Audiobooks & Narration: Paying Jobs!

This group is BUSINESS...where are the jobs today that pay narrators? Who has these jobs? What are the sources we might contact with a demo to get narration jobs? Sure, we can talk about narration techniques too...

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A thought from Bettye.... You are entering the PUBLISHING INDUSTRY. Learn about it!

You must have a killer audio book demo to get paying work in this field especially from PUBLISHERS. You also must separate jobs you do on your own in your home studio from voicing for publishers, often in their studios. When you read for publishers, the pay is better and you often don't do the audio engineering. Mostly, they prefer readers in their own studios. The audio book jobs advertised on the online pay to play sites are usually from vanity publishers or the authors themselves or for other reasons...not publishing house jobs. Know the difference. And get used to the fact that audio books usually pay for THE FINISHED AUDIO HOUR. How long will it take you to get one finished audio hour that is perfect? That depends....could be two studio hours could be twenty studio hours with you engineering and voicing it too! Be very cautious on your price bidding.
Bettye Zoller

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Comments

Dawn Harvey July 7, 2010 at 12:25am

Checked out IDEA.org and it isn't the site you mentioned Helene. The site you are talking about is at web.ku.edu/~idea/
Hélène Janover July 6, 2010 at 12:42am

Chuck, maybe you are talking about IDEA.org - International Dialects of English Archive. There are some academic sites as well including the gmu.edu cite Xe mentioned.
Xavier Paul July 5, 2010 at 5:48pm

Usually combing the various publishing companies and finding who does the casting helps me. This is a new area for me and I've found my work so far has been thru a combination of agent and my own internet marketing.
Chuck Burke June 21, 2010 at 4:21pm

Thank you Xe
Xe Sands June 21, 2010 at 4:07pm

I have found this one particularly helpful in getting a bit of a taste for what a person in another region of the world would sound like while speaking English. Very enlightening...not sure if this is the one you are thinking of, but thought I would post it anyway.

http://accent.gmu.edu/

Cheers!
Xe
Chuck Burke June 21, 2010 at 3:46pm

I have heard about a website that helps with dialects...it's a free site, and I cannot for the life of me find it again. Does anyone know what I am talking about?

Thanks
Ann Richardson June 19, 2010 at 2:39pm

My best results have come from my own research and footwork. I made those calls, contacted those folks who make decisions. However the most fruitful results, suprisingly, came from my volunteer work for RFB&D. Through RFB&D, a couple of local authors had their works recorded (by me). The staff at RFB&D work so hard at what they do and take great care of their volunteers. They went one step further and gave the authors my contact information. Through emails the authors and I struck up a relationship which resulted in two audiobook deals. USE YOUR IMAGINATION WHEN YOU SEEK WORK. Think outside the box. I'm no seasoned veteran by any means, but I hope this helps someone!
Heather Anne Henderson June 18, 2010 at 11:39pm

I second that recommendation about the new audiobook site -- it's called Audiobook Community, and anyone can join, listeners, narrators, publishers. It's really a good site and has become a way to keep networking when we're not at the conferences.
Bettye Zoller June 18, 2010 at 12:41am

A PS: The first question, to you all, is have you made certain that your demo is one that audio publishers, producers, and authors will buy into? Publishers are not interested at all in commercials or other types of vo. They want to hear audio book selections and if the CD doesn't grab them, you probably won't be listened to for long. The audio book demo has many forms...producers have various opinions on what the length of cuts should be and the overall length of the demo etc. but still, it has to be an audio book demo that shows your skills as a voice and as a narrator too. Characters help. The first step, everyone, is to have a top rate demo. It is very specialized.
Bettye Zoller June 18, 2010 at 12:33am

Thanks for asking, XE. It takes perserverence and no two people have the same experiences. One student who is narrating a lot of long form audio projects gets some of the jobs on the pay to play sites. There are some good long form jobs on various sites from time to time. He also volunteers at a local writer's gathering place and attends regular writer's meetings and gets reader jobs there now and then. One female student networks constantly on the internet and has a listing as a narrator on the Audiofilemagazine website which you pay for yearly. I'm there also. It's good publicity. She also attends national conferences which are "musts" such as the Audio Publishers' Association annual conference and Book Expo America. She reads Audiofile magazine monthly and gets the lists of publishers in the back of the magazine and submits her demo. The Audiobook Reference Guide is on the Audiofilemagazine site. Goldmine of info. I always tell my students to make a monthly tour of bookstores, looking at audio titles and turning over to the back to see who published a particular title similar to titles they believe they are suited for as a narrator. Several students have had major publishing houses phone or email them saying that their demo now is in the "file" as a possible reader. They are waiting for that first assignment! I continually am researching audio publishers finding out who is open to new readers and especially, publ. houses that are not "into" a lot of celebrity readers. This is such an enormous field with more than 85,000 audio publishers in the US today, probably more than that. You are in another industry when you try to get work in this field. This is the publishing field. You've changed fields. See? You have to get to know the industry!