[This article was originally published as a two-part feature in InD’Tale magazine, which has since gone out of business. Reprinted here so folks can find it.]

            As an independent author, I’m always trying to promote the first two books in my crime-thriller series to potential buyers. I frequently hear the question: “Is it available as an audiobook?” (OK, mostly it’s “Is it available on Audible,” but I’m trying to be more inclusive here.) For a long time, I had to sigh and say, “Not yet.” I wished that it could happen someday. All the marketing gurus say that there is a lot of money to be made in the audiobook market. But, the up-front cost of hiring a narrator, booking studio time, and hiring a professional engineer/editor was beyond my budget. So, I bought a home recording studio kit (under $250), up a studio in my basement, and set out to narrate my own books.

            Fortunately, my basement is pretty quiet (as long as nobody is walking across the floor directly above my work table). I fired up the software, plugged in the microphone, did a few sound checks, and then launched into Righteous Assassin – book #1 in the Mike Stoneman Thriller series. As I went along, I discovered that there are aspects of the process that I didn’t think about, didn’t prepare well for, and just had to learn by trial and error. Oh, there were a lot of errors.

In the spirit of paying it forward and helping other novice audiobook narrators/producers embark on their journey without making all the mistakes I made, this article (and next month’s installment) provide my quick tips. Before my list, though, please remember that there are a lot of other resources out there. ACX provides many good tutorials and blog posts. There are You-Tube videos and many websites offering good advice. Go look for them, read them, and do your homework in multiple locations. Toss out what you don’t find helpful, and take to heart what seems to make sense for you. An ounce of prevention, they say, is worth a pound of cure. And they are right.

There is so much information to impart here that I have broken it into two parts. This month, I’ll focus on the narration. Next month, we’ll focus on the technical issues – the editing and post-production process.

Part One – The Narration Process

1.         Test and practice with the equipment before you start on the book. OK, this is technical, but it’s not editing, and it’s super-important. Unless you have prior experience recording podcasts, take some time to setup your equipment and test it. Try different placements of your microphone (higher, lower, tilted in, tilted out, farther away, closer to your pop screen, etc.). Try recording with different volume settings. Check the wave patterns in your software to see what the recorded files will look like (bigger is better – smaller wave forms are harder to edit). Listen to the various test recordings and decide which settings are best. Then – and here’s the error you can avoid – make a careful record of the exact settings that you plan to use so that you can duplicate them every day – even after you knock over your boom stand or mistakenly turn the volume dial. Take a photo of the position of the mic and the settings on all your physical dials. You’ll be glad you did.

2.         Check the software interface settings! Please. I’m begging you. I found out the hard way that within your software (referred to as a Digital Audio Workstation or “DAW”), there is probably a drop-down setting for both input and output. In Audacity (the DAW I used), the default is for the input to be set for the microphone that’s built into your computer. It will say: “Microphone Realtek(R)Audio” or something similar. But, if you use an external microphone (and you should), that’s not the setting you want. You want it to be set to match the hardware you are using to connect your external microphone to your software, in my case Focusrite. Unless the input is correctly configured, you’ll end up speaking into the professional microphone – but having the software pick up your voice through your laptop’s built-in microphone! Trust me, it’s not pretty. Check by listening to a playback of a test recording. If it doesn’t sound perfect, then double-check all your settings. Of course, you won’t know what “perfect” is supposed to sound like, since you’re just getting started. So, listen to some sample audio from professionally produced audiobooks and compare them to yours. Sound the same? Great! If not, go back and check your settings.

3.         Listen with good headphones. As you narrate, you need to listen to what is leaving your mouth and being picked up by your microphone. It helps immensely to listen through high-quality over-the-ear headphones. You can hear all the pops and clicks your mouth makes that you never noticed. Don’t assume that your ear-buds are good enough. You’ll also hear that hum from your furnace!

4.         Create as perfect a home “studio” as you can. You will not have a sound-proof padded room with a near-zero ambient noise floor in your house. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t try very hard to come close. The temptation is to launch into the actual recording as soon as possible. But, fight the urge and make sure that your home studio is as perfect as it can be before you start chapter 1. There are many tutorials out there about the elements of setting up your home studio, so go read them and see what works for you. By the time I was done, I had changed four key elements of my studio – you should start with these in place: (a) turn off the furnace/air conditioning system while you’re recording. It creates at best a low background hum, and at worst a click and a clang when the system fires up for shuts down in the middle of your sentence. (b) Put your laptop (from which you are reading) on a soft surface that won’t make any noise if you move it slightly (a cotton blanket works well). (c) Get the other residents of your home to avoid any walking around while you’re reading. The slightest creak of a floorboard or soft pad of feet above your head will find their way onto your track. (d) Put up sound-absorbing material around your studio area. I started off without any sound barriers, thinking that my basement was quiet enough without them. By the end, I had blankets hanging down from the ceiling all around my work table to mute the echo.

