(or How I Did It, a “.doc”-umentary)
Branching Out
For those of you who don’t know, I am hearing impaired. Not totally Deaf, but my hearing loss is significant. I hear things like thunder, but not peeper frogs. I hear bass notes in thumping music, but not cicadas. I hear a motorcycle’s deep rumble, but not the more subtle approach of a vehicle from behind when we are out walking the neighborhood. And I can hear people speaking, but often I cannot make out the words, which all jumble together into an incomprehensible mishmash in my ears.
I’m pretty good at lip-reading, which helps me understand what someone else is saying, especially in connection with the bits I do hear; in fact, a friend once teased me by telling someone else not to ever say anything about me if I was nearby because I could read lips from across the room. But I still need captions for movies and TV, and don’t watch many podcasts or YouTube videos because so many of them don’t have the captions; it’s frustrating to miss so many of the words and feel lost throughout the program.
So you might understand why making an audiobook of Phagey wasn’t a priority for me.
Then I came into a bit of windfall, and suddenly, an audiobook was possible. B pushed for it; truthfully, he’s been saying I should do one since before Phagey debuted. Recently, before the windfall appeared, he even suggested I begin making a list of vocal traits for each character so that resource would be ready for The Audiobook that would one day come to be. I heard him. I knew he was right. But it wasn’t until I had the money in hand that it moved to the front burner.
Two weeks ago, I created an ACX account and opened up for auditions. The first one appeared the same day. I listened (more detail on this in the next post) along with B and got so unexpectedly emotional that we had to stop the playback until I could get myself together. Even though it was never a priority for me, this felt like the next logical step on my self-publishing journey. I knew it would open Phagey up to a whole new audience. And suddenly, listening to that first narrator read words from a book I had written, it was real.
It was REAL.
Last Saturday, I chose a narrator and began the work involved in this process. I’ll be working with the fabulous Stacey Lind to bring Phagey to the growing market of audiobook listeners. And I’ll be blogging about it here, as I have done throughout my indie journey. There’s a lot more to it than I expected (hey, what else is new?). Already I’ve had other authors ask me about it, so I’ll list all the steps I’ve taken or plan to take as I go.
I hope you’ll follow along. And as always, remember that I wish you all the best in your self-publishing journey!
**Please note that I am not a professional. Outside the writing part—for which I have taken numerous classes and workshops, and for which I’ve seen enormous improvement over the years, but which I am still learning—I mostly have no idea what I’m doing. I’m reading everything I can get my hands on, looking at how others who have been successful have done it, and learning this process as I go. I don’t want any reader of these posts to think I’m teaching THE way to self-publish; there are as many ways to do this as there are writers on the path. I am only sharing how I have done it. Your mileage may vary.
Photo credits:
Reading on the Phone, Photo by Joyce Busola on Unsplash
Ooh, yes to listing out your audiobook creation steps! I’ll be following this, for sure 🙂