Recording and producing an audio book properly is a long and involved process for both voice over and audio producer. This article explains what the process involves and covers ball park costs.
Who is involved in your audio book production service?
We use professional voice overs and audio producers on all projects. Typically, an audio book project will involve a voice over, audio producer and project manager.
How long does the voice over recording take?
For 1 hour narration, the voice over recording generally takes about 1.5 – 2 times as long to record. In other words, one hour narration can take anything from 1hr 30mins to 2 hours to record or even longer for complex characterisation and medical reads.
When you think that many books can be in the region of 100,000 words plus, understandably the recording time can become lengthy and tiring for the voice over. Voicing for more than 5-6 hours is a long shift for a voice over and at that point they could still have 5 to 10 times those hours to record depending on the length of the audio book.
As you can understand, a professional voice over will want to charge accordingly for the recording sessions and will also consider the fact that you may sell tens of thousands of copies well into the future.
The fee for hiring a voice-over artist will depend on a number of factors including current career position, current workload and the style of read required.
What happens after the voice over has finished recording?
OK, so the recording has finished, you may think the job is done… not quite. The voice over recording now needs a thorough de-breath. What is this?… Basically, the removal of all breaths, pops, clicks and spit noises. Find out more about de-breath.
Yes, there are audio tools out there to help remove breaths but they are not 100% reliable and do not always work well enough. The only way to remove breaths properly is by an audio producer listening to the recording and removing the breaths manually. Yes, completely manually.
Could you not just leave the breaths in?
Sometimes, people wish to cut corners and not have the de-breath, however, we don’t know any voice overs that will allow audio to go out with breaths in it.
The other thing we hear is people telling us it’s not needed as people breath naturally in speech. Yes, they do but how many people speak a couple of inches from your ear? Not many, but voice overs have to get this close to a microphone to achieve a good signal level.
What happens next?
A professional audio producer is needed to achieve a clear sound. Producing an audio book is about 10% the tools you use and 90% experience.
The next stage of the process is to produce the recorded and de-breathed audio with EQ and compression so that it sounds the best it can for its delivery format. e.g CD, mp3 download. Additionally, you may wish to have licensed music and sound effects mixed with it to provide the finishing touches.
What happens if changes are needed after the recording and production has finished?
It is inevitable that mistakes will be made on a large project and there are usually a few retakes that need blending into the audio mix.
If there are any mispronunciations or misreads, re-records and editing are scheduled in.
After this the audio book is finished and ready for you to send to CD duplicators or sell as an audio book download.
How much does this cost?
There are many variables involved in pricing audio book production. These include who the voice over is, the complexity of the read and production and the projected audio book sales.
The ball park figures for our audio book production service range from £195 – £600 (+VAT in the UK & EU) per produced hour of audio book.
We consider this to be good value for the quality of service and professional job we provide.
To conclude…
Hopefully, this has given you a better understanding of the amount of work involved in recording and producing an audio book.
The process outlined does not go into the project management aspect and logistics of organising such a project but gives a fair account of the process.
When you consider the amount of time and work involved (recording, production and project management) 1 hour of finished audio book can take anything from 3-6 hours to complete.
You have probably put a lot of time and effort into the content of your printed book so if you are thinking about creating an audio book version it makes sense to get the best quality result available.
If you are interested in finding out more and hearing some samples, please visit our audio book production section.
Hello, I was wondering, how does the engineer who is going to edit and mix calculate the price for a whole production? what are the rates or how should they charge this kind of job?
Thanks!
See this article https://blog.mediamusicnow.co.uk/2017/03/27/how-to-quote-accurately-for-an-audiobook-production/
Hi,
I’m an actor and audiobook narrator. Currently, I record books for a major non profit organization in the U.S. Many industry and Union people tell me I need to build a home studio and record for audiobook producers in this way.
Honestly, the idea of engineering myself overwhelms me. I don’t feel qualified to do this. Is self production a necessity? Will I lose out on tons of work if I can’t self record?
I can only speak from my experience, however, I would say on the occasions I have had to work with voice overs who do not have their own studio and have to hire one and an engineer, it has not been good. Firstly, it takes much longer to organize and there is the added cost of the studio hire. I work with many voice overs that record in their home studio but do not produce their own audio. This is fine, I am an audio producer, but getting the raw recording as economically and efficiently as possible is important. I feel the engineering aspect of recording is relatively easy to learn, whereas editing and production can take longer. For recording, you need some modestly priced equipment and a quiet, decent sounding room. A custom build recording booth is okay, but many pro voice overs do not have or need this.
I think being able to self record is vital if you are going to be competitive and provide fast turnaround, however, self production I do not feel is needed as you can easily find someone to debreath and apply production to your audio, myself being one of them.
Just had a question Lee. Do you know at a normal pace how many pages get done in an hour? I’m thinking of doing audio and have to fix the studio in terms of hours. How do I calculate the rate when I know the number of pages is 104? Thank you.
It depends how many words are on 1 page. You can get an approximation by counting the words on a typical line and then count the lines on a page. Times one by the other to get a page word count and them times it by 104
Also, see this post http://blog.mediamusicnow.co.uk/2017/03/27/how-to-quote-accurately-for-an-audiobook-production/ It might help.
Hi
My third book is called:
A DISHONOURABLE PROFESSION
I am John Eidemak with my book four on the way.
The book is 100.000 words
I am interested in converting it to an audio book.
If I did so, through you how do I market it?
I will within a couple of weeks have two web sites,
but feel I need to be on a bigger book selling sites with this project.
Can you give me a rough price idea and some idea abut timing.
Kind regards,
John Eidemak
jeidemak@gmail..com
Hi John
We don’t really deal with audiobook marketing. We just deal with the audio production side of things. For more details about our audiobook production service please see https://www.mediamusicnow.co.uk/voice-overs/audio-book-narration.aspx
If you would like a quote for your audio book please contact us via that section.
Many thanks
Lee
I agree about de-breathing! My pet hate is hearing breathing in full volume! 🙂 Thanks for sharing this blog, it’s really informative. I’m going to send this link to our voice overs!
cheers
Priscilla