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Midwest Momentum
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Midwest Momentum
Voicing the Story: Inside the Art of Audiobook Narration with Becky White and Gary Smith
Ever wondered how to become a book narrator? A storyteller's voice can breathe life into the pages of a book, that's exactly why Becky White and Gary Smith from Ohio Audio Book Narrators became narrators themselves and run the OAN. Join us as we uncover the nuances and challenges of audiobook narration, revealing how a distinctive voice can carve out a successful career. Becky's leap from business owner to voiceover artist and Gary's transition from an audiobook enthusiast to a voiceover professional offer a glimpse into the dedication behind their craft. Their shared expertise sheds light on the technical and personal elements that go into becoming a narrator, and they're here to tell you all about it.
If you are curious about how Ohio Audio Book Narrators can support you on your journey, or if you're simply fascinated by the world of voiceover, this episode will resonate with you. Tune in for a session brimming with wisdom, laughter, and the shared love of storytelling.
Time to hustle America, roll up our sleeves and make dreams happen. Midwest Momentum brings you stories of CEOs, startups, product development and founders doing whatever it takes to make their big idea happen. Here's Midwest Momentum hosts Michelle Gatchel. Welcome to Midwest Momentum.
Speaker 2:I'm your host, michelle Gatchel, and we have a great show today. You know I love hearing people tell their stories, but as a kid I loved people telling me stories, and when I found Audible and I could buy books where authors were reading to me, so to speak, I thought that was the best. It's something I do almost every night I play a book and fall asleep to it. So I found Ohio Audio Book Narrators right here in the state of Ohio, and joining me are two of the administrators, or the two administrators, becky White and Gary Smith. Thank you for joining me.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having us.
Speaker 2:So you know, we like to talk about different types of businesses that people get into and you literally can make a living narrating books, and I think there's probably. You know, I don't know if you guys are like this and I'm guessing maybe you are just because of what you do, but I'll be at a restaurant and I will hear somebody talking next to me and think, oh my God, they should be narrating a book. You know, there's a lot of voices that don't even know they could be making money with that voice. But so what got you guys into it? You want to start, becky?
Speaker 4:I can I? My background is in business. I had an insurance agency in a financial planning business. I sold those and I my husband said I couldn't sit around the house and just find things for him to do. So some friends of mine encouraged me to get into audio books or, you know, voiceover because they liked my voice, like you were saying, and also my husband is a keyboard player, so he knew all about the technical side of it. And the thing that keeps a lot of people out of audio book narrating who are good narrators is the technical aspects, because you have to have a sound modified room with no echoes or bass traps, you have to have the right equipment, just like you do for podcasting, and you have to know how to use it.
Speaker 2:And if you're technically challenged.
Speaker 4:You don't like working with software. You don't like sitting in a small booth talking to yourself for hours. You don't like hearing people tell you that you made a mistake.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:So these were all hurdles we were able to overcome and that's why we started Ohio Audio Book Narrators 2 is because we wanted to help other people find not just their voice to do audio books, but also to be able to do it professionally in a professional recording environment and to meet the technical requirements that there are to produce an audio book.
Speaker 2:What got you into it, Gary?
Speaker 3:Well, mine's a little simpler. I think I've always read a lot. I go through 50, 60 books a year usually, and then I started listening to audio books because it makes the time fly on the road.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, I went to a seminar that a couple of local guys who are voiceover talents put on at Westerville Library and they were great. They gave a little bit of overview of just being a voiceover artist. But I was very interested in the book end of it and you actually can get started fairly modestly in terms of money and where you go, because there will probably talk about it, where you can get auditions and so forth. Acx is a big one but you can bootstrap yourself and start this. That's kind of what I did. Plus, I did some very, very, very amateur acting when I was in high school and a little bit after. And if you do a lot of books, you have to do characters and be animated and really push it a little bit.
Speaker 4:You can't just read. Yeah, it's not reading, it's not reading.
Speaker 3:So with that background and we're always trying to improve by taking coaching and listening to webinars and practicing and, of course, auditioning a lot that's how you build your career to whatever level it is.
Speaker 2:And how long ago did you start?
Speaker 3:Geez, well, probably about. I count, say six years Six years?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've been doing it about six years, and what did you do before that?
