Click for the Audiobook
According to multiple sources, audiobooks are “the fastest growing segment in publishing”. Generating $2.8 billion dollars in 2015, the number of audiobook titles published this year has more than doubled since 2013.
With these stats top of mind, and SCARRED: A Civil War Novel of Redemption ready for publication in print and digital formats, the next step was figuring out how to publish the book in an audio format. Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX), owned by Amazon, is a company which easily facilitates the process of converting a book from written form to a downloadable audio file.
The entire process is quite simple and user-friendly. The first step is to find a narrator. The author selects a specific scene from the book and pastes it in an ACX file. ACX then notifies all potential narrators registered in their system that they can audition with the hope of being selected as the “voice” for the book. Within several days, four audition submissions showed up for Scarred—and all were very professional and articulate.
I’d selected a scene in which the protagonist, Zach Harkin, while incarcerated in Andersonville Prison, is interrogated by an Austrian prison commandant, Henry Wirz. The scene is tense: Both Harkin and Wirz want something from the other and with Wirz in charge, Harkin must somehow find a way around him.
Here is the audio segment submitted by the winning narrator:
I thought the narrator, Jeffery Lynn Hutchins, nailed it. He captured Wirz’s German accent very well, and his conversational timing was impeccable. It was important to have pauses between Wirz’s questions and Harkin’s responses as those moments of silence increased the tension. Hutchins, from near Louisville, Kentucky, also had a very appealing and natural southern drawl which helped with much of the other “twangy” dialogue throughout the book.
Hutchins was notified he’d been chosen and then the two of us worked out a financial arrangement to move forward. Once that was finalized, the formal narration started with Hutchins submitting a chapter or two at a time. I would listen and make some suggestions, he would dub in changes and we worked through the whole book.
During this entire process, which took nearly six weeks, we never talked on the phone. Our communications were by email or through the ACX system, but I felt I knew Jeff just because I had become so used to hearing his voice. One day, after the audiobook was approved and ready for publication, I got a call on my cell phone. When I said, “Hello,” the voice on the other end said, “Mike?” with that same wonderful accent I’d come to know from the audiotapes. My response was simply, “Jeff.”
I think he might have been surprised that I knew it was him—I’d know that voice anywhere. We talked for a bit, and agreed we’d try to work together again.
Hear more HERE (And find out how to get the audiobook for free!)
Leave a Reply