![]() Only one of the 34 narrators who auditioned didn’t read the whole script. I saw this as part of the screening process: if the narrator didn’t care enough about my project to read it all, then they wouldn’t be a good fit. My audition script was about 10 minutes long, snippets from five scenes. I needed to know the narrator was versatile enough to handle my epic books, that they could do a French accent and a Charleston accent and an Irish accent male, female, and child voices act in tragic scenes without going over-the-top understand my sense of humor read sexy scenes and not sound silly and hopefully sing a few 19th-century songs as well. The Lazare Family Saga is my life’s work, and I would be paying this narrator more than I’d spent on anything in my life. This narrator was actually auditioning for my whole series: four long novels, almost 60 finished audiobook hours total. With a family saga like mine and such a large, diverse cast, I knew that length wouldn’t be enough. The recommended length of an audition script is 3-5 minutes. It’s important to choose representative excerpts containing both narrative and various character voices. Then the author decides on the performance she thinks fits her work best. How to find this narrator? An author needs to put together an “audition script,” selections from her novel that she asks prospective narrators to record. ![]() On a 15.3 hour audiobook like mine, that’s $7,650. So I saved my money, and an insurance settlement allowed me to afford PFH if I could find a narrator who wasn’t asking top dollar, which can be $500/PFH. As an artist who values fellow artists’ work, this method made me more comfortable than asking a narrator to take a gamble on me with RS. I knew these factors would narrow the pool of possible narrators. I also write long books (requiring more hours in the recording booth) with steamy sex scenes (which some narrators don’t want to read). They’ve also done retakes because nobody sits down and records a whole chapter perfectly in one sitting.īecause of all the accents in my books, I knew I needed an experienced narrator to do my characters justice. They’ve done prep work like mastering an accent and learning how to pronounce local place names. The narrator puts in say 80 hours total on the book, but they get paid only Per Finished Hour. A narrator can read roughly 9,300 words in a finished hour. Per Finished Hour means that the Rights Holder, in this case the author/publisher, pays the narrator an agreed amount for every hour of the finished audiobook, say 10 hours. ![]() Royalty Share means the narrator records the book for no money upfront in exchange for a percentage of the royalties the audiobook earns over a set period of time, usually 50/50 with the author for seven years. When hiring a narrator, there are two main payment paths: Royalty Share (RS) and Per Finished Hour (PFH) as well as a couple of hybrid options. I could have hired a production company to find a narrator for me, but doing the search myself helped keep my costs down. Nor do I have access to a quiet space or the right equipment. I’m not good enough with accents, and my books have a smorgasbord. Some indie authors narrate their own books, but this wasn’t for me. I knew audiobooks aren’t cheap to produce-we’re talking thousands of dollars. ![]()
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