Speaker 3:I was and am a marketing consultant.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:So there's a little bit of theatrics to that, so kind of a lot of smoking mirrors, yeah, kind of all works. Yeah, yeah, I did before that I was a marketing consultant and I still do some of that work. But I enjoy the. I really enjoy the books.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, and so let's talk about how someone gets into it. Initially, because the overhead costs. I mean, you definitely have to have the equipment to do it and it isn't just reading. It's not just reading a book.
Speaker 4:There is a learning curve.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so even if you have a great voice, that doesn't get you in the door.
Speaker 3:You know the thing is, a voice is not is probably the least requirement. Yeah, I mean when you heard people say oh you, you know your voice sounds great. You should. That's great If you get a good set of pipes. But you'll hear me, my voice isn't particularly good right now because we're in a late in the day and everybody's voice changes over the day.
Speaker 3:Yes, I'm at my best in the morning when I'm rested, my lungs are full and all that good, relaxed, all that sort of thing. But you really don't have to have a great voice. You can't have a funny voice.
Speaker 2:Although some characters need it. Cartoons yeah.
Speaker 3:You're going to do cartoons, you're great. You're going to do graphic stuff, but you have to have a pleasant voice and you have to be able to bring the book to life.
Speaker 2:Right, and that is the key.
Speaker 4:And that requires creativity.
Speaker 2:So what kind of equipment does someone need to get into this?
Speaker 4:Well, the first thing is an area in their house, because most people it's cost prohibitive to rent space. So you know a closet, a small room, something where they can not soundproof it, you don't have to have a soundproof. It's matter of fact. It's difficult to get to soundproof a space, but you do have to hang curtains or clothes or the bed. Yeah, the styrofoam, the audio styrofoam tubes that will absorb sound so that it doesn't echo off the walls, and you know cause?
Speaker 3:well, I don't know Just well the weird thing is you want to make the space dead, dead to sound, so that all the mic gets is your voice and there's no echoing. And you can do that cheap with like working in a closet that's full of clothes.
Speaker 2:I've tried that it's it works. Yeah, it works.
Speaker 3:And she's talking about hanging, moving blankets, things like that. There are inexpensive ways of building a sound-treated room. There's also like if the Westerville Library has a whisper room, which is a professional-level room that's already built, isolated within within their lab.
Speaker 2:that you can use Interesting yeah.
Speaker 4:But you would be competing with other people for its use. It's a great way to start, just to see if you like it. You could do a book or two like that, but at some point you have to have your own equipment in your own space.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, because most narrators work at home. It used to be. You'd go in the studio. Yeah, because nobody had an at-home studio. But with the digital revolution and everything, you can own your own production studio right in your house. Mm-hmm, that's what we all do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, it's interesting how many people are in the in the Hio audio book.
Speaker 4:Oh eight or ten.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh, and so in Ohio, like other certain states that this industry is really big.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm. Certain cities.
Speaker 2:I would say yeah, new York.
Speaker 4:LA yeah, la.
Speaker 2:A lot of you know actors unemployed actors yeah, look at what they want to do yeah, exactly. Okay, all right, so let's talk about what type of books like. How do you audition for such a thing?
Speaker 3:Well, I mentioned ACX, yeah, and that's the production arm of Audible and they're a big dog. You know a lot of books go through there. They on the internet. They have a website. You can go to ACXcom, register as a narrator and audition as much as you want. Now, we've both done that and there are definitely pros and cons, but that's a good way to get started you know to get your name started.
Speaker 2:Are you making an audition tape with different voices that you do so that they listen to that? Demo yeah or do you just read some of their script for them on an audition?
Speaker 4:Or both yes.
Speaker 3:They publish. You know they have a book synopsis there and you can read and see if it's for you and a selected amount of text that you can read for your audition. You could get a book without auditioning by your profile and your samples in there.
Speaker 2:But most of the time you're going to have to audition. Sure, I'm guessing there's a lot of people on. Is it ACX? I'm guessing there's a lot of people on ACX.
Speaker 4:Oh man, I think it's over 100,000.
Speaker 2:Wow, but not all of them are active, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Probably more narrators than there are books but Some days yeah.
Speaker 2:So how often are you guys doing a book?
Speaker 4:Man, it really depends. I mean I have. So the people who do it full time are doing a book a week. Okay, yeah, we're both semi-retired and we kind of pick this up when we're not on vacation or you know, so we do several books a year. Okay, not, not, not 40, 50.
Speaker 3:One of our members, angus, has done what? Maybe 60, no more than that. Over the same span of time that I've done 20. So, but I mean, you'll work as much as you get projects, but since you're competing for everyone here, you know, there's lots of narrators and.
