When it was time to record my audiobook, I used a website called ACX to upload my audiobook to Audible and iTunes. With all that hard work from myself and my friend who graciously edited the audio for me, I get a measly 40% of the profits. Yup, Audible and iTunes get huge profits off audiobooks. This is why you can get them with credits and other coupons for cheap audiobooks. An audiobook that is listed for $30 will be listed as $10 as far as Audible is concerned when someone uses a credit to listen. This means, for most purchases, I will only get $4 even though the title is set to $29.99. It’s a good thing I’m not banking on retiring off profits from my book. At this rate I’ll be lucky to recoup my investment. Thankfully, my goal is to share my story, not make a million bucks off the book!
Creating the audiobook actually takes a lot of work. I had to learn how to use software (Audacity), use a __mixer?__, find a specific type of headphones called "monitor headphones". I bought a used macbook air for recording (it doesn't have a fan to make noise that would be caught by the super-sensitive microphone). I had to learn about the different types of microphones and find one that suited my voice. And once I was all set up and good to go, I had to practice!
I expected to be able to just read my story aloud. It's my story, after all. But, alas, things are not that easy. I needed to practice my speed, tone and enunciations. When I recorded the book for real, I needed a dog clicker to signal every time I made a mistake. There's 2 ways to fix mistakes, either after the recording is done, called "straight through", or while recording, called "punch and roll". I preferred to do it after the recording as I found the other method awkward and difficult. I guess if I were narrating multiple books I'd get good at it. For this book though, I just clicked the clicker every time i made a mistake and started over. The clicker makes a clear jump on the recording that makes it easy to pick out where I made a mistake. Then, using the monitor headphones, I was able to slice and splice to get rid of the error and make the track sound smoother. I was also able to do this for some minor speed errors. I could speed up or slow down pauses in order to get the cadence I was looking for. It was a lot of work. For every hour of finished book it probably took me 2-3hrs to record and edit it. And that's not including the time my friend spent on editing the audio sound.
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