Reading it yourself

A memoir, an essay collection, a devotional or a single-narrator novel in first person often reads better in the author's own voice than in a hired one. Listeners can hear conviction, and conviction sells non-fiction.

The cost is time and consistency. Expect several hours in front of the microphone for every finished hour, plus retakes when a cold, a cough or a different room changes the sound halfway through the book. Consistency, not talent, is what defeats most first-time author narrators.

A book with a large speaking cast is the wrong book to read alone. One voice performing twelve characters flattens the story, and listeners notice by chapter three.

Cloning your own voice

This house will clone an author's own voice, free, once consent is given. You read a short passage; from then on the narration can be built in your voice without you sitting through the whole manuscript.

It is the only road that gives you your own voice and a full production schedule at the same time. It suits authors whose readers already know their voice from a podcast, a pulpit or a stage.

Handing it to a cast

Base production here is 7.000000000000001% of the word count for an audio book. A 90,000-word novel is $6,300. Voices are added in blocks: 1% of the word count for every 2 voices, always rounded up.

A cast is the right answer for ensemble fiction, dialogue-heavy fantasy and anything with accents you cannot hold for forty hours.

Decide it with the manuscript, not with your nerves

Paste a chapter into the Cast List and every speaking part is named and weighed by its share of dialogue. If one voice carries almost all of it, read it yourself. If six parts share it, you are casting a company, not narrating a book.

The order of the work

1. 01Weigh the cast firstPaste a dialogue-heavy chapter into the Cast List and see how the speaking is divided. One dominant voice means you can read it; a spread means you are casting.
2. 02Test your own read aloudRecord a single chapter and listen to it the next day, not the same hour. If you can hold the pace and the pitch across it, you can hold a book.
3. 03Fix the room, not the microphoneRecord in the softest room you have, at the same distance every session, at the same time of day. Consistency is what retail specification actually measures.
4. 04Choose your roadRead it yourself, clone your voice once and let the house narrate in it, or hand it to a cast. All three end at the same retail specification.

Asked and answered

Do I need a studio to narrate my own audiobook?

You need a quiet, soft room and a consistent microphone position far more than expensive equipment. Retail storefronts reject files for noise floor and inconsistency, not for the price of the microphone.

How long does it take to narrate my own book?

Plan several hours of recording for each finished hour once retakes and pickups are counted. Finished runtime here is 155 words to a finished minute — 9,300 words to a finished hour — so a 90,000-word novel is about nine and a half hours of finished listening to plan around.

Is cloning my voice really free?

Yes, once you have given consent. It exists so an author's own voice is never priced out of their own book.