Speaker 2:You gotta beat them out or that's it to get a book.
Speaker 4:But and then you know, the other thing is, sometimes you don't. We are trained to narrate and produce a book, so by producing, I mean you know, after the, after you record the audiobook, the sound goes through an audio interface to your laptop and you, there's free software you can bring up. Oh, what's it? What do you use? Audacity, open audio. I use Reaper, which is pretty cheap, um, and you can see the sound waves in there and you can manipulate the sound to make it louder or softer. So Some people prefer to narrate their own books, and so I've done a couple books now for authors who narrated it themselves, and all I did was the technical part of it.
Speaker 4:Okay so you know, so we do that. And then some of us have side gigs where we do commercials you know, voiceover commercials or movie trailers or you know things like that. So not all of us Narrate audiobooks full-time. But to be in the Ohio audiobook narrators Group, we prefer to have people who are primarily doing audiobooks, who've done you know several have a professional home studio and Can you know, can demonstrate that they Can produce a professional level audiobook.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're not just Narrating into their smartphone or Although in their car have a pretty good audio system, don't they the 15 pro max? It's.
Speaker 3:I I've never done a book on my phone.
Speaker 2:I have auditioned through it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because there you're just throwing something out there right. But yeah, I don't know too many people that use it for a finished product. Mainly it's because it's the sound treatment of the room you're in, maybe even than the phone right right.
Speaker 4:Yeah well, and then you have to be able to hook the phone up To an audio interface, like you're using here we don't have anything quite this fancy so that the sound can get Converted into a digital signal that your software can read, and the hookups. And that's the problem, because you have to have either a thunderbolt or a USB connection, and most phones don't do that.
Speaker 4:Yeah so there's no way really. I mean, you can, you can generate an mp3 on a phone, but when we're recording a book, what we record, prefer to record, is a wave file, or there's a different format in Apple I can't remember the word for it, but which is a. You know much more, has captures, more sound frequencies and and and. Then that's what we work off of to Edit and proof and then we generate an mp3. So so With smartphones, like a lot of people, just all they can generate is the mp3.
Speaker 2:Yes, I.
Speaker 3:Would. So I mean, we're here to talk about our group and we're here as Outreach to teach people these things when they don't know them.
Speaker 2:Help help newbies right, so do you do workshops then?
Speaker 3:We have, we've done, we've done a couple at Westerville we're. We got a couple coming up this year and my point is it sounds very complicated, we're all, we all kind of understand this, but that's why we're here, because it doesn't have to be impenetrable.
Speaker 3:Yes we can Definitely give you ideas on how you can set up a home studio when to audition, get some help, get your career going if that's what you want to do. You won't be auditioning right away, maybe for some of the things we're going to talk about with casting call, but we can get you started in the in the business.
Speaker 4:What we can't do is Well, you have to find the work yourself and. Get the experience, and a lot of times that involves getting coaching, which we're not really set up to do coaching. You know like there are people who all they do is help voiceover artists.
Speaker 4:Some come up with their studio, their technical end of the work. There are coaches that help people finesse their voice, make it Easier to understand, work on accents, work on character development for fiction books Mm-hmm, we don't really do that, but we're. What we provide is pretty basic, but at that the point that a person who's got into audiobooks comes To us with some background then at that point we can also say well, we learned by mistake or by experience how to do this better or that better, and and so that's what we spend a lot of our meetings on, not necessarily helping newbies, but helping existing narrators get better.
Speaker 2:So how much does one make on narrating a book?
Speaker 3:It'll sound impressive what your per hour rate is. There's two ways to be paid. Okay, you can be paid by sharing some of the royalties from the sales of the book, which means you don't get much upfront if anything.
Speaker 4:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:So you're kind of betting on the come. The other way is what we call per finished hour PFH. You're just paid a certain amount per finished hour of the book and then you're out of it. You go on to the next project. Yeah, there's, if you've got a best seller, if you're narrating a best seller, you might want a piece of that action, you know and say I'll defer my income now and wait, but most of what we do in Ohio are not best sellers. We're not doing Grisham every time we turn around.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, darn it.
Speaker 4:Well, I can't say that there are narrators in Ohio that are full. Doing those books, all doing those books, yeah, I mean, but but the vast majority? But the vast majority are not we're you know we're doing nonfiction.
