We’re in the thick of it now!

At this point, I’ll be doing the narration for your book, and you’re unlikely to hear from me unless I have a question. I’ll try to drop you a quick note when I reach the halfway point and when I near the end just to update you on my progress. (Don’t want you to worry that I’ve slipped into a black hole or anything.)

Some things to be aware of:

• There are different parts of your book. Obviously, I’ll be narrating the main body of the text and any prologue or introduction. Some parts, however, don’t generally get narrated: the table of contents, “About the Author” or “About the Publisher…” segments, book reviews, author’s notes, a bibliography, an index. Some parts are flexible: a foreword, a preface, a dedication. These are generally intended to help sell the print version of your book and can be included or left out of the audio version without detracting from the listener’s experience; just let me know what your preference is if you have one.

• This might seem obvious, but the written version of your book is visual and the audiobook is aural. This means from time to time I may need to make some minor adjustments to the text so that it will make more sense when listeners hear it. For example, if you have bullet points, I’ll probably say something like, “Here are important considerations, first… second… and finally…” because the listener can’t see the line breaks and bullets to keep up with the list. At other times, a slight word change or addition can make a big difference for a listener - like with abbreviations and acronyms, for instance. If you’ve got illustrations or diagrams, we’ll need to have a conversation about how best to handle those.

• Let’s talk about text errors. GULP! It will come as no surprise that no text is ever error-free. As a fellow writer and a college professor, when something looks off, 99.9% of the time, I’ll be able to know exactly what should be there and can fix minor errors on the fly without bothering you. If it’s more than a single word or prepositional phrase, I’ll check with you, giving you my suggestion and then following your directive.

• If you have song lyrics or poetry or something that you don’t own the rights for, we’ll need to talk about how to handle that.

After the raw audio is recorded, it will be proofed and edited to make sure that it’s 99.99% accurate to your text and free from distracting noises. Before I upload each chapter to the ACX website, it will be “mastered,” which is a process to ensure that the volume is comfortable and consistent for your listeners.