- When you sit down to narrate your audio book
you'll be faced with decisions
around what you should read and what you shouldn't read.
For example, do you read the copyright page?
What about the footnotes?
How do you handle charts and graphs?
If you're going to be narrating your audio book
and you haven't decided how to handle
all these awkward pieces of a non-fiction book,
then this video is for you.
(bright upbeat music)
Hey, there I'm Juliana Book Broad,
the founder of Book Launchers,
a self-publishing services company.
I'm also a multi-award winning author
and the narrator of two of those audio books.
We also help our authors narrate and produce
and publish audio versions of their fabulous books.
Now here's a few of our wonderful authors books
that have been turned into really
great selling audio books.
(logo chimes)
We've talked a lot about audiobook on this channel before
so all link to a playlist at the end
so you can catch it
if you're wondering if you should do an audio book,
if you should narrate it or hire a professional.
How you set yourself up to do an audio book
and where you distribute it.
Oh, and how you market an audiobook.
We've covered all of that.
It's a big, wonderful subject area.
So we have lots of great videos to help you.
Today, we're assuming you're already on board
to narrate your book
and you're suddenly looking at your manuscript going
"What the heck do I do about all these random pages,
"pictures and footnotes?"
Well, first let me tell you
that everything is essentially a choice.
There are common practices
but there are choices to be made.
The time to make those choices though
is before you sit down to record your audio book.
I've talked about that before.
Going through your manuscript to spot words
which are usually names of people, places
or things that might be hard to pronounce
and prepping that in advance
as well as going through and adding commas
or places to breathe.
(Julie heavily breathes)
But what about copyright, acknowledgements,
dedications, et cetera?
Well, let's go through the material page by page. Okay?
All right.
First step opening credits.
You would say the title, subtitle
followed by author and narrator name,
for example, "Self-published and Succeed"
written by Julie Broad, narrated by Julie Broad.
This is always read.
Testimonials or endorsements of the author,
table of contents and material from the copyright page.
None of those early pages in the book are typically read.
Typically you would read the forward
if there is one,
but that is optional.
Reading the dedication is optional as well,
but if you followed my no boring books approach
to dedications,
I'll linked that video at the end.
Then you can read it,
because it's for your reader and sets the tone.
But reading it, is optional.
Now, if you've placed the acknowledgements at the beginning,
I wouldn't recommend reading them.
I would also recommend moving them to the end of your book.
But if you did read them,
you would read them at the end with closing credits
when you thank your audio book producer
or the recording studio.
I personally don't do that part,
but it's your book and you can do what you want.
If you've done some creative things in your book,
you'll have some decisions to make.
Like, for example, do you read that epigraph at the start?
That's where you'll find the names
that are hard to pronounce and you might feel a bit awkward
but that's a choice.
You can read them or not,
just be consistent.
If you read them on some chapter starts, but not all,
that's not good.
So choose it and stick with it.
Once you're into the meat of your book,
read the text word for word.
Some people like to take a liberal license and ad lib
but that's not ideal unless the audio book
is a completely separate product that you're creating
and you're not looking to take advantage
of whisper sync or other synergies that would exist
between your e-book, physical book and your audiobook.
Now for the weird ones, footnotes and endnotes.
What the heck do you do with those things?
Well, it is your choice,
but generally if it's material,
you'll probably work it into the paragraph
where you referenced it,
but otherwise you just skip on right
by like you didn't see it.
(Julie laughs)
Now, the end notes, nobody is gonna sit there
while you read through a page of endnote material
nor would that be remotely fun to read.
So skip it.
But what do you do
about reference material like graphs, charts, and images?
Again, this is your choice.
Have a listen to an audio book
in your category that has references
and see what they did for inspiration and comparison.
Your listener will likely be familiar
with the practices of top sellers in your category.
So doing what they do is a safe choice
and there really isn't an industry standard here.
So it does come back to your choice.
What I do is reference the chart
or graph and then offer up a resource page
on the website where the materials can be accessed.
