Blog Posts

For Authors

It was exciting to attend the RT Booklovers’ Convention here in Atlanta last week with over 25 of my fellow audiobook narrators from across the country. Several members of the group organized and participated on educational panels about audiobooks, and we all contributed for a booth in the Bazaar.
In talking with people who came to our booth, I noticed 3 reasons authors shy away from audiobooks.
1) Authors aren’t sure about consumer demand for audiobooks.One person who never listens to audiobooks asked me the average price for one. When I said it might be $15-$20,

Since many indie authors and smaller publishers are new to the world of audiobooks, I thought you might like to have a quick overview of the 7 players on an audiobook production team:
1. Rights Holder 2. Producer 3. Director 4. Narrator 5. Sound Engineer 6. Audio Editor 7. Proof Listener
One person may be responsible for several phases of the process. For instance, on ACX.com, Audible’s marketplace connecting rights holders with narrators, I’m the audiobook producer in addition to being the narrator.
My husband Drew serves as both the director and sound engineer in all of

The fantastic info found in this list of links will better prepare you for the task, especially if you plan to use Audible’s Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX.com) for the production process.
If you feel overwhelmed about audiobook production, you may want to cut to the chase and hire an experienced narrator and producer.
Subscribe to the ACX blog and Karen Commins’s blog for on-going

Want to create an audiobook of your book but feel overwhelmed about the process?
Concerned that you will pick the wrong narrator?
Afraid that you will need to spend hours that you don’t have in requesting changes to an unsatisfactory production?
Sit back and R-E-L-A-X!
In fact, you can head to the beach because you’ve found an experienced producer and narrator to whom you can hand off your book without worry!
As a full-time and Audible Approved audiobook narrator, I love interpreting your words on the printed page and creating a pristine recording that allows today’s ultra busy people

Last updated 6 December 2018
Don’t you just LOVE to market your audiobooks?
I think many people would answer an emphatic NO! to that question, in part because they feel uncertain how to proceed.
This page will give you plenty of creative ideas for promoting your audiobook!
Before we get to those ideas, I want to point out that the author and publisher should do most of the marketing and promotion of the title. Even on royalty share contracts, the narrator’s role in and effect from promotion is minimal. Narrators typically have larger portfolios than authors and

An author recently wrote that her fans were demanding audiobooks, but she couldn’t afford to spend any money up-front for the narrator’s fee and other costs of production.
Narrators frequently bemoan the fact that, instead of narrating the next book, they are spending too much time editing an audiobook because they can’t afford to hire an editor.
I’ve previously written about our words being a self-fulfilling prophecy and encouraged you to think/write/speak what you WANT into being.
Thinking or saying “I can’t afford it” is often a knee-jerk reaction immediately offered by Resistance to keep you from taking action toward the
In writing a response on author Elizabeth Spann Craig’s blog about tips for success on ACX.com, I realized I had been remiss in adding my latest video to my own blog!
Last fall, I spoke at the Georgia Romance Writers annual conference to help authors get started with creating audiobooks. I recently created a 41-minute video from that presentation which:
explores the audiobook landscape (beginning at 2:43) explains reasons every author should produce audiobooks of their books (beginning at 7:23) demonstrates Amazon Whispersync capability between an audiobook and Kindle ebook (beginning at 10:19) offers specific tips
On 18 March 2015, ACX hosted a Twitter chat about audiobook marketing with author assistant Kate Tilton. I used Storify to compile and categorize all of the tweets on this page so that the questions and answers are together.
Updated 12/21/17 Content moved to my Evernote account since Storify is discontinuing operation
An audiobook listener on Goodreads wrote recently:
“I’m hoping the powers-that-be realize this (and care) and we’ll see more audiobooks being narrated by dual-gender narrators.
And I don’t mean simply dividing up the chapters between a male and female narrator to read…I like the dialogue narrated by the relevant gender.”
I can tell you why most books have a solo narrator: COST.
I produced and co-narrated the 4-book Blue Suede Memphis mystery series (fun, cozy mysteries with romantic elements) where I voiced all of the female parts, and a male actor voiced all of