When I tell people what I do for a living and mention audiobook narration as being part of it, the inevitable question I get is ‘how long does it take?’
The flippant and perhaps predictable answer is “Well, how long’s a piece of string?”…..but I wouldn’t be so blunt! Yet the answer often surprises people who tend to think that if a book takes, say, 6 hours to read, then it shouldn’t take much longer than that to record.
If only! For one hour of content, you can reckon on at least 8 hours of work for the narrator – if they are doing a good job. So a six-hour book is going to take around 50 hours of work. This explains why most narrators will tell you how long a project will take in terms of weeks or even months, rather than days!
Are you wondering why? What does the narrator do in all that time? Does it iinclude lots of tea and lunch breaks or sitting in the garden?
No it doesn’t.
Firstly, a narrator should always read the whole book before doing anything else. It’s important that they get to know the story and the characters before they start recording. I narrated a book recently where an American character who appeared in the first chapter and reappeared in several more beyond, was only revealed as a Texan in chapter 18. So, if I had not read the book first, his accent leading up to Chapter 18 would have been wrong and would have involved hours spent applying corrections.
But apart from getting the accents right, reading the book first gives the narrator a sense of the thrust and direction of the story, which could have an impact on how it is read. It might be a subtle influence that is brought to bear, but if you were to narrate a book without knowing where it was heading, it is more than likely to mean that your narration will lack the right emphasis and atmosphere.
So read the book first, meaning that a 6 hour book will take…..well, 6 hours or thereabouts.
Then you can start recording. You’d be lucky to be able to read each session straight off, with no short rests and no rewinds. In fact, you shouldn’t ever attempt it. For an hour’s worth of reading matter, allow two hours to record. And if you have some new character voices to introduce in that hour, it might take you longer to hone the voice and personality accurately. Maybe you even need to research the accent.
Once you’ve recorded, you should play back the whole recording and check word-for-word accuracy against the manuscript. During this process, you are bound to find some errors and some bits that you want to change, maybe a mispronunciation, or a point when you didn’t quite get the emphasis right. So, for one hour of content, you can reckon on two hours for reviewing. So that’s 5 hours so far.
Then you move to editing and mastering. Editing means closing gaps where you have paused during recording, the removal of any extraneous noises, like breaths and mouth clicks, and ensuring the whole thing is paced correctly. Then mastering involves applying some software processes to make the recording sound clear and professional. All in all, the editing and mastering process is the longest – allow 2 and half hours for an hour of content.
So that’s reached 7.5 hours, and that doesn’t include saving the file, uploading it, and applying any corrections that your client might ask for after they’ve reviewed it…..add another half an hour. That comes to 8.
There you have it. Not quite as simple as you thought perhaps? So now, if a narrator quotes a price of say £150 per ‘finished hour’ of content, that means he or she is charging less than £20 an hour for their time and effort. If a narrator is charging less than £100 per finished hour for example, then you have to ask yourself, are they cutting out any of the steps outlined above and what will be the quality of the end result if they are?
You don’t want that piece of string to have an ugly not in it that you can’t undo.
Cheers, Andy.