All Ears: A Comprehensive Guide to Reviewing your Audio

A good audiobook is a beautiful thing. It isn't simply your book read aloud—a well-acted, well-produced audiobook is a medium all its own, transforming your work and adding a new dimension to the story that wasn’t there in print. The power of the human voice can reach your audience on another level, connecting them more deeply to your story and its characters. The accessibility of audiobooks can allow you to reach fans you couldn't reach with print alone. If you need more convincing on why you (and your fans) should give audio a try, check out our Case for Audio. But if you're sold on the merits of audio storytelling, you want to give your story the audio edition it deserves. For that, this guide for authors on how to listen, when to listen, and what to listen for is essential when it comes to casting, directing, and approving the final audio for your title.

First things first, let’s talk about how you listen:

• Always listen with headphones. There is no substitute for good headphones. They’ll help you hear nuances in the audio that you will miss with computer or phone speakers alone. Plus, your listeners are far more likely to be listening in headphones than any other way,

  so you should experience your audiobook the way your listeners will!

• Listen without distractions. Don’t try to multitask while listening to your audiobook or you’re liable to miss something important.

Next, let’s talk about when:

• At the audition phase. Listening to auditions for your audiobook isn’t just about the right voice or performance—you’re listening for the full package. ACX narrators are responsible for the finished production of your audiobook, so you’re not just auditioning the voice, you’re auditioning the producer, too. If you find a voice you love, but the audio isn’t up to quality, don’t be afraid to ask them about it! If the production skills aren’t evident in the audition, don’t be afraid to ask about them before hiring them for the job.

• At the 15-minute checkpoint. This is your first opportunity to hear what the full production is going to sound like. Listen carefully to make sure the performance, vocal, and audio quality is what you want for your whole production. Take special care to note whether your producer followed any production or performance notes, and give additional notes and direction if needed. The better you communicate with your producer in the early stages of your production, the better you set yourself up to be happy with the finished product. If you and your producer can’t reach a resolution, reach out to our CS team for support.

• When the final production is delivered. It’s your responsibility to review your entire production before submitting it to QA to ensure it meets your expectations, and request revisions from your producer if it doesn’t. This is your last opportunity to listen to your production before it goes live for all your listeners. Our QA team listens for submission requirements, but they’re not conducting an end-to-end review of your audiobook. There might be things they miss (or that aren’t technical violations) that you don’t want in your final product.

• At intervals agreed on with your producer. Your producer is only required to provide audio at the 15-minute check-in and the end of the project, but if you have a complicated project with any tricky elements (lots of character voices, busy scenes, etc.), it may be worth arranging some additional check points. That way you and your producer will be on the same page throughout the recording process.

And finally, just what is it you’re listening for anyway?

• Performance. Listen for performance at all stages of the process, from audition to final product. Ask yourself, is the performance what you had in mind when you wrote the book? Are you happy with the pacing, tone, vocal choices, and accents/dialects? Can you distinguish between different characters voiced by your narrator? New to audiobooks? You can always listen to well-reviewed audiobooks in your genre to get a sense of what listeners like in a performance.

• A human voice. ACX currently accepts human narration only, and while we do our best to monitor the narrators on ACX to ensure they’re not providing text-to-speech narration to authors, it is ultimately your responsibility to ensure you are receiving a human narrated work. Sometimes it can be difficult to catch text-to-speech narration before the title is fully produced. To prevent this from happening, it is important to listen closely at the early stages, and again before paying your producer for the final production, to ensure the narration you’re getting is human. Not sure what you’re hearing? If you’re unsure, listen to other titles they’ve produced and narrated. If you’re working with a new narrator who doesn’t have a library of established titles under their belt, request a video call with your producer to talk about the production in the early stages, and match the voice with a face. If you’re uncertain, you can always reach out to our Customer Service team for additional support.

• Audio quality. Here’s where the true importance of listening with headphones comes in. Is the audio crisp and clean? Are there any extraneous background noises like the whir of a fan, the hum of a refrigerator, electronic hiss/static, mouse clicks, chair squeaking, or a cat that wandered into the room? Does it sound like the audio has been over-processed, having a clipped or strange, flat/robotic quality? Are the levels consistent, or do you find yourself adjusting the volume often to hear what the narrator’s saying or avoid blasting out your eardrums? Not sure what good audio should sound like? Try listening to a few professionally produced audiobooks or Audible Originals to get a sense of the industry standard for audio quality.

• Errors. As a writer, you understand the importance of a second set of eyes—how they can catch things the writer might miss being too close to the project. The same is true for audio! It’s your producer’s responsibility to deliver a finished, retail-ready audiobook, but a second set of ears can catch something the producer (who has likely listened to the audio several times through) might miss. Give your audiobook a thorough listen start to finish, with good headphones and minimal distractions. Make sure the contents of each chapter matches the name, that there’s no duplication of content or missing sections, that there are no long gaps of silence or sections cut off mid-word or mid-sentence. Listen for any double takes the producer may have forgotten to take out, places where character voices get confused or are inconsistent, or mispronunciations of names, places, or terms.

And with that, we hope you're ready to open your ears and share your story with listeners everywhere!