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Talking Books: A labor of love, a magic beyond the printed page!

Listening to a talking book can be like listening to an old-fashioned storyteller or to a fascinating professor. We have different expectations when we plug-in with an audio download version of a recorded book than when we sit down with the printed word. Apart from variances between abridged and unabridged versions, it is primarily the narration that makes audiobooks different from the traditional printed paper book. Read the book review, then Download and Listen to any Digital book for only $7.49. Select from over 75,000 Titles.

Recorded Books: All about the Voice:

Listening to a narrated book is so much more than having pages read out to you. It’s all about making the voice and personality of the author and the many characters in the book, come alive with a narrative that captures the pacing, rhythm, mood and many other subtle nuances such as dialects and accents, that bring out the true essence of the book.

For those of us who never heard Ernest Hemingway’s voice or Harper Lee’s, it makes sense, it fits, that Charlton Heston narrates an audio version of Old Man and the Sea and that Sissy Spacek reads To Kill a Mockingbird. Recorded books are a labor of love produced by experienced teams usually consisting of stage or movie actors, a sound monitor and reviewer, working hard to create the perfect experience for the audiobook listener.

The audio book narrator, often called the reader, is crucial to meeting our expectations and to the success of the book. The listener wishes to hear a credible voice, a voice that fits the story being told. In this way, the narrator is similar to an actor playing the leading role (and all the other roles) in a play or a movie. He needs to draw on many talents to make the reading credible.

Recording Preparation:

To prepare to record a narrated book, the reader needs to understand and feel comfortable with the material. This means not only studying and reading the book, but also getting behind the script to understand the author’s intent in non-fiction or the motivation of the characters in a work of fiction. The narrator needs to convey a sense of pacing and rhythm in the text, know when to emphasize and when to pause to either build or relieve tension.

He or she needs to pronounce the words properly and give vocalize different dialects, accents, and personalities. Our audiobook reviews  generally include a comment about how well the narrator succeeded in bringing the book to life.