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| The Dungeon as an audiobook recording studio |
[note: Since this blog was first published, I have added material relating to my experiences with ACX after a gentle nudge from one of my mentors who reminded me of those experiences and urged me to include them in this narrative. I thank her for that nudge]
In mid-2013, through the encouragement and connections of a former colleague at the Department of Veterans Affairs here in Washington, I reached out to the owner of a major audiobook production house [note: the company does not wish its name to be used, and I have been rebuked for using it on social media in the past, so it will remain anonymous even though it is well-known in the industry].
Our initial conversation was upbeat but the owner was frank about the path I would have to take to become one of his company’s narrators. There were technical aspects to the profession I’d have to learn, equipment requirements to be considered for my home studio, and auditions I’d need to perform. All of which I’d assumed from the beginning, having done voice over (VO) work in the government for several years. It was a good first step.
Throughout the fall of 2013 I modified my basement studio (the Dungeon), and purchased the best equipment I could afford—industry-quality microphones ($500), audio interfaces ($300), software and licenses ($400+), upgraded monitors ($200), booms, cables, sound-absorbing treatment for the walls, floor, door, and ceiling of the Dungeon ($1,000). All in all, I probably invested $3,000 or more in the basic materials necessary to achieve the proper sound qualities and electronics of a recording studio. I was helped in all of this by technical experts from the audiobook production company, Sweetwater Electronics, and hired sound engineers.
And, in order to hew to the world of social media, I created an LLC, Audio by Moore, a website (www.audiobymoore, which has been deleted), and the requisite Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts. Eventually I would join a couple of professional groups, including the Audio Publishers Association (APA) and one of the largest author-to-narrator audition sites ACX (the Audiobook Creation Exchange, owned by Amazon/Audible). More on my ACX experience is noted a bit later on.
With the Dungeon and my social media presence thus prepared, I began my audition path, guided by the technical team of the audiobook company, and investing in their audiobook narration and production course (several hundred more dollars). It was not a wasted expense, I must add. I learned a lot, made some very good friends who would be my assignment producers, proofreaders, and sound engineers for the next couple of years.
On Christmas Eve, 2013, a little more than four months after that first phone call to the audiobook company, I received a call from their assignment editor: Would I like to narrate “Faiths of the Founding Fathers,” by David C. Holmes, a professor at William and Mary? The circumstances of that call could not have been more appropriate and propitious: I was, at the moment of the call, walking down the main street of Williamsburg, Virginia, the very place where many of the characters of Dr. Holmes’s book lived and played their roles in America’s colonial history—in fact, I was probably standing not more than 1,000 yards from the author’s house! But that was unknown to the assignment editor; she was just letting me know I was getting a chance to narrate my first audiobook. Merry Christmas. The audiobook was released by Audible on January 20, 2014, less than a month after the assignment. Over time, it has received generally favorable ratings (4.3 stars out of five, over 40 ratings). These are not, however, big numbers for an audiobook, and I have no idea how well the audiobook has actually sold.
For the next two years, working closely with the audiobook publishing company, I narrated seven more audiobooks, including “Madam Speaker,” a Nancy Pelosi biography, “Great Powers and Geopolitical Change,” ‘Step Up,” and “The Jihadis Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising.” In addition, for a few months at the beginning of 2015, I was the voice of “The New Republic” magazine.
I also ventured into the ACX realm in the spring of 2015 by auditioning for "Virginia's Ring," a lovely book about the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) written by my now-friend Lynn Seldon. The story required male and female roles, and I was fortunate to be paired with one of the best audiobook narrators in the business, Andi Arndt.
I think Andi and I produced a nice audiobook for Lynn, and it was a wonderful experience working with Andi and being responsible for the audiobook's technical production. Without belaboring the details of per-finished-hour (PFH) rates vs. royalty fees that factor into an author/narrator contract on ACX, it is sufficient to say that, "Virginia's Ring" not withstanding, my experience with ACX, was fraught with failure after failure of my audition samples--about 50 attempts over four years. It takes a thick skin and persistence to overcome rejection and break into the ACX realm. As a narrator who steadfastly refused to lower my per-finished-hour rate or work for a royalty, I was stymied by the fee floor I'd set for myself. Many narrators thrive on ACX audiobook deals, so my experience has to be viewed as just one data point.
The pace of recording for the audiobook producer was not enough for me to rely on its assignments alone for audiobook work, so I began looking at public domain (PD) book—books published before 1923, and thus free of copyright restrictions. Through the support of what was then Listen-2-a-Book, now Spoken Realms, I began some of the most fun narrating of my six-year venture, starting out with the nearly 15-hour western, “The Virginian” by Owen Wister. With “The Virginian” I began true long-form voice-acting, taking on more than 20 voices, ranging from a handsome cowboy to an aging Vermont aunt to a pretty schoolmarm, to a mean and nasty gunslinger.
