Creating an audible book is fun and also tons of work. I recommend using the open source software Audacity to edit your recording. It’s simple to use much like cutting and pasting in Word. I also enjoyed narrating my work because I became engrossed in the story I created and my MC and pat myself on the back for my excellent tale. The story is written in the first person so it was natural for me to read it. I narrated my first novel, Walking with Elephants and it’s for sale on Audible and Amazon. My original motivation stemmed from the idea that it would be a legacy to leave my grandchildren to hear my voice after I was long gone.
Creating the audible book for When a Stranger Comes… is slightly more challenging than my first project. Firstly, there are accents. The MC’s mother is from Russia and so I went to YouTube and found voice actors who give you lessons on how to speak English with a Russian accent, also I found an online dictionary that will pronounce words with a British accent, which I also needed. Then I decided to use an effect that Audacity offers to change pitch, so that I could sound like different people, different genders. The final result? I have no clue. We’ll see if Audible accepts this project, haha, but it sure was interesting.
I takes hours and hours to do this narration yourself and then the editing takes more hours. I almost hired a company to perform this task but the voice actor sounded like Alexa or Siri. So I wondered if that’s the quality listeners expect, robotic voices, and it doesn’t appeal to me. My book will sound real, human. We’ll see how this project plays out.
I just came off another major and costly disappointment. I bought an expensive promotion from Chick Lit Cafe that had a zero return on investment. They gave the book a great review and placed it on various web sites for readers. I noticed that popular traditionally published books that have good sales were on these sites but also unknowns. The unknowns had terrible sales like me. Take away? Self-publishing is not the way to go for a career. My great reviews and awards do nothing because my topic is not a titillating knock off of Fifty Shades, or cowboy sex, or vampire sex. I’ve learned a lesson. Don’t expect much and enjoy the fact that most readers that take a chance on an unknown, love my work. I’ve priced it right now at $0.99 to try and attack a few more. Maybe my blog subscribers could give it a try?
