I was clueless, before, about the work that goes into these—no wonder they’re so expensive! It’s a multistage process: the author must choose a narrator by listening to samples. That alone can take weeks. Once a narrator is chosen, the author sends the manuscript, there is a period of discussion about the tone and any questions the narrator has, and then he or she performs the story. This also may take months, between waiting for the narrator to be free to start, and the reading itself. After that, the author does a listen, and sends back anything that needs revision. Once the final narration is done, the files go to an audio engineer to be mastered—clicks removed, weird stomach noises, volumes made consistent, and other tweaks to ensure a good listening experience.
All told, it takes, on average, 6.2 HOURS to edit and master an audiobook, for every ONE hour of finished work!
Here is a raw clip of Serafina’s narration on Helios (yay!). This is from the airport scene in the third chapter. I thought it might be fun for you to see it: all the buttons across the top and the track itself. The top one with blue squiggles is the “waveform” view, which shows the deliberate sound of the narrator’s voice, but also a breath and some clicks that will be later edited out (though the section with Torrid in Topeka has been left breathy on purpose!). The bottom track depicts the same sound in “spectrograph view,” which gives more information about frequencies. Having both together helps with the editing process.
When will it be done? I’m hoping it will be a matter of a few weeks, but it takes a while for them to go through the QA process as well. In the meantime, Finder’s Keepers is out there at retailers and libraries, too—it’s been borrowed Down Under, in Canada, the UK, and Mexico! It’s an amazing, interconnected world we have now, and a real kick to hear the story while I garden.
Wishing all of you happy Springtime vibes!
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