My work through Spoken Realms was incredibly rewarding—not so much financially (though the royalty checks still come in and are welcome reminders of a very good time), as creatively. The whole process of selecting a book to narrate, prepping the book for recording, researching the character voices, hiring and working with really top-draw proofreaders, editors, and audio engineers, and then sitting down in front of the mic for hours of story-telling was pure delight. Perhaps the most fun was “The Reluctant Dragon,” by Kenneth Grahame. Upon completion of each of my PD audiobooks, I designed the cover art suitable for Audible.com (the “Reluctant Dragon’s cover was designed by my daughter, Charlotte). My art and photography backgrounds came in very handy during this stage of the audiobook production.
With one exception—mentioned momentarily—the productions of three F. Scott Fitzgerald audiobooks “The Beautiful and Damned,” “This Side of Paradise,” and “Tales of the Jazz Age” were the most enjoyable work I’d ever done in voice acting. That they have yet to be rated or reviewed is disappointing, but the sales are consistent, and so I’m pleased with the effort.
The reality of self-producing public domain audiobooks is that there are inescapable back-end financial responsibilities—payments to proofreaders and engineers—that have to be factored into the profit/loss columns of a self-employed narrator’s bank accounts. In addition, as was the case in more than one of my PD audiobooks, I hired voice coaches to train me on accents I needed to voice, and that voice coaching, over time, cost me in excess of $2,000. Expenses for proofers and engineers exceeded $3,000 over the time I was narrating public domain audiobooks. In 2018, I signed up with a voice/business coach for a 12-month series of lessons in audiobook narration and the business of audiobook narration. The bottom-line cost of that was $1,400.
I began to feel the effects of a new breeze blowing from the audiobook publishing side of my work as the company I began with began to swell with dozens and dozens of narrators—many of them well-know voice and theater actors—and that assignments no longer were coming from the company’s staff, but, instead, were dependent on clients choosing from the company’s roster of narrators.
I did open lines of communication with several other well-known and well-respected audiobook publishers, placing my biography and audio samples on their websites. But, as with my original publishing house, I realized I was going to have to up my game in order to rise to the level of being seriously considered for my narration.
Without a solid track record of a hundred or more audiobooks, or name recognition, or a robust media presence, I was suddenly on the outside of the “most selected” box, and I was struggling to compete for any work at all from my publishing house. When that happens to any actor or creative person, the first feelings to crop up are feelings of inadequacy, of failure, of rejection and marginalization.
I know those feelings all too well, having competed as a news photographer and writer for decades. My own grandfather, Charles Brackett, holder of four Academy Awards—two of them for “Sunset Boulevard” and “The Lost Weekend”—was stricken with self-doubt throughout his otherwise stellar film writing and producing career. How often he muttered to himself that he was a failure and wondered about his talents is recorded throughout his own diaries.
When those feelings, irrational as they may be, hit you in the face, they can sap every atom of confidence, spirit, and energy. I don’t know a serious artist in any field who has not faced those demons of doubt. Nonetheless, they can be debilitating, and the only cure is to drive on and look for new avenues that will take you to the next success.
At the beginning of this year, I signed up for the APA conference in New York City, a two-day networking and workshop event which set me back well over $1,000, including transportation, hotel, food, and conference fees. I viewed this expense, at the time, as a necessary investment in what was becoming a difficult and stressful career.
In 2018, I’d made a commitment to narrate “The 480,” by Eugene Burdick. “The 480” is a sweeping political novel published in 1965, that, to me, foreshadowed the political world of the Trump years and the 2020 election to come. I’d worked hard to secure the narration rights, connecting with the Burdick family (the rights holders), and various agents, to do justice to Mr. Burdick’s important work.
When those feelings, irrational as they may be, hit you in the face, they can sap every atom of confidence, spirit, and energy. I don’t know a serious artist in any field who has not faced those demons of doubt. Nonetheless, they can be debilitating, and the only cure is to drive on and look for new avenues that will take you to the next success.
At the beginning of this year, I signed up for the APA conference in New York City, a two-day networking and workshop event which set me back well over $1,000, including transportation, hotel, food, and conference fees. I viewed this expense, at the time, as a necessary investment in what was becoming a difficult and stressful career.
In 2018, I’d made a commitment to narrate “The 480,” by Eugene Burdick. “The 480” is a sweeping political novel published in 1965, that, to me, foreshadowed the political world of the Trump years and the 2020 election to come. I’d worked hard to secure the narration rights, connecting with the Burdick family (the rights holders), and various agents, to do justice to Mr. Burdick’s important work.
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| Sales banner for "The 480" |
It is not a particularly long audiobook (about 14 hours), but the characters ranges from Indians and Pakistanis to Filipinos and a variety of American from several parts of the country. Narrating male and female voices, in at least a dozen accents foreign and domestic was a huge challenge for me, and I did hire two very well-known voice coaches to see me through. I am grateful to Spoken Realms and Blackstone Publishing for agreeing to shepherd the project through to publication on Audible and many other audiobook outlets.
