By Claire Buss

If you’re an independent author and you’d like to get started on recording your own audio books, here are some tips  I’ve learned along the way of my own audio book journey. I’m Claire Buss, deputy Editor of Write On! magazine, occasional Pen to Print writing workshop lead and author of 22 books.

Tip One – Build Yourself A Recording Studio

Now, you might think that building your own recording studio is a little bit out there, but hear me out. When you start recording your books, your microphone is going to pick up everything. The traffic outside, noisy neighbours, the hum of your fridge – everything. So you need to try to create a soundproof space. Some people record in a cupboard. Others record under a blanket. What I did was create a small recording nook in my wardrobe cubby.

I bought a curved microphone isolation shield, a mic stand with a shock mount and a pop filter. I put the microphone stand on a thick foam mouse mat and stuffed pillows and blankets behind and above it. The whole setup sits next to the clothes in my tiny wardrobe and atop my skinny chest of drawers. It’s not glamorous or sexy but it works.

Tip Two – Make Your Environment Quiet

Once you start recording, you’ll be surprised at what sounds get picked up by the microphone. I close all the windows in my flat to reduce any outside sounds coming through. I close all the curtains to muffle that sound further and I close all the doors. I don’t go to the toilet and flush the chain immediately before recording, otherwise I have to wait ages for the water tank to refill. And yes, you can hear that. I take off any jangly jewellery. I remove cardigans or jackets that might make a sound as I move. I put my phone on silent. I try to pick a time of day when I know it won’t be too busy so I don’t bother trying to record in the evenings when everyone is coming home from work or at the weekends – I live by the seaside, it’s noisy. I also avoid bin day.

Tip Three – Hydrate!

In my experience, dry mouth is the number one audio book recording killer. You will be surprised at how quickly your mouth gets dry and how much water you’ll want to drink. Beware of the gurgle when you drink too much, too fast. You’re looking for regular sips. As you get thirsty, your voice will change and obviously you want to sound the same throughout the audio book.

A note on eating: surprisingly, not eating has just as many pitfalls as eating. Imagine you’ve made a super-quiet environment. You haven’t eaten any breakfast and your stomach wakes up. All the gurgles and rumbles? You’ve guessed it – the mic picks them up. The reverse is also true. That banana you thought would see you through, well, the stomach is going to town on digesting and now we have some different types of gurgling and possibly a burp or two. Normally, you probably wouldn’t notice how much noise your body makes.

Tip Four – Buy The Right Microphone

There are a lot of microphones out there. When you first start out, you don’t know what you’re doing and if, like me, you haven’t got a clue, there’s a very good chance you’ll buy the wrong microphone to start with. My advice: keep it simple. Do your research. Talk to other authors who record books or podcasts and see what they’re using. I recommend the RODE podcast microphone. Picks up sound beautifully and is easy to connect to my laptop.

Tip Five – Record To Audacity

If you haven’t heard of it before, Audacity is a free piece of software specifically designed for audio recording. Like most software, it has lots of bells and whistles on it but really all you need to do is download it.

When I’m ready to record a chapter, I set up my quiet environment and take my laptop into the bedroom. I connect my RODE mic and then open Audacity. The software reads that my microphone is connected and, just to double-check, I make sure the Recording Device in the Audio Setup menu is set to my microphone and not the one on the laptop. Then I press record (the red button) and off we go.

Tip Six – Recording

When you start recording a chapter, leave a couple of seconds at the beginning and the end. This is so you have a background noise level that can be removed/improved later.

Record your chapters individually and not the whole book in one file. This is important for when you come to upload the files to ACX or Findaway Voices.

If you make a mistake recording, don’t worry. Stop, gather yourself and then start again from the beginning of that sentence. When you come to edit the recording, Audacity allows you to highlight mistakes and delete them easily. Save your chapters as you record them so that if you make a mistake editing, the original will still be there. Audacity also has an Undo button.

It’s important you listen to your recording all the way through once you’ve finished. There may be background sounds you weren’t aware of. You may have pronounced a word wrong or fluffed some letters in a word without realising. You may discover you have a slight lisp or a faint articulation problem with certain words. This isn’t an issue. It’s part of your personal narrative charm.

