Saturday 5 September 2015

Deliverance close to completed

This week was fully dedicated to audiobooks (well, and the day job, but we're not talking about this here - at least no more than necessary).

The two short stories Skybound and Deliverance have both been recorded. I'm just waiting for the Skybound cover to wrap up - I've listened to the final version and it's good, I'm really enjoying listening to what the narrator does to my words.

Then Audible will run its quality check on the files and Skybound should go up soon.

I'm currently listening to Deliverance (I forgot how much I tortured poor William there) and will do a second pass on the whole text, then submit edits. The cover gets tweaked a little bit but should soon be ready to (after the narrator has re-recorded whatever went wrong). Then get the narrator paid and submit this one to Audible to.

And lastly, Gold Digger is fully recorded and I need to listen to it all in this version (I've listened to the raw files already). That cover's ready, too. Again, I'll submit change requests to the narrator and once all that is fixed, the audio gets approved.

But I'm excited. I was really lucky to find three narrators whose voices I really like and the process itself has been a lot more intuitive and smoother than I thought.

I originally planned to do the two short stories as "feelers", but well, that's not how it worked out in the end, and by now I'm thoroughly addicted to audiobooks. I mean, it's like a fresh book release I don't have to work for or worry about. Bleeding awesome! Especially if you struggle to write or finish anything. And listening to them really does make the Muse flutter a bit.

So, yeah, I'll be adding audios to my work spreadsheet so I can keep track of them.

Largely, I feel that my "author voice" translates pretty well to audio. That sparseness/efficiency really works because audio is slowed down so much. So the idea is really to forge full speed ahead with the audios and hopefully, over time, get my whole backlist into audio (in English first).

Hopefully I'll be able to put the frontlist (the current release) out in audio roughly at the same time as the e-book or the print version, but that's a bit of juggling, so it might not be completely simultaneously. If things stay as they are (read, I keep working at the bank and have the money to do this), I'm pretty confident I can put 2-3 books into audio per year.

So the project list is:

Incursion (done)
Skybound (95% done)
Deliverance (90% done)
Gold Digger (60% done)

[all these should make it onto Audible in September]

Return on Investment (hiring narrator)
Nightingale

And yeah, I'm hoping to listen to the Memory of Scorpions series eventually, too. And Dark Soul.

I'm even playing with the idea to write a book specifically for audio - play around a bit, really crystallise the voice/tone.

It's a great experience so far. 

2 comments:

  1. Very excited to see you are doing audiobook s my favourite is Gold Digger so will be looking out for the releases dates.

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    1. The Gold Digger audio is turning out beautifully. You'll enjoy it if you're anything like me. :)

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