Audiobook Narration Manual: How to Set Up a Home Studio and Record Audiobooks for a Living

The seminal guide to learning how to become an audiobook narrator, Derek Perkins’s Audiobook Narration Manual is compulsory reading for beginners and more experienced narrators alike. Here is your complete step-by-step guide to: gaining experience as a narrator; setting up a home studio; creating a demo; the best way of marketing yourself; establishing a super-efficient recording methodology. The Audiobook Narration Manual explains how to gain experience of narrating books in a professional studio; details all you need to set up a low-cost home studio that produces excellent quality sound and explains in detail how to develop and produce an effective demo at an affordable price. And the marketing information contained in the book outlines all you need to know to position yourself quickly and efficiently with key industry contacts. Grover Gardner, an AudioFile magazine Golden Voice, multiple Earphones award winner and Audie nominated narrator, says the Audiobook Narration Manual is: ‘As comprehensive and readable a book on the basics of audiobook narration as you are likely to find. Derek Perkins has done a superb job of describing the fundamentals of our profession as they are currently understood. Highly recommended’. No-one should venture into the world of audiobook narration without thoroughly reading the Audiobook Narration Manual - and even after that, keeping it close by your side for further reference as you work through each step of your transition from novice narrator to audiobook professional.

Derek Perkins, originally from the UK, has narrated nearly two hundred audiobooks to date in a wide range of fiction and nonfiction genres. He became a professional narrator in 2012, a move helped by his knowledge of three foreign languages, a facility with accents and a lifelong love of the written and spoken word. An award-winning performer, Derek has received multiple AudioFile Earphones awards. In 2015 and 2016, he was nominated for an Audie, the industry’s top award. He was a double finalist in 2014 and 2015 for the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences Best Voice award in two categories. AudioFile magazine named him a 2014 and 2015 Best Voice, Biography & History. Derek works from a professionally equipped home studio near Boston, MA. He is a member of the Audio Publishers Association and SAG-AFTRA. He was prompted to write this book as a result of discussions with many aspiring narrators wanting to understand the best, most effective way of breaking into the audiobook business. Now Derek is revealing the process that took him from rookie to award-winning professional within three years in the wonderful world of audiobook narration.