The “Feel Great: It’s Your Decision!”-Audiobook narrated by the author. In this blog post, I’ll let you know why I narrated the book myself and a little about how I had done it.
First, let’s see why I had been narrating the audiobook myself. There are plenty of professionals out there who would do a decent job narrating an audiobook.
Why the heck have I narrated the book myself?
Though, why the heck have I done it myself? Well, as it is my first book, I decided to do it myself. On the other hand, I always enjoy learning something new.
And narrating an audiobook had been something new to me. There is so much to know about intonation, the technical requirements of an audio file when you are going to publish it, as well as the recording of the audio itself.
Of course, there still are some moments of the final audiobook that I would like to sound different. But, if you go for perfection, you may never get it finished. Thus, I’m okay with the few things not as perfect as it could be.
When you listen to the audiobook, you will “know” what I mean with the above. And a final reason to narrate the book myself was the price tag on a professional narrator.
You never know if your book will be sold as much, when you just started, if it will pay for the professional narrator. Alternatively, I could have waited until the printed and e-book are successful enough to hire a professional narrator.
Also, an audiobook narrated by the author is something that could help the listener (reader) to connect with the author and the message a little easier. You may have had such experiences in the past. A person you had spoken to (even if you never met in person) leaves an impression with you, which may never be achieved by only reading something from or about this person.
How have I done the Audiobook recording
Sometimes I’m a bit impatient. Therefore, I did it myself. I learned a lot about recording audios. As I’m a fan of open source software and Linux, it was quite easy to find the right program to do the recordings.
The program I used is call Audacity. Learning to use the software wasn’t that hard. There are lots of tutorial videos on the web.
Sitting down and doing the recordings took some time. But before starting the recordings, I had to record the environmental sounds at my place.
It’s amazing what you could clean out on an audio recording when you have noise profiles of the things happening around you. For sure, the more quiet your place is, the better will be your recording.
After mastering the technical side of recording an audiobook, I had to start the recording. As already said, it took a while until I had recorded all chapters of the book.
I needed to learn to speak clearly (hope it worked), make more pauses as well as to breathe more silently between sentences. However, I had many slips while I was recording the book. Fortunately, you could delete everything what you do not like when you have it as a digital file.
At the end, I guess I had narrated the book at least twice. Maybe it just felt that way.
The book content is more important than the narrator
Beside the above, the most important thing of the book is the content. The message is clear: “Feel Great: It’s Your Decision!”. The audiobook helps you to focus on the exercises as you could do them while you listen. No need to read the exercises again and again.
Furthermore, you might “hear” something that you may just overlook while reading the book. And don’t worry about any illustration in the print book or e-book, they are described in the audiobook as well. And some audiobook store even provide the supplemental information containing the illustrations.
Now, there is just one thing that is open to mention. Could you imagine what it is? I bet you can. Of course, you need to know where to get the audiobook.
Where to get the audiobook, “Feel Great: It’s Your Decision!”
A while ago I published a blog post which provides some links to where you could get the book. Not only as an audiobook, but also as a print book or e-book.
The blog post is Where to get the book “Feel Great: It’s Your Decision”? And it also provides a list of the ISBNs for the different book formats, as well as the various languages of the book.
I hope you enjoyed reading about the “Feel Great: It’s Your Decision!”-Audiobook narrated by the Author story.
Now it is up to you, if you feel bad or “Feel Great: It’s Your Decision!”