Audiocraft 101: How We Produce Our Audiobooks
We research every book to create a unique, full-immersion
experience for audiobook lovers.
What makes Narration Station unique?
Unlike most audiobook narrators who have limited audio engineering training, we are a mother/son team with professional-grade recording equipment, years of combined experience in the entertainment industry, and multiple audiobooks under our belts. We do more than just read a book out loud. Lorri is a seasoned actor, vocalist, and narrator. Matt is also an experienced actor, audio engineer, and composer.
12 Steps in the Audiobook Production Process
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Pre-production, Phase 1: Author and narrator discuss terms and sign the contract.
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Pre-production, Phase 2: Author uploads or sends complete manuscript to narrator.
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Pre-production, Phase 3: Author and narrator discuss production schedule, deadlines, plot, character traits, pronunciation of proper names, etc.
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Pre-production, Phase 4: Narrator reads entire manuscript from beginning to end, to get a feel for the story's flow, tone, major events, setting, and characters.
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Pre-production, Phase 5: Narrator makes a digital copy of the manuscript and uploads it to her iPad. Using the Apple Pages app, she inserts performance notes, character names, accents, etc. into the script.
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Production: Narrator records each section or chapter separately in the recording booth, using a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). Our DAW is a MacBook Pro laptop, running the Logic Pro X software suite, a pre-amplifier., and a microphone. Narrator also uses an acoustic shield to dampen ambient noise in the studio. Narrator then submits each chapter to engineer for editing.
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Post-Production, Phase 1: Engineer takes the raw recorded audio tracks, balances the sound levels, and applies sound effects and filters to specific words and phrases, as needed.
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Post-Production, Phase 2: Engineer and narrator review the edited tracks (one chapter at a time), to check for errors. Step 6-8 are repeated until narrator and engineer are both happy with the track.
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Post-Production, Phase 3: Narrator submits the edited mp3 file to ACX for Quality Control checks.
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Post-Production, Phase 4: ACX reviews the audio tracks for technical errors. If corrections are needed, engineer repeats Step 7. Steps 7-9 are repeated until the tracks meet ACX technical standards.
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Pre-Distribution: ACX technicians blend all audio sections and chapters into a final, retail-ready audiobook.
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Distribution: ACX uploads final audiobook to various retail formats, based on author's publishing agreement.
My Narration Station partners with Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX) and Findaway Voices. Our audiobooks are distributed to a variety of publishing platforms, such as Amazon Audible, Apple iTunes, and Kindle WhisperSync.
AUDIOBOOK FACTS & LINGO
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In the audiobook industry, a short story is 20,000 words or less / 1-2 hours of edited audio.
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A novella is between 20,000 and 40,000 words / 1-4 hours of edited audio.
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A novel is any work over 40,000 words / 4 hours or more of edited audio.
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To date, our shortest audiobook project was 30 minutes long, with a single primary character.
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Our longest audiobook was 14+ hours long, with over 60 characters.
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The average length of our audiobooks is 6 hours.
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Stories with multiple character voices, special accents, or dialects require additional time.
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It takes approximately 1 hour in the recording booth to record 5,000 words.
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Each hour (5,000 words) of raw recorded audio requires 3 hours of editing work. Manuscripts with multiple characters, accents, dialects, or special effects require 1-2 hours of additional processing time.