6 Benefits of Narrating Your Own Audiobook
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One of the most important decisions authors face during the early stages of audiobook production is whether or not to narrate it yourself. In fact, some authors may not even consider self-narration at all!
Whether it’s shyness or fear or inexperience that’s holding you back, you should at least weigh the pros and cons before writing off self-narration entirely. In fact, there are several unique benefits to narrating your book yourself, ranging from practical to promotional.
So before you outsource the reading to a dulcet-voiced professional, here are 6 key benefits of narrating your own audiobook that you should consider:
1. Saving Money
The first and most obvious benefit of self-narration is the money you’ll save by not hiring a narrator to do the work for you. Hiring professional voice talent is an investment. Much like book editing, the cost of narration is on a per word basis, which means that the longer the book the more costly it is for a professional to narrate.If you have the time and the valuable guidance of audiobook production experts, you can help bring production costs down significantly by recording your own book’s narration. Despite your possible inexperience, having an audiobook producer to guide you through the process will ensure that you avoid any costly amateur mistakes and come out with the professional-grade end result you envisioned.
2. More Control Over Production Time
To narrate your own audiobook is to be in the driver’s seat of its production. Whether you decide you want to speed things up or slow things down, you get to dictate the pace. Just beware of long, marathon recording sessions as they can be more challenging and physically taxing than you might expect. There is no waiting for a hired narrator to complete their work, then having to make time to review it, critique it, and write your notes about it with expert articulation in the hopes that they can exactly reproduce what you want to hear. Especially when it comes to unique names, technical terms, or non-English words — you know best how they should be pronounced. There are plenty of expert voice talents that could probably give you just what you want, but it is important to understand the options available to you, how that impacts the production process, and what best fits your goals as an author.
3. Deepen Your Connection with Readers
Audio is a very direct and intimate medium. If your book is about you or your business — or if your personal voice is your brand — recounting your story firsthand can deepen its impact and form a strong connection with your readers.It can be a challenge to find the perfect narrator to match your words and literary voice, but there’s no doubt that you’ll have found the perfect match when you narrate the audiobook yourself. A connection with your audience doesn’t simply come from having a voice like world-class narrators Stephen Fry or David Attenborough; it’s the authenticity and passion you imbue into the words that draw listeners in and keep them interested.
4. Your Voice Sets You Apart
Coupling your voice with your own words creates a memorable listening experience that sets you apart from the mounting competition within the fastest growing segment of publishing: audiobooks! With an ever-increasing number of fresh titles on the market, your voice can be used as a valuable selling feature. It’s particularly well-suited for nonfiction titles where the author is usually speaking directly to the reader. Listeners often look for self-narrated titles because they understand it can sometimes feel out of place to have an outside narrator reading someone else’s words — no matter how talented they may be.
5. Bringing You Emotional Catharsis
The act of writing a book can be an emotional process, whether it’s the rollercoaster of loving your draft in one moment and doubting it the next or the emotion found in the content of the writing itself. To deliver your written work aloud can be a cathartic and therapeutic experience — it helps you as an author to reconnect with your own content in a way other mediums cannot. It gets you back in touch with the original intentions of the book and the overarching emotional journey for you and your readers.
6. On-the-Fly Media Training
If you intend to be making appearances with your book in the media, working with an audiobook producer to develop and execute your narration skills can have huge dividends down the road. It takes time to narrate your own audiobook, but in those hours reviewing your text and reading it aloud, you can gain a new perspective on the work and become even more familiar with it. As a result, it becomes easier to articulate the story or premise in an enticing way with all the grand ideas and fine details front of mind. An understanding and appreciation of your text is one part of the resulting benefit, but speaking your words line by line will also improve your speaking voice. You will have been practicing to make your recording sound as engaging as possible in what could amount to a bootcamp of voice training. Your newfound skills carry over to improvements in your speaking engagements, live readings, and interviews.
If you're debating whether or not you should narrate your own book, you now know the wide-ranging benefits. Do these benefits align with the vision of your publishing journey and the goals you’d like to achieve as an author? If so, it may be time to turn on the microphone and hit “record.”
