Audiobook Narration Business

This workbook turns the Audiobook Narration Business course into action with hands-on exercises, fill-in worksheets, and ready-to-use checklists for each module. Work through each section as you finish the matching lessons. By the end you will have a measured home booth, a repeatable recording and mastering routine, a character and pronunciation bible, an audition system on ACX and Findaway Voices, and a deal-by-deal income model you can actually price.

Treat your space, choose a recording chain, and prove your audio hits the peak, RMS, and noise-floor targets distributors enforce.

Record 30 seconds of complete silence in your treated space, sitting still at your normal microphone distance. Open the file in Audacity and run the ACX Check plugin, or read the noise floor directly. Note whether it passes the minus 60 dB RMS target, then change one thing at a time (turn off the AC, unplug a device, add a blanket) and re-measure to learn what actually moves the number.

Complete this plan before buying or moving any gear so your setup is intentional and repeatable. Fill in every field with the actual gear and treatment you are using.

Run an efficient session, edit invisibly, and apply a saved mastering chain so every chapter passes quality control the first time.

Record one page of any book using punch-and-roll in Reaper, or the clap-and-continue method in Audacity. Deliberately fumble a few lines and fix each one without stopping the session. Then listen back and check whether the joins are seamless or whether the level, distance, or energy jumps at any repair.

Record the settings you land on for each step of the mastering chain so you can save them as a preset and reproduce identical sound on every chapter.

Time yourself on one finished hour of audio and record how long each phase actually took. Use these numbers to price future books in finished hours.

Find a natural pace, give characters distinct repeatable voices, and prep every script so recording becomes performance, not problem-solving.

Record yourself reading a 300-word passage at what feels like a natural narration pace. Time it, then divide 300 by the minutes taken to find your words per minute. Compare against the 150 to 160 words-per-minute target and re-read it slower, performing the punctuation as timing, to feel the difference.

Fill in one entry per recurring character. Build a sheet of these for any book before you record so you can reset every voice instantly, even after a week away.

Win well-matched titles on ACX and Findaway Voices, choose the deal structure that pays, and grow a backlist that compounds.

Pick a posted ACX audition script in a genre that fits your voice, or a Findaway sample text. Prep it, perform it fully with at least one character moment, and master it to retail spec. Run a spec check on the finished audition before submitting, since the audition is your first proof of clean delivery.

Fill this in for a real or hypothetical title before accepting any offer. Use roughly 9,300 words per finished hour to estimate length, then compare guaranteed income against the royalty bet. Leave the calculated cells for you to work out yourself.

Map your first ten target titles into a pipeline. For each, note the genre fit, whether you would take per-finished-hour or royalty share, and the expected finished hours. Then set a rate-raise trigger — for example, after a set number of completed books or a set number of strong reviews.