And one more thing. Before you start any reading, check your noise floor – the noise level of your studio environment when you are not speaking. Then, run an analysis of your room noise using the tool in your DAW to see whether your quiet background meets the Audible/ACX requirement of less than -60dB. If your baseline noise floor is too loud, don’t even start recording. Fix that problem first, before you begin!

5.         Spend some time with the script to prep for narration. I thought (stupidly) that since I wrote the book, I knew the book, and I could narrate right from the text. Wrong. Oh, so very wrong. You need to take the text and turn it into a script. Make it look like a screenplay.

[Mike – angry] “I thought we were done with that?”

Make sure it is clear at the beginning of every paragraph who is speaking, and what emotion or tone of voice they are using. This will avoid re-recording segments that turned out to be the wrong voice or the wrong tone. This will take time, so start now – long before your home studio equipment gets delivered.

6.         Articulate markers to flag mistakes during recording. No matter how careful you are, you will make mistakes, and you will hear clicks and mouth-sounds that you will immediately need to re-record. Or, you’ll just flub a line. Don’t just keep reading and expect to go back and fix the errors in a later clean-up session. Fix them right away. I took a great tip from someone and clapped my hands two times right after a mistake, which shows up on the visual wave form as two peaks that are easy to find when you’re editing. Then, speak into the microphone the location where you are going back to (to help you find the right spot when you’re editing), take a breath, and re-record that segment. Later, in editing, having made a “marker” to identify a place where there was a mistake and a re-record, you’ll be able to edit out the flub more easily, and then keep right on going. You will be able to duplicate your volume, cadence, and voices best if you do it right away.

7.         Practice your voices! It is not absolutely required that you read your book using different voices for different characters. But, if you want your audiobook to sound at all professional, you’ll want to; at least for the major characters. I like to develop the voices for my characters in the car on my way to and from work. Nobody is around to laugh at me as I try out different ideas. Then, I can practice re-creating them from one day to the next until they are relatively consistent. One error I made during my first audiobook was that I had not fully developed the voices at the start. As the book progressed, the voices got more distinct. That’s probably fine for someone listening to the book and who hears the voice mature from chapter to chapter very incrementally. But, for someone who listens to book #2 first, then goes back to listen to book #1, they will realize that the voices are a little different. Take the time to be really ready for showtime before you start.

8.         Take your time with the narration. You’ll hear this a lot, because it’s true in two specific ways. First, don’t rush through the reading. Give your listeners time to absorb what’s happening. They’re not in a rush, so why should you be? Your narration will be better if you take it nice and slow. Second, and this is the real “trick” part, take a long pause and a deep breath between sentences any time you feel like you need more air. It’s unfortunately true that reading text will often leave you, well, breathless. You will have expended all your available air supply on the last clause of the last sentence, and you need to take a breath before the start of the next sentence. Rather than rush your inhale, resulting in an audible “breath” noise that you’ll have to edit out later anyway, take your time. Pause. It’s a good time to sip some water if you need it. Take a deep, breath and then start the next sentence. Leave 30 seconds of dead air on your track. It’s actually very easy to edit out dead air, and you’ll probably be doing it anyway whether you take 30 seconds or only 4 seconds. So, take your time, take your breath, and then start the next sentence with a full lung-full.

9.         Backup! Backup! Backup!! I Can’t stress this enough. Don’t wait until you have inadvertently deleted 30 minutes of narration during editing before you figure out that you have to back up constantly. As soon as you finish recording a track, save it, then back it up immediately. Use an external hard drive. Now, you have two copies and can edit, safe in the knowledge that you have a spare. Then, as soon as you finish editing a track, save that, and back it up immediately. Always have a back-up made before you start manipulating a track, so that if you mess it up, you can go back to the “original” and start over.

* * *

            Of course, reading your book – no, performing your book – is only half the process. Unless you plan to hire a professional editor, you’ll need to edit the tracks that you narrate, and then do the post-production necessary to have a publishable audiobook. Next time, we’ll cover all the mistakes I made on the technical side.