Speaker 3:You know books that people have to listen to, but they don't. It's not a compelling story, but anyway, you're paid per finished hour and the per finished hour rates are pretty good. You'll get to 300, 400 bucks an hour is sounds pretty good. But when you realize that, since most of us do our own producing after the word, we don't just sit and talk into the mic. We then take the files and, as Becky was explaining, we have a lot of a lot of work to do on them we don't end up making that much per hour for that finished out.
Speaker 4:Because you can spend five hours to get one finished hour book or more easily easily.
Speaker 2:Right so yeah, yeah so.
Speaker 4:But if I can, just step back we all got started out doing ACX royalty share. One of the things that OAN, that we try to help our Narrators do, is find work that pays per finished hour. Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:So if an author let's flip the coin, so to speak has a book that they want narrated, is ACX audible, the only place to go for them. Like, how do you find the authors?
Speaker 3:Well, we don't. We don't do too much. Author. Finding it's good when you do, because then you can kind of set it up, yeah. Generally, becky, I can, you can talk about yeah.
Speaker 4:There are a variety of publishing companies that will that look for authors that want to do audio books and look for narrators who will narrate for them.
Speaker 4:And we were recently approached by Emily Hitchcock, who owns Boyle and Dalton Publishers and also Columbus Publishing Lab, both based here in Ohio. She's been publishing print and ebooks for 10 years and she knew about OAN because of our work with OWA Ohio Writers Association on their anthologies, and she had wanted for a long time to provide assistance to her authors. A business she wanted, a business producing audio books for her authors who wanted them but didn't know how to find narrators. And so she approached us and we were I mean, there's a obviously a little different, because OAN isn't profit, it's not a for profit company. So Gary and Angus who's the other administrator in the group and I sat down and kind of worked out a proposal for her to provide access to a group of vetted narrators who would be willing to work for her per finished hour rate and who have professional home studios experience and then send out casting calls or auditions for her authors.
Speaker 2:So she has a stable of narrators now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you could say that, I mean in that sense.
Speaker 4:Well, in that sense, there are publishing companies that have stable, their own stables, and they send out.
Speaker 2:Is there a national audio book narrators?
Speaker 3:I mean like us, yeah, and in states.
Speaker 4:We're not part of a national organization.
Speaker 3:If that's what you're asking there are national organizations.
Speaker 4:There's Hannah professional audio book narrators association, which is specifically for narrators, and they do help narrators, you know who want to get into the business.
Speaker 3:We would really love to grow the membership Sure.
Speaker 2:And so when's the next meeting? So like if someone's listening they can put on their calendar.
Speaker 4:Oh, I don't have an exact date. That's going to be the. I think it's going to be this second week in March, but I don't have a dark Okay.
Speaker 3:What we say is go to the Facebook page and we'll put it on there. So when you dial in or you want to send us, contact us and get on the list, then we'll send you the link to dial in and listen.
Speaker 4:Or, if you want more information, you should. You can contact us through Facebook dot com at hot Facebook dot com. Slash Ohio audio book narrators, or you can contact me. My website is voicingexpert.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I know when I searched Ohio audio book narrators, the Facebook one was like the third thing down, but Ohio writers association came up first.
Speaker 4:They have a website.
Speaker 2:They have a meta for you guys.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Listed meta tag, you know for you guys on their on their site.
Speaker 3:Very much better at Facebook than we are apparently.
Speaker 2:So well, so You're in the business of narrating audio books. Do you have a favorite thing, like I would love to do children's books in my mind, because I love reading to little kids, right? But?
Speaker 4:you guys and you have a good voice for that, yeah thanks.
Speaker 2:Do you guys have an area that you focus on?
Speaker 3:Well, the first book you like to do is the one that wants you to do it. But no, if I had my druthers, I do a lot of fiction and military, and not maybe a great selection of characters because they're difficult and take time to develop well, or accents, or another one that's difficult for most people to do, sure, but yeah, I love to do fiction because you get to be more demonstrative, but done a fair amount of just nonfiction books about self-improvement and so forth, and those are okay too.
Speaker 3:They're actually a lot easier to do, so that's kind of where I like to live. What about you, becky?
Speaker 4:I prefer nonfiction. Personally, I like to do how-to's and memoirs technology, history, that kind of thing.
Speaker 3:Nice. I had to do a book one time that was military but, not having been in the military, it also had some French in it, and so I tapped into my family wiki. My son was a Marine sniper, so he knew all the acronyms and how to say them and what they meant, and his wife speaks French. Oh perfect, and so she sent me a little recording of everything that I didn't know how to say.
