You may be saying, what is she babbling about now 
It’s simple really. What voice would you put with your main character if you had the chance? Well, I had to figure that out this week and let me tell you, it was a blast!
What I’m talking about is audio books. An author recently mentioned I ought to try it out, so I did. I went to ACX.com and set up an account. It’s really easy and may I say extremely fun and exasperating too.
After you give them your general information, then the fun starts. You have to put your book information in and an excerpt that you want someone to read for an audition. Yep, you heard me right, an audition. You actually have people sending you auditions on the account. But the fun starts when you have to put in the settings you want. Here are just a few of the things asked.
1. Style of voice: This was a huge list of things like soft, loud, funny, sad, gruff, gravelly, and the list goes on.
2. Gender: Male or female. This part was easy for me.
3. Region of Voice: In the site it has a different name but you get the idea. These included Southern, Northern American, Irish, English, Oriental, Cajun and the list goes on. This one was hard.
After you pick these out you need to tell the producer a little about the way you want it expressed. Then you put why you picked this excerpt.
Then the fun part begins. You can listen to the different styles of voice in the next screen. This is where you can change your choices which is a good thing. This was hilarious. I had to change most of the settings I’d picked. My editor would just looked at me and shake her head laughing.
The strange part is I’ve always known what my character would sound like if she could talk. I listened to a couple of people that had general auditions and found a voice I liked. Then I’ve started receiving auditions. This is going to be hard. I’ve received some that really sound right. A couple sounded like they were in pain, so no. But it was so invigorating to hear my book being spoken by someone other than myself.
So if you want to hear your book, go to ACX.com and try it out. They take royalty percentage or pay per hour. I went with royalty percentage. It’s a no brainer really. They distribute the finished audio book to Amazon, Itunes and a couple of other places.
As always, Good Writing and May God Bless You.