            Last month, I shared with you my narrating tips if you’re thinking about self-narrating your own audiobook. {insert hyperlink to last month’s article} This month, we’ll focus on the technical and editing aspects of the process, which are just as important as being able to read your masterpiece into the microphone.

In the spirit of paying it forward and helping other novice audiobook narrators/producers embark on their journey without making all the mistakes I made, here are my quick tips.

Part Two – The Editing and Post-Production Process

1.         Practice Editing. You can do this while you are also doing your sound checks and practicing with your equipment before you start narrating. Make a practice recording, then go back and edit it. Editing is the time-consuming part of the process. The ACX trainers say that you should expect to spend three hours editing every one hour of narration. They’re not kidding! But, the more you do it, the easier and faster it gets. But, there is a steep learning curve. Here’s the tip – after you are all done, go back and re-recording and re-edit chapter 1, or whatever section of the text you are using as your sample track. You want this to be as perfectly edited as you can make it. You’ll be a much more experienced editor by then.

2.         Listen with good headphones – especially during the editing and proofing process. I already suggested that you use good over-the-hear headphones while narrating. The same goes double when editing. I had some family obligations that prevented me from barricading myself in my basement for the entire night while I carefully edited in total silence. So, I sat on my couch with and earbud in one ear while carrying on a conversation with my wife through the other ear (and listening to the hockey game). Bad idea. Later, during the QC process, I heard many things on my tracks that I wish I had heard during the initial editing pass. If you can, use your good headphones when editing. You can take them off occasionally to talk to your spouse.

3.         Edit immediately after recording. There are two great reasons why you should edit immediately after recording. First, this will limit the duration of your recording sessions, which is good. Your voice will start to wear down if you try to record more than (in my case) 90 minutes in a stretch. You will also get tired and make more narrating mistakes. If you do a 60-minute recording session, then immediately spend the next three hours editing what you just recorded, you will necessarily limit the strain on your vocal chords. Second, if you need to re-record something after the edit, you will more easily re-create the same vocal inflections if you do it that same day, rather than waiting until weeks or months later.

It’s also really nice to have a finished, edited file in the can at the end of the day. You will have a great sense of accomplishment and finality that will help you move on to the next day. To the contrary, if you end the day with 3 or 4 hours of narration that still needs to be edited, you’ll be looking at a long hard stretch of editing that will seem like a much more monumental task. (At least, that’s how I looked at it.)

4.         Run backwards through each file to remove mistakes. After 20 days of editing, I finally realized that I was spending time each day editing sections of the track that I later deleted. This happened because, a few second later in the track, there was a flub in the narration that I had re-recorded, including the material I just edited! The solution is to run through the whole track backwards from the end to the beginning, looking for the error markers that you made when you messed up during the narration. (See tip #6 from Part One of this article.) You can quickly delete all the flubbed and re-recorded text first. Then, when you start the editing from the beginning, you’re only editing the “clean” track.

5.         Backup! Backup! Backup!! I Can’t stress this enough, which is why the same tip was included in Part One! Always have a back-up made before you start manipulating a track, so that if you mess it up, you can go back to the “original” and start over.

6.         Mastering your edited files. Carefully follow the instructions and advice of ACX about how to “master” your files. Start from a backed-up WAV file and run it through the equalizer and normalizing applications until it meets all the audio standards to be accepted by ACX. (Findaway Voices uses the same standards.) As you go through the process, take careful notes about each setting you are using. When you configure your equalizer in a certain pattern, take a photo of the pattern and label it. When you adjust your limiter settings, write them down. When you finally achieve the final sound quality that you like for the first track, you need to be able to duplicate the exact same settings for every other track. Don’t assume that you will remember (oh, you won’t remember). Write them down!

7.         Don’t neglect the QC review. After you’re all done with your mastering, you’re supposed to do a Quality Control listen. The QC process means listening to the whole book, front to back, just as a new listener would experience it. My first book, Righteous Assassin, is 14 hours of audiobook. So, that’s a lot of QC listening. There is a temptation to just skip it. You’ve already edited each track. You are quite sure that there’s nothing more that you really need to check. But, you’re probably wrong.

