Maniacal Laughs, Musical Stings, and Distinctive Voices — Eight Lessons From Recording My Audiobook
The audiobook of my fourth novel, Pirates of Sausalito: Houseboat Wars Murder Mystery, is now available widely. Here’s how it got produced and what I learned from the process.
1. Hire a Professional Audiobook Producer
Before the pandemic, I had never listened to an audiobook. My first one was The Perfect Spy, by John LeCarré, which was fabulous, and I was dazzled by the virtuoso performance of the narrator, Michael Jayston, who brought to life so many intriguing characters, each with their own distinct voice, accent, and cadence.
A couple years ago, once I was a regular audiobook listener, I explored the possibility of recording my first novel, Bones in the Wash: Politics is Tough. Family is Tougher. I reached out to Becky Parker Geist, a friend, author, and fellow board member of BAIPA (Bay Area Independent Publishers Association). She’s also founder and president of Pro Audio Voices, an audiobook producer.
Bones in the Wash is a longish book — 122 thousand words, 420 pages — and an audiobook would be more than 15 hours long. There’s a wide range in what professionally produced audiobooks cost per finished hour, from $200 to $800, or even more. I decided a Bones in the Wash audiobook would be too expensive.
Hiring a professional audiobook production company is not the only path. I could have recorded it myself, and, now that I’ve done it once, I might consider that option in the future. But I was grateful to record with the help of an experienced team — most of my writing, publishing, and marketing is a one-man show. I also wanted it to be as professional sounding as the John LeCarré audiobook.
It’s also possible to hire narrators who are paid through a cut of the sales, usually about half. But experienced audiobook narrators are wary of such revenue-sharing arrangements for good reason — they don’t want to put in their time with no guarantee of a reasonable return.
2. Choose a Shorter Audiobook Because It Costs Less to Produce
My fourth and most recent novel, Pirates of Sausalito, is also my shortest. Only 70,000 words, 308 pages, and about 8 hours long. So it cost significantly less to produce. Plus it was adapted from a play that I wrote and directed in 2023 — “Sausalypso Houseboat Wars Murder Mystery” — and it retains a lot of the play’s dialogue, so it’s well suited for an audiobook.
I took the plunge. I love listening to audiobooks and I wanted my novel to be available in that format.
After discussing the various options, Becky and I agreed on what’s called a “full cast” audiobook, with two narrators who give each character a distinct voice. She would narrate the women’s parts. I would narrate the men’s.
3. Buy High-Quality Recording Equipment
Once I signed on with Pro Audio Voices, I got an orientation, over Zoom, with Becky and production coordinator Elias Khalil.
Elias created a recording script from a pdf of the novel, marked up with sound effects and other relevant notes. He also set up a meeting for me with Tristan Wright, who helped me pull together my home studio setup.
Tristan recommended the Rode NT1 Studio Kit, which included a microphone, audio interface, shockmount, pop filter, and cables. That ran me $350.
Becky would be recording in her professional studio in Portland, and I would be in my “study,” a seven-foot by eleven-foot shed next to the house, crammed with books, which, according to Tristan, are good for absorbing sound. There was a less expensive option for the recording equipment and I asked Tristan if paying $200 more would make a noticeable difference. He said it would, so I went with his recommendation.
Becky and I each had our own microphone and recording software, so when we were recording, over Zoom, my track was recorded on my computer, and hers on hers. We both wore headphones, so when Becky read her lines, my mic did not pick up her narration and vice versa. The audio editor mixed the tracks together to produce the final audio.
4. Develop Distinct Voices for Different Characters
I am an actor and played one of the roles in the play, plus I’ve read every scene in Pirates out loud at least once to my writing group. I was confident about delivering the lines dramatically, with oomph and feeling, but worried about creating distinct character voices for the six primary male characters.
I emailed Becky about this concern and she responded not with an email, but a voice memo, going over about a dozen different ways to distinguish voices. Here’s a brief excerpt demonstrating three of the ways.
Becky Voice Memo
I came up with voices for each of the characters. Some were easy, like greedy developer Fenton Felton, the melodramatic villain, who’s determined to evict all the hippie houseboaters to build his luxury marina. I used a gravelly and bombastic voice for him.