If you decide to do regional accents or ‘voices’ just make sure you are consistent in your delivery. Some authors prefer a straight delivery in their own voice, others just can’t help themselves. If you want to differentiate between male and female speakers and the narration of the book, you can modulate your voice slightly. Tilt your chin down and go a little lower than normal for a male character. Lift your chin and go a little higher for a female character. Then use your normal voice for the narration. It doesn’t sound like much, but it will help differentiate characters.

Tip Seven – Use An Expert

My view on audiobook recording was to do as much as I could myself. So I bought the kit, set up the mini recording studio, used Audacity to record and edit the chapters, but I felt the sound quality wasn’t quite there. It was good, but it wasn’t perfect. I got in touch with a sound engineer called Rob Hodgkinson and asked if he could help me out. It was absolutely the best investment I could’ve made. The sound quality was great and, although this was a cost to me, it was nowhere near as expensive as having somebody else record the audiobook for me. That cost can be in the thousands.

Here’s Rob to explain his process:

“When I first receive the audio files, I open them in my audio software of choice which, for me, is logic pro, and then run each chapter individually through software that removes any room sound reflections and, to a degree, any background noise. After saving the files (I keep the originals separate…just in case!), I will then apply processing to tame any sibilance (harsh ‘S’ sounds) and plosives (popping sounds caused by high air pressure from ‘P’ sounds that the pop shield hasn’t caught).

After this has been done, I apply some gentle compression, which reduces the difference in volume between loud and soft parts of the recording, and finally apply some equalisation, where I smooth out the tone of the voice.

Then, with all of those processes applied, I listen closely to every chapter, and any audio issue that disturbs the flow of the story gets dealt with at this stage. This can take quite a long time and requires great concentration, especially with a good story where the tendency is to listen to the story, not the audio!

I make notes of issues that can only be fixed by re-recording and then send a list of these, with notes on what the problem is, back to the narrator for re-recording. The sort of things that require re-recording are too much background noise and fluffed words ,etc.

Once I’ve the fixed audio, I insert it into the original files, and then run each chapter through software to make all the average volume levels the same and bring the levels into the industry standard range for audiobooks.

I will then listen to every chapter again, just in case I missed something, then send it all back to the author/narrator.

To add to Claire’s advice, if you make a mistake, leave a couple of seconds of silence before starting again. This makes editing much easier and, if you want a sound effect, like a door knock etc, let your engineer have a note of where it is, as some software will see this as background noise and remove it… we engineers can always add the odd sound effect in for you if you need one!

Also, when you save your files in audacity, save them as .WAV files. Audacity saves as .AUD files, which need converting to use in any other software. WAV files can be used in anything.”

Tip Eight – Decide How To Sell Your Audiobook

There are a couple of options. You can use ACX which is Amazon’s platform for Audible. They have strict sound settings you must comply with and each chapter has to be uploaded individually. If you are happy uploading your ebooks to KDP then you will have no problem uploading your audiobook files.

If you want your audiobook to be more widely available on Spotify, other audiobook platforms and libraries, then you need to use a distributor such as Findaway Voices. Again, they have sound settings but if you ‘ve already got the hang of distributing your books wide with someone like Draft2Digital, you won’t have any problems.

All of these platforms have great FAQs and ‘How-To’ blog posts available, plus decent Help Desks. My advice is to always do your research and go with what you feel comfortable managing. I tested the audiobook water with a novella first and am now in the slow process of recording all my novels. Time is my Achilles heel but now I’ve figured out my set-up and know what I’m doing, I’m sure each book will proceed quicker.

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Connect with Claire via Facebook: facebook.com/busswriter or Instagram: @grasshopper2407. Her website is clairebuss.co.uk (currently undergoing a facelift!) All her books can be found on Amazon or at your preferred bookseller.

You can get in touch with Rob via his email: robhodgkinson2@aol.com

The Interspecies Poker Tournament is available on audiobook, narrated by Claire and The Rose Thief is coming soon!

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