When I was young, I had this poster or similar ones taped on my bedroom wall.
You probably recognize David Cassidy from his work on The Partridge Family TV show.
I adored David when I was young, and I learned a valuable lesson from him as an adult.
When I was young, I had this poster or similar ones taped on my bedroom wall.
I adored David when I was young, and I learned a valuable lesson from him as an adult.
Today’s World Violin Day! As you know, I play harp, not violin. However, a violinist and his instrument figured prominently in my audiobook of FANNY HERSELF: A PASSIONATE INSTINCT by Edna Ferber and in the music I chose to go under the credits.
I started to write this quick story as a Twitter thread, but I strive to keep my original content on MY site and share it on social media.
Last updated 10/10/23
I’ve recently enjoyed participating in several Clubhouse chats. In fact, I held an Ask Me Anything on the site on 9/16/22 to celebrate the 3rd anniversary of NarratorsRoadmap.com.
If you click the link above, you’ll see it goes to an Evernote page that has the Clubhouse graphic and audio recording of the chat, as well as an AI-generated transcript from Sonix.ai. (Please see the additional comments about the transcript in the notes below.)
When creating an open Clubhouse room, you can choose to turn on Replays. The Replay is created automatically once you open the room and will be available on Clubhouse until you delete it. Replays let your audience hear the discussion at a later time, share the link to the chat on and off Clubhouse, skip to the next speaker, and make 30-second clips.
Just as — perhaps even more — importantly, Replays can be re-purposed in other ways, such as in part or whole on other social media sites. You know I LOVE to re-purpose content! For instance, I could transcribe one or more recordings and copy my words to a blog article. I’ve also extracted clips to make audiograms to promote the replay in between live events. I’m thrilled to announce that my Clubhouse shows are available on NarratorsRoadmap.com with AI-generated transcripts and on podcast platforms like Apple and Amazon/Audible!
An author wrote to me this week because her publisher sent her a list of items to be done before they could produce the audiobook. She wanted to know if these requests were typical. She complained that the publisher is only uploading the audiobook files and taking her royalties, but she had to design the cover and market the audiobook. She concluded, “I feel I’m doing all the work for someone to just read my book out loud.”
I’ll answer her question, but, more importantly, I also want to address the erroneous statement that the narrator is “just reading the book out loud.”
When the Professional Audiobook Narrators Association (PANA) recently asked me to create a video about my music for its current Get Outta the Booth campaign, I couldn’t start fast enough!
Last updated 1/26/24
When the obstacle in your way seems to have stopped you in your tracks,
it’s not a failure.
It’s part of what’s calling forth the necessary change
so you can move through, around, over, or under whatever is on your path to success.— Christian Sørensen
This quote applies to my relationship to public domain books,
Although I started narrating audiobooks in 2002, it wasn’t until ACX launched in 2011 that I really got a foothold in the industry. Prior to that point, the market didn’t exist for a narrator who lived in Atlanta. You either had to be in New York or LA; otherwise, producers didn’t want to talk to you. With ACX, all of the rest of us could have a voice in audiobooks, too.
I soon burned out doing ACX projects since most of them were royalty share books where the rights holder was not promoting the audiobook. (Shameless plug: If you’re interested, I explain how to pick good ACX titles in my webinar Put Yourself in the ACX Drivers Seat, available on my Shop page.)
At the same time, I wasn’t getting traction with publishers. I decided to start recording more public domain books.
Public domain (PD) books are those where the copyright has expired. They belong to all of us, and anybody can do anything they want to with a book that’s in the public domain.
Over time, I’ve kind of become what I think of as the Public Domain Whisperer™️. I regularly search HathiTrust.org for interesting PD books. HathiTrust is a consortium of academic and research libraries with over 17 million digitized items, I often find a book that I think would be a good one for another narrator to do, so I send the link and the suggestion to them.
I’ve been gratified by the enthusiastic and excited responses to my finds. One experienced and award-winning narrator told me I had set them on a new path, and they’ve won a number of awards for their PD productions!
This article will be my Public Domain Narration Headquarters. I’ll start with ten reasons why I love, love, LOVE recording and publishing public domain books. Plus, check out the resources list below as well as the comments, where I answer your questions!