For months I have been toying with the idea of making an audiobook, but I didn't know how much work would be involved, or whether I could do a recording with the equipment and programs available to me. I started to research the subject and then thought, "Hey! I could do a post about this!"
ACX.com
The first place I looked for information was ACX.com. (If you would like to learn a bit about ACX, here is a link to their FAQ.) ACX has a great section entitled: Video Lessons and Resources. On that page are links to five video tutorials that will take you, step by step, through everything you need to set up a recording studio in your home. The downside for me was that if I followed the advice in these videos I would have to spend hundreds of dollars on new equipment. :-(
My search continued.
Podiobooks.com
The next place I went for information on making an audiobook was podiobooks.com. After clicking various links pretty much at random I came to a page titled: Postcast101 - Creating and Hosting an Audio Podcast. The information on this page is for people intending to transmit their books via an RSS feed so it contains a lot of information not applicable to me, but from what I can tell one can record an audiobook using only:
Your current Mac or PC
A Microphone
Audacity
Levelator
iTunes
If you want to include music anywhere in the audiobook you could take a look at ccMixter.
Tutorials
Here are tutorials that give the nuts and bolts of how to record an audiobook:
Step 1: Creating and Editing an Audio Recording
Step 4: Levelating the Podcast
Step 5: Encoding to MP3 Format
I think I would like to try making an audiobook one day, but it looks like a lot of work. I have a new appreciation for all the folks who have done it.
UPDATE (February 25, 2013): I've written another article that builds on this one:
- How To Record Your Own Audiobook: Setting Up A Home Studio
Other articles you might like:
- Podcasting on the iPad
- How To Write Short Stories
- Michael Hauge On How To Summarize Your Novel