By the time “The 480” was released on Audible in May of this year, I was exhausted and hoping that my attendance at the APA conference in New York would re-ignite my creative engine and crack open a door or two to other publishers or at least audiobook professionals whose experience and support would help guide me back to the Dungeon with a renewed sense of purpose. Regrettably, that was not to be.
The folks in New York were all very nice, energetic, and mutually supportive—of that there is no doubt. But the driving tone of the conference was decidedly market-oriented, that is, the emphasis was on how best to market oneself in order to meet the increasing demands of the audiobook marketplace. The more people I met, the more workshops I attended, the more material that was presented, the more I realized I was not in any way, shape, or form, made from the same cloth as those narrators who were consistently successful.
Putting aside my own self-protection blinders, I saw that the paths most of these successful narrators were taking were paved with marketing skills, the ability to self-promote in many venues, intense focus on industry trends, networking and relationship building, and outreach via social media platforms. Within hours of leaving the conference—while sitting on the train back to Washington—I knew I did not have, nor would ever have, those paving stones leading to success in the audiobook industry.
For virtually all my professional life, going back to the late 1960s, I’ve been in jobs where maintaining a low profile was the key to success. News reporter and photojournalist, campaign consultant, Congressional aide, press secretary, defense advisor, government investigator, and, for the last 15 years of my career, cabinet-level speechwriter. All these jobs are best accomplished by keeping out of the spotlight—letting your client shine while you stay in the shadows. Without a doubt, a speechwriter at the highest levels (with a few notable exceptions) must consider his or her work to be a “silent profession” just as submariners are part of the “silent service.” We are not trained to toot our own horns, to herald our own work, to outshine our clients or even stand on the same stage with them. We are the unheard voices of others.
That “under the radar” personal perception of one’s work process is not conducive to success in an industry like audiobook narration when the goal is to be in the spotlight, to raise your hand at every possible moment, to say “Here I am, take me!” I know many fine audiobook narrators of all ages who are terrific self-promoters in their businesses as narrators without being overbearing or pains-in-the-ass in their personal lives, and I’d love to be one of them, but I realized on the train from NY to DC that I am simply not cut from that cloth, and, at 70, I have to come to terms with that.
Give me an assignment to narrate a book and I’ll do it and do it well—and that was the case in the first couple of years. But, if I have to promote myself, maintain a competitive website, hand out cards, knock on doors, put myself out there for inspection, sing my own praises (few as they are), and network like hell at conferences and workshops, well, I don’t have those tools ready at hand. Realizing that, after six years of working to be the best narrator I could be, will keep me from remaining a mediocre voice actor, and my head will be the better for it because I’ll stop banging it on so many walls.
Now the Dungeon has been returned to its original function—to be my art studio and writing den where watercolor still challenges me, where more than one book awaits my attention, and where being an artist and writer is pleasantly quiet and the solitude is welcome.
For virtually all my professional life, going back to the late 1960s, I’ve been in jobs where maintaining a low profile was the key to success. News reporter and photojournalist, campaign consultant, Congressional aide, press secretary, defense advisor, government investigator, and, for the last 15 years of my career, cabinet-level speechwriter. All these jobs are best accomplished by keeping out of the spotlight—letting your client shine while you stay in the shadows. Without a doubt, a speechwriter at the highest levels (with a few notable exceptions) must consider his or her work to be a “silent profession” just as submariners are part of the “silent service.” We are not trained to toot our own horns, to herald our own work, to outshine our clients or even stand on the same stage with them. We are the unheard voices of others.
That “under the radar” personal perception of one’s work process is not conducive to success in an industry like audiobook narration when the goal is to be in the spotlight, to raise your hand at every possible moment, to say “Here I am, take me!” I know many fine audiobook narrators of all ages who are terrific self-promoters in their businesses as narrators without being overbearing or pains-in-the-ass in their personal lives, and I’d love to be one of them, but I realized on the train from NY to DC that I am simply not cut from that cloth, and, at 70, I have to come to terms with that.
Give me an assignment to narrate a book and I’ll do it and do it well—and that was the case in the first couple of years. But, if I have to promote myself, maintain a competitive website, hand out cards, knock on doors, put myself out there for inspection, sing my own praises (few as they are), and network like hell at conferences and workshops, well, I don’t have those tools ready at hand. Realizing that, after six years of working to be the best narrator I could be, will keep me from remaining a mediocre voice actor, and my head will be the better for it because I’ll stop banging it on so many walls.
Now the Dungeon has been returned to its original function—to be my art studio and writing den where watercolor still challenges me, where more than one book awaits my attention, and where being an artist and writer is pleasantly quiet and the solitude is welcome.
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| Clouds after the storm. Watercolor |
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