The Professional Voiceover Handbook by Peter Baker

Author:Peter Baker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: voiceover, voice-over, voice over, voice actor, professional voiceover, home studio, voice acting, make money at home, learn voiceover
Publisher: Peter Baker
Published: 2021-04-25T00:00:00+00:00

26

GETTING PAID FOR AUDIOBOOK NARRATION

IF YOU'RE JUST GETTING into understanding character voices, or even starting voice over work itself, recording audio books is a good way to start. You might like doing just factual or non-fiction books which is fine - they are basically enormously long documentary type scripts, although there may be some character quotes in some factual books; but where your character work will really come alive will be in FICTION books, where quite often, there are different characters interacting with each other. Because the listener cannot see the text of the book or the script in front of them, you have to make it very clear as to who is talking to who.

You also have to learn good technical production techniques. Why is this important? Well, if you hire a studio , or studio hires you as “just a narrator”, you really won't have much cash to take home at the end of the day for an audiobook.

The average fee “per finished hour” – that’s an hour of edited together material, not the time it took you to get this edited recording - to just narrate an average “non-name” audio book can be not great – just $75 to $150 per finished hour. But if you learn the skills to actually edit together the files after recording, in other words “produce” the audiobook as well, you can ask for $150 to $350 per finished hour, especially if you have a decent and fair author and/or publisher.

The work is more satisfying as well if you don’t just narrate it, but edit it and master it as well. This is called “audiobook production” and so basically clients would hire you as a narrator and a producer together. People with these joint skills are much more valuable in the world of the audio book, and if you are a narrator AND producer, you could either get contacted direct from authors or publishers, or you can work on one of the many audiobook platforms we'll discuss later.

Assuming you are a freelance narrator and have been approached by an author or publisher, you need to ascertain two main things:

How much you’ll be paid...and when you’ll be paid!

Wouldn't it be awful to spend weeks recording an audiobook and then never get paid for the work? With ACX and other established platforms, they keep funds and distribute them when the work is done. More these systems soon. But if you are independently working for someone, as a freelance narrator and producer, here is what I suggest.

You need to know if the author or publisher are prepared to sign an agreement that includes payments and delivery dates, as well as details of rights assigned, and any royalty arrangements.

Also you need, as the narrator, the “clean” version of the whole manuscript. The author needs to understand that an audiobook can’t just be recorded with the exact text, word-for-word from the physical or Kindle book. An audiobook has – of course - no illustrations and if there

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