In the QC process for Righteous Assassin I discovered two instances where I spoke in the wrong voice – speaking lines for a female character in a male voice, and vice-versa. I also found three instances where I spoke the wrong word – just brain-locked and said “seven” when it was supposed to be “seventeen” and “Two Thousand Six” when it was supposed to be “2016.” I also noticed several instances where I thought I had successfully edited out a stray sound, only to leave in an editing “splice” that was obvious and distracting. And, there were two instances of lengthy spaces of dead air. How did I miss all that when editing each track? I have no idea, but I did, and I was very happy to catch them in the QC process. You’re putting in a lot of time on your audiobook project. Don’t cut the final corner. And use your good over-the-ear headphones. You don’t want to miss something important (like a stray mouse click) because you were not using your good equipment.

8.         Don’t skimp on the preparation of your intro and end credits. Don’t forget to do as good a job on the recording of your introduction and your end credits as you did on the rest of the book. Remember, the front credits/intro is the first thing that a new listener/reader will hear. Give them a good impression. Maybe add some appropriate music or background sounds. Make sure the title and your name are clear and well-recorded. Do a nice fade-out leading into “Chapter 1.” For a professional audiobook, the intro will include the name of the publisher and/or producer. Since you don’t have one – make one up. I gave my basement studio the title “First Legacy Productions.” (I wrote a serious literary fiction novel titled A Legacy of One, which is where that came from.) Give a listener the impression that they have purchased a professionally recorded audiobook, rather than a self-produced product. They may figure it out later, but do your best not to make it obvious.

9.         Check your lead-in and post-text (quiet) room sound. This seems easy. Each track should have between 0.5 and 1 second of “room sound” at the beginning, before you start reading, and between 1 and 5 seconds of room sound at the end. You can’t just use your DAW software to delete all sound from the quiet space – that would be too silent. It needs to be “room sound” – the not quite totally quiet that exists in your recording studio when the mic is turned on, but you’re not talking. My second audiobook, Deadly Enterprise, was rejected by ACX because one track had an insufficient amount of quiet space at the end (0.5 seconds), and one track had too much (8 seconds). How did that happen? I have no idea. I checked them. I swear. But, somehow I missed these two problems. So, I corrected them, waited another six weeks, and then got another email rejecting my project again – this time because there was noise (a slight scratch and a mouse click) during the space that was supposed to be quiet on two tracks. Aarrrrrgh!!!! Really?

            The solution? Find a clip of really good quiet room sound, copy a snippet that is 0.8 seconds long, and paste that onto the beginning of each track. Then take another snippet that is 4.3 seconds long and paste it onto the back of each track – erasing all other blank space. Each track will have exactly the right amount of room sound at the beginning and end, and each one will be exactly the same. If ACX Quality Control wants to reject the project, then it will have to reject every track!

10.       Don’t rush the upload process. When you are (really) all done with the recording, editing, and mastering, you will need to upload your precious book for sale. This is a big moment, so don’t screw it up by rushing the process. Yes, it takes a while. Make sure that all the chapters are properly titled and uploaded in the correct order. Make sure that the intro comes first and that the end credits are at the end. Do a quick check of every track. Listen to each file for 30 seconds, or at least listen to the chapter number and title.

The second time I re-submitted Deadly Enterprise to ACX, as I was quickly reviewing my uploaded files, I heard “Chapter 34,” and then “Chapter 34.” What?!? Somehow, when I was saving the MP3 files to my computer, I copied chapter 34 twice – once giving it the title “Chapter 34” and once giving it the title “Chapter 35.” Thankfully, I still had my backups (see #5 above) of the files and I was able to find the correct Chapter 35 WAV file, check it, then convert it to MP3 and upload it. Whew! I’m glad I did the final check!

Then, take a deep breath, and push the button to “finish” your audiobook.

* * *

            After two solid months of recording almost every day, I finally I took down the blankets hanging from the ceiling around my poker table that served as noise-absorption barriers. I coiled up my microphone cords, dismantled my boom stand, and put away all the equipment that I had been living with daily. I had a real sense of accomplishment. I was also fearful that all the hours of effort had been (maybe) wasted since I had no idea whether anyone outside my friends & family circle would buy the audiobook. But, I also knew that, someday, my great grandchildren would be able to listen to me read my books to them. Sure, they can also read the books, but having the personal connection of my voice reading my stories to future generations is something that I really like thinking about.

            I’m glad I did it. I made a ton of mistakes. Hopefully, the narration of book #3 will go much more smoothly. Now, only my readers and reviewers can judge how well I did on my first attempt. I can already say that, without much in the way of marketing, I have already realized more profit on the audiobook versions of my last two books than I have on the ebook and paperback sales. Yeah, it was worth it.