Our featured writer today is Richard Roberts Let’s give him a warm welcome!
If you would like your talent featured in the Authors in Our Midst series or Artists in Our Midstseries, send me an email message. Don’t be shy! I have no more Artists or Authors posts in the queue, so please get in touch if you would like to be featured.
This will be a little different from most of our Authors in Our Midst series, because much of the focus here will be on the audiobook facet of the book, rather than on the story itself. But if you’re interested in hearing more about the story, too, chime in below!
Spaceship Repair Girls (and audiobooks)
by Richard Roberts
This post is for the authors, the audiobook listeners, and hopefully we have some voice actors here at Balloon Juice. I’d like to talk about audiobooks, the process and the feelings involved, and how those two are tied together.
For fiction authors, audiobooks are strange and magical things.
An author pours their heart and soul into a book. Even writing pulp, there’s a huge investment of time, mental effort, and a reflection of who you are in the details.
And then someone comes along and reads every word out loud, records it, acts out your book. In doing so, they bring it to a new audience who will only know your book through this voice actor’s interpretation. Hearing it is like looking in the mirror and seeing someone else, which can be jarring, fascinating, scary, or fulfilling.
It’s also a gut level status symbol. A book with an audiobook adaptation has gone up a level, right? I have heard the hunger in the voice of quite a few starting authors talking about getting an audiobook. I have over a dozen audiobooks done of my books, and unless I’m actually listening to one, it’s stopped being real. Surely it’s not me that has OH MY GOD THAT’S SOMEONE READING MY WORDS LISTEN TO THAT.
So how does this miracle happen? Usually through either ACX or Tantor, and unless you are self-published, the author doesn’t have much to do with it. Most presses, small or large, will want control over this most basic and obvious of adaptations. Curiosity Quills (CQ) did it so much without me that I only found out I had audiobooks after the fact. They negotiated with Tantor, and got me the magnificent Emily Woo Zeller, and even a couple of advances that CQ immediately stole.
My current publisher, Crossroad Press, goes with ACX. They still handle most of it, but from what I can tell the process consists of posting a sample of the first few pages, and voice actors who like the look read and submit a sample. Those contracts are purely royalty based, so the big names rarely go for them, but most of my books sell, so I hope I’ve been worth the readers’ time. I know any of this because my part is that Crossroad Press hands me samples from about a dozen readers and asks me to pick.
My publisher’s advice was ‘pick the person you could listen to for hours’. Also important to me is that the actor understood what I was getting at. For Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’m A Giant Monster I ended up picking from the two actors who understood that when Mirabelle described being enraged, she was being sarcastic because she can never, ever express her anger. I listened to the audiobook later and I chose well.
I was inspired to write this post because for some reason, nobody applied to do A Spaceship Repair girl Supposedly Named Rachel for months, and it has only just come out. When I got it, this reader, who is supposedly a successful name, reads completely differently than any other voice actress I’ve worked with. All the others try for an even tone and rhythm, with only a little emotion, designed to be easy to listen to. This actress heavily emoted every sentence. I listened to the whole book and enjoyed it, but it stuck out as different.
Which leads me to ask… voice actors! Are there voice actors here? Who do audiobooks? What do you focus on when reading? What does the process look like from your end? Do you work with Tantor or ACX? What are your contracts like?
Audiobook listeners, what do you like in a voice actor?
And other fiction writers, are you getting audiobooks? Does your publisher consult you at all? Is the process as emotional for you as for me?
Nonfiction writers, is any of this familiar? Do you work in a different world? I’ve listened to a nonfiction audiobook, but it was a writer trying to make an unusual topic weird and fun.
I will leave you with an anecdote. My strangest book is Sweet Dreams Are Made Of Teeth, a classic coming of age story except the main character is the nightmare of being chased by a big, fangy animal, and it takes place entirely within the dream world. That makes it pretty weird, and while I wasn’t trying to make it scary, horror stuff like ripping people apart is Fang’s life, even if his victims are in no physical danger. His friends are nightmares, demons, twisted ancient pagan gods, that sort of thing.
When Crossroad Press submitted Sweet Dreams, the readers applying were awful. Only one was pretty good, and he applied on the second round of asking for readers. So we agreed, he started reading the rest of the book… and immediately sent an email saying he was canceling the contract. The book was so vile and immoral he couldn’t be associated with it.
And then recently I found out there is an audiobook, and I’m listening to it and the reader is pretty good. He has to be, because so many of my books are female protagonists that a male voice sounds weird to me. But… I have no idea when he applied or how he was picked. I thought it was a failure!
Okay, that’s audiobooks from my end. Answer my questions, folks! I’m pretty sure a lot of people have thoughts and feelings about this!
A Spaceship Repair Girl Supposedly Named Rachel!Post + Comments (58)