! Like in the movies, music helps to break up any monotony of the read and helps to emotionally setup the next chapter. At ReelMusicianPro we write custom music for each audio book, and the reason is, because it almost takes as much time to locate library music as to writing it and then, more times than not, it doesn't achieve end game goals. As much as bigger than life music scoring helps the big screen, so does cinematic and music themes in helping the look, feel and sound of your audio book. And quite honestly, most libraries, while there's some good ones out there, likely won't get the job done or at least not give you the leading value that is intrinsic in a well scored music theme.
Beware of online publishing deals. Don't be taken on the "We'll put in x amount of dollars (usually a fairly large sum from publisher to make it look like they're really spending a lot of money, while using their time and resources as in the total bottom line "upfront money" ) with the money you put in really being their profit. I didn't say that time and productions aren't worth anything, because they certainly are, but the idea that $20,000 or so is being paid upfront from the publisher on your behalf usually isn't upfront money, but "time" spent. There's a lot of good folks out there, but just be cautious.
Look at the obvious ways to market your audio book and set up accounts with a number of the social networks solely for your book. You will want to set up accounts with Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and numerous other publishers where you can sell your book. You will want to sell your book on Ebay and other sites of the like. Creating a book trailer can be very rewarding and really help push the sale of the book Look carefully at that concept. Like everything else, a great push from a well thought out book trailer could help sell many more units. If nothing else it looks credible, professional and creates more of a buying atmosphere with your potential buyer.
Mr Gauger is an accomplished radio and TV writer with too many credits to list here along with numerous audio book productions. This author can be contacted at tgauger@reelmusicianpro.com or 615-300-5030. Mr Gauger works with small business to very large national brands and books and you may visit his website at http://www.reelmusicianpro.com
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