Our Services
Casting
We like to ensure that you, as an author, are given a good choice when it comes to who will narrate for you. So, with this in mind, you can choose 3 narrators, from our talent on the home page, whom you would like to provide a 1 minute sample of your text.
You can then clearly hear the style and tone that each narrator could bring to your narrative, thus making a better informed decision.
To help us in creating a sample which most accurately reflects the full narration of your audiobook we just need the following information:
- Your preferred Gender of Narrator
- A synopsis of your text
- An overview of the main characters and any specific requirements for accents
We’ll make sure we find passages with main characters and those with specific voice requirements when creating the samples.
Formation
After you have chosen who you would like narrate for you but before we get started on the narration, our producer will read your book and create a plan for the narration based on some key aspects:
- Names and Places – Checking the pronunciation of any unusual names and places
- Characters – Deducing the personality and role of the story’s main characters to gain a better understanding of how they should be voiced
Recording
Now it is time to get to the part all parties are normally most excited about!
We will now have all the information we need for the narrator to begin their recording.
All of our narrators have professional home studios, allowing them to quickly get to work on producing your audiobook.
To give you an idea of the time it takes us to deliver a finished audiobook; we can deliver 10,000 words in a week from when the narrator actually starts recording.
This includes the full editing and mastering to the standards required for the majority of large online audiobook distributors.
The narrator will send over the chapters individually to us.
As the chapters come through they are sent off to the Post Production Stage!
Post Production
This is the stage at which the raw recording is fine tuned to produce an audiobook that provides an excellent listening experience to the consumer.
It includes:
- Editing – This is simply going through the raw audio to ensure that there is nothing in there that shouldn’t be. This includes extraneous noises such as mouth clicks and loud breaths.
- Mixing – This includes equalisation, which is a fine level of frequency control to narrow the higher and lower ranges of the audio and compression to ensure that the volume throughout the chapter is consistent.
- Mastering – Finally we use limiting to further ensure a constant volume throughout and noise reduction to reduce any room tone that could impact the listening experience. The finished result is an audiobook that is at a level of quality to provide a fantastic listening experience to the consumer and that meets the standards of the majority of large online distribution platforms.
- Proofing – At this final stage the producer will listen right through and pick up any issues, including narrator mistakes, or noises that have been missed. We send our notes over to you, along with the audio, so you also have an opportunity to pick up on anything you feel needs correcting.
- Re-Record – All notes are then sent over to the narrator for re-recording and, once these have come back, they undergo the same editing process and are integrated into the main audio.
Sound effects
Sound effects can be a wonderful way to add another dynamic to the listening experience for your consumer. The feedback we have received has been excellent and a lot of people tell us the sound effects add to the envisioning of scenes in the listeners mind!
We offer two levels of sound effect integration:
- In depth – as the name suggests, this encompasses detailed sound effects throughout the book and includes effects when actions are taking place. To get a better idea of what we mean, have a listen to our sample below:
In-Depth Sound effect Sample
- Background – These sound effects still run throughout the narrative but with the idea of setting the current scene for the listener. For example, the sound of the sea and the creaking of a ship can bring to life an ocean scene. The crackling of a fire or the creaking of floorboards can engender a spooky or fantasy castle feeling. Listen to our sample below so we can show you exactly what we mean:
Background Sound Effects Sample
Music
Someone once said that “music is the universal language of mankind”. Music is such a fantastic way to communicate to a wide variety of people and this, we believe, is why it works so well when included in the intro and outro of an audiobook.
If you decide that you would like music added, then we will provide you with several samples of music that we feel would fit your narrative.
Once you have chosen which piece you prefer our production team will professionally integrate the music into the intro and outro for you.
To hear some examples of the musical intros we have created for our authors, click the samples below.