If you’re anything like me, one of your favorite sounds is the hush of gentle waves washing against a sandy shore. You also like the sound of your own voice 😅 Not in a narcissistic way, of course (maybe a little? Yikes), but you know you’ve got that special blend of personality and dramatics necessary to portray your authorial voice to the world. When you’ve loved playing in the waters of your own novel at the keyboard, it makes sense that you’d want to do that in the recording booth as well (doubly so if you happen to be a writer with a performance background). One of our fellow Ventorship passengers has the audiobook bug and writes:
I have long been interested in narrating audiobooks. I was wondering - do you have any steps or resources you recommend for a complete newb?
While I definitely didn’t get into narration the traditional route, I can give you some advice inspired by how I went about it, and hopefully this will help!
First, don’t wait to be given permission to audition for your own book. Just write your editor an email noting that you’d like to be considered for the narrator gig and attach a sample of yourself reading a chapter. Normally an audition is probably only 3-5 minutes, but authors have an uphill battle. As a person who’s established your relationship with your publisher as a writer, there will be some pushback. It’s sort of an industry joke that I’ve heard from a number of publishing insiders that authors are terrible narrators, but you and I both know that while some of us are definitely introverts who prefer to stay out of the spotlight (maybe even most of us), others are introverts who masquerade as extroverts that got talent, baby! So I found that a whole chapter for this first go-around of asking to narrate your own audiobook can show that you are able to keep up the pace, the authorial voice, and the nuances in how you embody different characters better than just a three-minute snippet that might have been practiced or edited over and over to perfection. If they only want to listen to three minutes of that chapter, that’s great too, but at least you’ve already sent over proof that you can do more than that.
Be ready for your team to tell you no, quickly and without remorse, lol. That’s what happened to me with JAY’S GAY AGENDA. When I asked if the audio team had perhaps a sentence or two of feedback so I could improve for the next book, I got nothing, which, of course I got nothing. These are audio professionals who are literally producing thousands of books, they don’t have time for that! Just take the loss respectfully and patiently wait until your next book comes around.
When your next book comes out, send a friendly reminder that you’d like to narrate and ask if you could be considered for the job. Don’t send an audition this time, because the first go around it didn’t go so well, and perhaps sending too many unsolicited snippets is too forward. This is what I did with OUT OF THE BLUE, and again, I was quickly told no.
Here’s the part where the specifics aren’t entirely replicable, but I think can be applied to any author looking to narrate their own work. Once JAY’S launched and OOTB was on the way, I was getting asked fairly regularly to moderate or speak on panels. One such panel was for the release of the iconic Julie Murphy’s PUMPKIN (a phenomenal book, btw), back in the day when everything was over Zoom. A VP of HarperCollins’s marketing team was watching us, and the angel of light and love that she is said to others in her department, “We need to be putting JJ in front of more people.” Literally, she changed the trajectory for me being able to narrate my own work. Because she vouched for me, EpicReads created a web series for me called YA for a Day with Jason June in which I was given adventures to do that I’d never done before inspired by the plots of other YA books. It was so much fun! And (very pivotal for my audiobook journey) it proved to my publisher that I could perform while being recorded and gave them the confidence to let me narrate RILEY WEAVER NEEDS A DATE TO THE GAYBUTANTE BALL.
As you can see, this chapter of my narration saga was very random, very fortuitous, and entirely outside of my control. I’m definitely not like, “Just get your publisher to produce a web series for you, it’s so easy!” But if you’re currently getting no’s when asking your publishing team if you can narrate your audiobook, I’d recommend getting yourself out there in any forward facing media possible so that you have all kinds of material to show your publisher that you can do this. Moderate panels, go on podcasts (maybe even start your own!), perhaps you create a little scripted something on your social media (I’m not talking a full-on TV show, but perhaps little vignettes), whatever you can do to show you are also able to shine away from a keyboard.
I don’t think that any one of these things was the one that sealed the deal for my first narrator yes with RILEY. But I do think all of them added up (the audition, the respecting the team’s rejections, the other examples of how I could perform), eventually led to that yes. And once I recorded RILEY, it set a precedent for my other works that I could narrate. A snippet from RILEY helped me get the yes to narrate my next book, THE SPELLS WE CAST. I now get to do all my books and we negotiate it into my contracts. And I’m eternally grateful to the authors who’ve vouched for me to narrate their books too, after they heard samples of my work.
As for a resource, the Audio Publishers Association has been very helpful! And one more little tip, for any author who is also an actor and wants to get into SAG-AFTRA (the union for actors, for those who aren’t familiar): When you get your narrator yes, ask to be given a union contract. Money will be deducted from your pay for Pension & Health, and being the primary narrator on a union project qualifies you to join SAG-AFTRA.
So that’s my audiobook journey. I’m recording my next one (for Mason Deaver’s SHIP HAPPENS!!) in a couple weeks and can’t wait! I also can’t wait until we’re all listening to your narrations, too 💖
-JJ
If anyone has any other audio-related questions, feel free to put them in the comments, or if you’d like to chime in with other narrator tips, you can write them there as well. If you want to stay anonymous, e-mail me at heyjasonjune@gmail.com, and I’ll include your thoughts without your name.
If you’d like to anonymously vent about anything author/writing related, write to me at heyjasonjune@gmail.com with the subject: VENTORSHIP. I’ll give you my take in a post, and we’ll crowdsource author opinions in the comments. You’ll remain anonymous, and any haters will be thrown overboard. Ultimately, I think you’re going to be buoyed up by author love and support as we realize we really are all in the same boat 🛳️
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