{"id":24543,"date":"2020-09-26T08:07:46","date_gmt":"2020-09-26T08:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/?p=24543"},"modified":"2020-09-26T08:07:47","modified_gmt":"2020-09-26T08:07:47","slug":"recording-my-audiobook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/uncategorized\/recording-my-audiobook","title":{"rendered":"Recording my audiobook"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A while back I got an interesting email. Audible<\/a>, the leading audiobook company, had bought the rights to my latest book: The Goode Guide To Wine: A Manifesto Of Sorts. Only one of my books had also been an audiobook \u2013 Flawless<\/a>. That was read by an actor, and I couldn\u2019t bring myself to listen to it. For the manifesto, it\u2019s such a personal book, I really wanted to read it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I replied immediately: please, please can I read my own\nbook? Initial signs weren\u2019t encouraging. So I pressed. Eventually they agreed\nto let me audition. I had to send Audible a five minute sample of me reading\nfor them to check. After a while, I got a response: could I come into a studio\nand do the recording?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was booked in for two successive Fridays, and last week\nheaded into a studio in Camden. It was a bit weird because the producer\/engineer\nwas working remotely, controlling the recording set up in the master room from\nhome. So I was alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am not a trained actor. Actors are trained to read well,\nand it really felt like I was a bit out of my depth. I think that acting is a\nbit like writing. I find with writing, that because people can all put words on\na page, they all feel like they are writers. With acting, because everyone can\nspeak, they feel they could be an actor. I was under no illusions about how\nhard this was going to be. Try it: read a paragraph from a book out loud. Then read\na page. Then read a chapter. It\u2019s incredibly hard to do well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I was connected with the producer over headphones, in a\nsmall sound-proof booth with carpet on the walls, where I was to speak into an\nexpensive condenser microphone via a metal pop shield and in front of a purple reflection\nfilter. After a sound check, it was down to business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was quite nervous. I really wanted the book to be read by\nme because if I was buying an audibook I\u2019d want to hear it in the author\u2019s\nvoice. But I don\u2019t think I have a great voice (doesn\u2019t everyone hate their own\nvoice?) and I\u2019m untrained at reading aloud. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does the recording process work? The producer follows\nalong, and if you\u2019ve mumbled a word, or emphasized it wrongly, or stumbled, or\nmade any other of a long list of potential mistakes, you are taken back to the\nbeginning of the sentence, or a clause in the sentence, and dropped back in to continue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of the time you know when you\u2019ve made an error and don\u2019t\nneed the producer to pick you up. Some words are also tremendously difficult to\nsay clearly, such as \u2018phenomenon\u2019. The whole process is quite exhausting, and\nrequires concentration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other thing you don\u2019t think about is the physical effect\nof speaking for so long on your voice. Lubrication of the mouth is vital for\nspeaking, and affects the way your voice sounds. So you need to keep drinking,\nbut water alone doesn\u2019t lubricate, and after a few hours there\u2019s a noticeable\nvocal fatigue. This adds to the challenge of reading well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first day finished at 5 pm and I was exhausted, but we\u2019d\nmade good progress. The producer was very professional and pleasant to work\nwith. In the one day, we\u2019d polished off two-thirds of the book. I returned\nyesterday for day two, and this went pretty smoothly. After finishing the last\nchapter, we went back to do some corrections from the editor: a word here that\nwas fumbled and we\u2019d missed, or a slight noise on the recording, or a weak emphasis\nof something important. I was finished by 1530, and much less tired than after\nthe first day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So soon the audiobook will be out. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll listen to it \u2013 I\u2019m too close to it, and I still can\u2019t bear the sound of my voice. But it has been a great experience recording it, and I think it\u2019s also good to have the author reading their own book if possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reminder: this blog is irregularly updated, but there are daily updates on the main wineanorak site<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A while back I got an interesting email. Audible, the leading audiobook company, had bought the rights to my latest book: The Goode Guide To Wine: A Manifesto Of Sorts….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24543"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24548,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24543\/revisions\/24548"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}