When publishing a children’s book, it is a brilliant marketing strategy to produce your own audio book to accompany it. You can either give it away free for book promotion or have it available for sale alongside your book. Children (and mothers) love a great read-aloud and besides, an audio book makes your book accessible in one more medium.
All the information about the equipment and software is available on the web. Learning the technique is easy and with a few tries, you should be able to get the hang of it. So what are you waiting for? Follow these simple steps and get it going.
Hardware and Software
You will of course need a computer and some recording equipment, maybe a microphone and headphones. As for the software, there are loads available on the web. Most are easy to work with and there’s lots of information on how to. Once you are clear about how to use the equipment, you can move onto the recording. Check out the link for audacity, popular software for recording and editing sounds.
Recording
Practice the material that you’re going to record, experimenting with a variety of voice modulations. Try the high pitch, the low pitch, different types of laughs and anything else you can think of to add to the fun in the script. You can either read for various characters or assign roles to your family and friends.
Complete recording!! Save the recording on a single file for easy access. Don’t forget to set the software to record files in mp3 format. This allows your recordings to be played on any media player by the listener.
Editing
Edit the recording to make it clean as possible. Eliminate pauses and the unwanted background noise and re-record unclear parts. Add some fun elements – music and sound effects- to brighten up the narration. Explore sites on the web which will provide you with both. Check the link given below for music.
Check and recheck by listening a dozen times! Play it for friends and family and anyone else who might give you sensible feedback.
Getting it to the Listener
Once you are done with the final product, get all the recorded and edited tracks onto a CD that can be placed on a shelf. Get the packaging and the cover design for the CD. You can market the CDs online or make your audio book available for downloading.
Happy recording, happy listening.