That could be like this.
And as illustrated in graph A2,
the trend is upward for audiobook
and it's accelerating.
Visit selfpublishedandsucceed.com
to view the chart and download other valuable resources.
And that's not real.
You won't get those resources there.
You will get an opportunity to buy my book though.
(Julie laughs)
Then just carry on with the text.
If you have tunes or other sort of fun imagery,
you can just carry on and disregard its existence.
I personally like to send people
to a website to download or see the missing references,
but ACX also allows you to upload a PDF of these materials.
It can be single file, not single file, a single file.
(Julie laughs)
(beep)
It must be a single file and less than 99 megabytes.
The instructions are on the ACX website.
As we head to the back of the book,
you may have an index,
which you absolutely would not read.
Imagine what that would sound like.
Aggregators 42, 81, 29,
Amazon page four, 12, 19, 45,
Apple Books, 22, 91.
Oh, my.
(Julie laughs)
Please do not read your index
and same goes for the bibliography.
You can however, read your acknowledgements at the end
but more commonly you would do closing credits.
So more of a specific thing for your audio book
not necessarily straight out of your book
you can have a call to action
at the end of your audio book to hit you up
on social media or your website for your awesome download.
(logo chimes)
I think I covered all the things you might encounter.
If you have a preview for a different book you've written.
don't read that,
it's just an industry standard
that you don't typically read previews.
If there are two authors,
you may choose to have one read parts of your book
and the other read parts,
or you could have two narrators.
It's not super common to have multiple narrators
in non-fiction, but it's possible.
And again, it's your book
so you could do it if you want to.
If you learned something or had your question answered,
smash that thumbs up button.
Oh, wait, music.
(bright upbeat music)
We get asked this all the time.
Can you or should you include music in your audio books?
Well, once upon a time
music was common at the opening and closing of audiobook.
These days, the audiobook files tend to be music-free.
That said, you could include music,
but here's some words of warning.
Number one, make sure you have the license to use it
for the very purpose that you're using it for.
Be careful and conscious to make sure
you have the rights for use in the audiobook.
Number two, the music must be proper edited
so that it's at the same levels as the narration.
I've covered some of the audiobook specifications before
that make professional editing
and mastering invaluable.
And if you're including music files,
it will become even more essential
or you'll end up in the never ending cycle
of upload, rejection, revise, upload, reject.
(Julie laughs)
Quite a few people go through that.
Number three, you would typically only use music
at the opening or closing
of the book to set the tone and close it out.
Some people want to include it throughout,
but it can be jarring to a listener
because it's not common
kind of like sound effects.
It isn't received very positively by listeners.
They seem to prefer high quality narration.
I'll just give you an example.
It's fiction, but check out the reviews
of "The Grapes of Wrath Audio Book"
which had a harmonica play between chapters.
This book gets hammered in the reviews for little else
but that harmonica.
Also straight from the ACX website
for audible submissions on music,
we do not recommend adding music to your audio book,
as audible audio book listeners have told us
that music can be a distraction when it comes to audiobook.
Additionally, adding music file can also cause whisper sync
for the voice feature to fail.
So overall, I would avoid it
unless there's a really, really important
and relevant reason for adding it.
Oh, boy. Okay.
(chuckles) There is a lot to think about
when it comes to audiobook production.
Make sure you subscribe to the channel
and turn the notifications on
for the latest on audiobooks
and well, all things non-fiction writing, publishing
and promoting,
plus, then we can become besties.
And I send my besties #noboringbooks swag.
Cool. Right?
Okay. Now if you're still trying to figure
out what the heck an epigraph is
that I mentioned earlier, don't worry.
I got that for you right here.
And as promise, let's make sure your dedications
and acknowledgements are up to the #noboringbooks standard.
Check that out right here.
Oh, and that audiobook playlist I promised,
right here.
If you have other questions or comments,
definitely comment below, otherwise click
on one of those videos.
I'm waiting for you.
See you there.