How to Make and Produce an Audio Book
Monday, July 27, 2009 During the making of “Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry and Music” I gained an education in how to make and produce an audio book. Here is the six stage framework for that process: 1) creative; 2) technical (editing, mastering, disc numbering); 3) legal (licenses and copyrights); 4) production; 5) distribution and marketing; and, 6) Big Celebration.
Stage 1: Creative
First, you must have something to record. In our case, that was the text of “Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary” interwoven with music, stories, and banter recorded in my father’s parlor.
There's more to this stage than pursuing the muse willy-nilly. It's important to pay attention to your logical self to stay organized. It's essential in order to communicate effectively with your audio engineer and any other professionals you'll be working with. Not to mention saving time, money, and sanity.
During the creative stage you are planning, establishing the content for the CD, recording, and later in the editing phase, swapping files with your audio engineer. After the initial recording, you'll be editing for clarity, completeness, and cohesion.
So how do you go about finding an audio engineer? You can find such folks through online research and personal networking. I found mine through an online friend. Scott Kidd was a joy to collaborate with because he was simpatico with my project. Because of his reputation, I knew that I could trust him.
I spent two days in my sound engineer's home studio in Nashville recording all the poems. After I returned home to St. Louis, the editing began.
Tip: Practice before recording. Be present, alert, and open to your emotional response so that you can bring it into your reading. Think of your voice as instrument. Use inflection, pacing, and pitch to sustain listener engagement.
This video gives you a tour of the sound studio where we recorded and an overview of our working process.
Stage 2: Technical
Editing
Scott sent MP3 files for my review and detailed response in order to complete his editing. In our project we were collaging 90 poems and hundreds of clips from songs, stories, and banter recorded in my father's parlor. He understood the nature and purpose of my project so completely that with minimal direction, he made excellent initial choices, but these still had to be refined.
During the file-swapping phase, you call upon your highly analytical, critical listening skills. You'll listen for quality of the audio, pause intervals, and finalizing the content. For example, in my project we listened especially for pause intervals between the poems and the song, a story, or the banter between us that framed it. When you finish your review of the MP3 files, you send notes (like a play director) back to your audio engineer who takes care of the rest.
Tip: Make a map to organize your recording work. Before our group recorded in Pop's parlor, I wrote out the songs I associated with each of the book's five sections so we wouldn't waste time. After the four mini discs were completed, I listened to them and cataloged their contents according to running time. This catalog became a handily coded roadmap that he and I could refer to. It saved lots of time during the session, and time, trouble--even money--as he moved deeper into the editing process.
This video between Scott Kidd and myself tells more about editing and the technical process.
Mastering and Disc Numbering
During the technical stage the audio engineer masters the disc (adjusts for sound levels), and you decide how the discs will span (disc numbering). Where will the tracks and the CDs themselves break if you are making more than one disc?
In our project there were four discs, so this step was critical. Your engineer sends you the first complete work in CD format-your hard copy. You send back comments, including any technical glitches to clean up.
Stage 3: Legal
From this stage onward, the key word is "business." You've established the content and done what most of us would consider the fun part. Now it's all straight-ahead work.
A new term I learned during this phase was "mechanical licensing." Basically it's permission to use copyrighted musical materials that are being replicated for sale in recorded format. It ensures that artists receive the royalties they are due for creating their original works. As a creative person yourself, you can appreciate how important it is. This step also curtails your legal exposure so you won't get sued.
So, with that definition under our belts, the first legal step is to secure mechanical licenses for any songs you did not compose yourself.
If you are recording original material you composed yourself, then it makes good sense to get it copyrighted. It also makes good sense to copyright the completed product to protect your entire work.
Royalties are computed on an elaborate equation of number of uses per CD and number of CDs. The mechanical licensing for our project to make 1,000 copies cost around $1,000, roughly $1 per audio book package with the four CDs. We also copyrighted seven original songs. I hired a specialist, Greg McNey, to do this work, and it sure paid off in hassle and money.
As you can see there are myriad details to take care of during this stage. You might want to designate a project manager. My sound engineer became my point person to guide us through the business matters. He gave me great advice throughout.
Here’s Greg McNey explaining the licensing and copyrighting stage.
Stage 4: Production
At this point, you choose a company to physically produce your project. Production includes pressing and replicating the discs, making the insert, and packaging the entire product. You have to choose what services you want from among the various ones the company offers. For example, will you produce the artwork yourself or will they? How many copies do you want? In my case we chose a production company through online comparison shopping and decided to make 1,000 copies. That sounds like a lot, but at 1,000 copies the price per copy started to make sense. Also, if you do another production run, the law requires you to renew and redo all the mechanical licenses. Ack!
This conversation captured on video tells more about the legal and production stage.
Stage 5: Distribution and Marketing
How you do this will depend on many factors such as the strength of your existing marketing platform and your available resources. You'll price the product at this point. A minimum rule of thumb is to double the basic cost invested.
If you are doing it yourself, make a marketing and distribution plan just as you would for a self-published book. The plan helps you determine your audience and figure out the most effective channels for reaching these people.
For instance you can market the audio book from your website, but sell it off CD Baby. That way CD Baby is responsible for fulfillment: taking the orders, packing the product, and sending it out.
View this video for more information on production and marketing.
Stage 6: Big Celebration
After all the work and months of waiting your product took, make sure you have some kind of party to celebrate the completion. We held ours in Nashville, Tennessee, where the project was produced.
Here’s a slice of our celebration party at the Sportsman Lodge and Grill.
About the Contributor
Janet Grace Riehl is the award-winning author of Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary and the subsequent audio book Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry and Music. Janet speaks and presents conference workshops on writing and publishing. She was twice selected as finalist for Poet Laureate of Lake County. A member of Authors Guild, her poems, stories, and essays are widely published in national literary magazines such as Harvard Review and Cream City Review.
This post is part of Janet’s 9-week Internet tour. She last appeared on Hal Manogue’s Short Sleeves Insights. Her last stop on the tour is with Carol Cole-Lewis as they construct a case study for internet marketing. To qualify for a free copy of Janet’s audio book, watch the featured video of the week at www.riehlife.com and comment. Janet will let you know the results of the drawing.
Reader Comments (2)
Irene, It's a joy to see this information all in one place. Anyone who wants to create an audio book will find this article a good place to start.
You can buy both book and audio book on Amazon if you want to do one-stop shopping. At CD Baby, you can listen to any of the tracks listed.
Book and audio book make a good package fans tell me.
Fee free to post questions here and I'll reply.
Janet Riehl
Janet,
What a great comprehensive article. I can see this was a very complicated process and I congratulate you on making it through all those steps!!!
Susan