One character voice I had a tough time pulling off consistently was Huck Hennessee, Fenton Felton’s sniveling sidekick. I delivered his lines with a low-pitched voice, lower than I ever talk in real life. That low pitch made it harder to project, so I had to be sure my mouth was closer to the mic.
We started recording at the end of last May, with one two-hour recording session the first week, three the second week, and two the third. I enjoyed the recording, though it was demanding, especially the chapters where I narrated multiple characters. I liked the sound of the words coming out of my mouth and I felt good about the tightness of the writing and the cleverness of the dialogue.
5. Use Music and Sound Effects, But Don’t Overdo It
When I adapted the play into the novel, I decided to tell the story through the first-person point of view of nine characters. That was tricky because one of those characters was the murder victim, another was the murderer, and almost all the rest were suspects. I like reading books with multiple points of view, but it can be challenging for readers to keep track of who’s narrating. To address that, I put the point-of-view character’s name and a brief description at the beginning of each chapter.
For the audiobook, we decided to add a musical “sting” at the start of each chapter to help the listener track which character was narrating. A sting is a short musical phrase used in broadcasting and films to introduce or end a scene or amplify the drama. One sting we’re all familiar with is the “Dun dun duuun!” in suspense movies.
Elias and Becky proposed musical stings for all the characters and some of their suggestions were perfect, like the pirate riff for Honest, the houseboat pirate. But many were more symphonic than I imagined and did not evoke the late 1970s as much as rock and roll would.
Fortunately, there were many other options available, and I listened to hundreds of music clips and agonized over what worked best for each character. I was happy with how it turned out.
You can hear the musical stings and description for each character below, in the cast list that comes at the beginning of the book. Each chapter starts with one of these musical stings.
Cast of Characters
One change, which we came up with while we were recording, was the maniacal laugh of my villain, Fenton Felton. In the play, there were five or six times when Fenton Felton unleashed this laugh. But when I adapted the play into the book, I had to describe that laugh. For example: “He laughs, a deep, loud baritone laugh, like a maniacal melodrama villain.”
Because we were recording the book, we decided it made more sense to deliver the laugh instead of describing it. Like this:
Fenton Felton’s Laugh
We started with more sound effects than we ended up with. Some, like a clip of water lapping that faded away as the narration started, worked well to establish the Sausalito waterfront where much of the story takes place. But there were also sound effects like truck wheels screeching on gravel that seemed distracting, so we cut those and stuck with the descriptions from the book.
6. Don’t Sweat Mistakes, Just Start the Sentence Again
I was worried about making mistakes during the recording, but I needn’t have. We both made mistakes, but not that many, and there was some noise from leaf blowers. We stopped, paused for two seconds, went back a sentence, and started again. The editor deleted the mistakes and the pauses.
The editor also flagged sentences or paragraphs that we needed to re-record, usually just a sentence or two here and there. I was sent what they called a “pickup packet,” which identified each new block of text to record again and the reason for having to redo it.
7. Proof, Proof, and Proof Again
I have been proof reading since I was sports editor of my high school newspaper, but never before have I proof listened.
This was the most tedious part of the project and took longer than the recording. When I found things I wanted changed, then I needed to review the audio again, after the changes were made. The kinds of nit-picky changes I asked for included shortening some of the musical stings, removing some sound effects, and deleting pauses that seemed too long.
Once everything was finalized, the Pro Audio Voices team took over and got the final audio distributed to the various places where potential listeners can find it — Audible, Spotify, Apple Books, AMPlify Audiobooks™, and more.
All told, it took five months, though that was partly because of my traveling and other commitments.
I’m thrilled with how well it turned out. It was a pleasure working with the Pro Audio Voices team. Thank you so much to Becky, Elias, and Tristan for an enjoyable experience and a fabulous product.
Here’s a clip of one of the chapters, between Fenton Felton and his vengeful ex-wife, Alice.
Chapter 12: I Hated You Before I Met You
8. The Marketing is More Challenging Than the Writing or Recording
The recording and production are done and in this new year, 2025, I’m focused on marketing. I know — because I’m one of them — that there are millions of audiobook listeners out there. The challenge is how to find them and let them know about Pirates of Sausalito.
If you know anyone who loves listening to audiobooks, please spread the word.
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P.S. There’s also an audio interview between Becky and me that you may enjoy: From Stage to Audiobook: Pirates of Sausalito Interview with John Byrne Barry
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