Speaker 2:Right, so that's what we have to do as narrators.
Speaker 3:We have to do research a lot of times in order to make what we're doing authentic.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 4:And one of our narrators speaks French fluently as well as he can do a number of accents and he's kind of our go-to for things that we just don't quite exactly know. But there's just a phrase or a word and there are also coaches. If you need to learn a Chinese accent, there are coaches that can help you do that. If you need to figure out how to do some kind of pronounce some sort of technical word or acronym, there are Facebook pages full of narrators where you can go and get that, and we try to provide that kind of help and support through OAN as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, you know it's interesting because I love that you guys have started this organization so people can find you and come together with others and learn, and it's definitely an avenue for voice work, where commercials you mentioned is like the avenue people think of the most. I think years ago I did a voice work where I literally just recorded my voice saying a whole bunch of things and what they used it for was if someone had a brain injury where they couldn't talk, they could pick a voice to use for their computer, and so it was kind of a fun, I thought, a fun thing to do to help somebody be able to talk again, right, Since I love telling stories.
Speaker 2:But are there other things that you have found, since you've been doing this, that your voice can be used for?
Speaker 3:There's really a whole group of things like what you mentioned, where a computer will actually take the little pieces of your you pronouncing one letter or one syllable and build it into. It's not a little bit like Steven Hawking, but it lets somebody speak. They do the similar thing for a lot of the gaming in the gaming industry. You might read a bunch of syllables over and over and they patch them together. But then, yeah, the commercial voiceover radio work and voiceovers like that pay very well. 30 second spots, 60 second spots all that we would certainly do. I've done just a tiny little bit of it, just a couple of jobs since I started this. But yeah, we're always open to that sort of thing.
Speaker 4:And I've done some of that. Well, it would be more like e-learning for some of my former clients. But there's also a lot of narrators like to get a book that's in the public domain that they can narrate, because the narration will be copyrighted to them.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay.
Speaker 4:And that's actually what I did. I took a book that was in the public domain and rewrote it to kind of update the language. And that was how I got to know OWA, because they were kind of giving me some tips and I sat in on some seminars on how to write. So there's that, like I said, you can produce books for people who don't, who only want to narrate it. Yeah, you can also do. I know one of our members has a podcast and he is I like him already.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's a special.
Speaker 4:his background is airplanes. I mean, he has some acting skills too, but his background is airplanes and so he announces air shows. He does this podcast on all things having to do with airplanes and that's the kind of books he likes to narrate too, oh nice. So-.
Speaker 2:Niche is probably a good thing to get into almost.
Speaker 4:Right, yeah.
Speaker 2:If someone knows, fine-tune it.
Speaker 3:But when you're starting, you don't know your niche.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right.
Speaker 3:You're lucky if you do. A lot of us had to do a lot of books to find out what we weren't very good at.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, right. Well, tell everybody where they can find you.
Speaker 4:Well, as I mentioned, you can find us on facebookcom. Slash Ohio audio book narrators. You can also. I'm kind of the point person for OAN. You can reach me at wwwvoicingexpert.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, thank you both for joining me and sharing what it means to become an audio book narrator.
Speaker 4:Thank you for showing us. We enjoyed it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we really did, it was great Thanks for listening to Midwest Momentum on your favorite podcast site and great radio stations across Ohio like 92.9 in Franklin, lickin and Delaware counties and WDLR Herden, delaware, union and Marion counties.
Speaker 5:Hey, america, are you looking to do something new and cool? Well, I'll tell you how you do it. It's called storytelling. That's right in Columbus, ohio, and all over the Midwest we're celebrating storytelling. Everybody's out there trying new things, believing in the new dream and believing in tomorrow. And here at Get your Rock, we're right in the middle of it. Every day, we work close with other people and entrepreneurs to tell their story and get it online. Maybe you've got a story? Well, let us know, we'll get it out there for you. Or maybe you have a question about what stories you should be telling or the things that you could be doing. Well, come on down to Get your Rock and we'll help you out. We'll talk about podcasts and radio and video and memberships and loyalty things and all kinds of ways for you to actually act upon the story capability that you have in your company and your own voice. You've done the hard work already. I'll let us help you tell your story. So come on down to Get your Rock today and we'll get you started.
Speaker 2:Visit us at GetYourRockcom.