Written by … read by … When producing an audio book, is the author the best reader; or would a professional do a better job? In pondering this, AB&P spoke with a publisher, an author who did read his own book, and a long-established author/reader pair.

‘We do try and get authors to narrate their own books where possible,’ Bolinda Publishing product manager Jill Farrer told AB&P, ‘if you’ve got any kind of name attached to the book, it makes it easier to sell.’ Jill also argued that there was a perception among the reading public that an author’s own rendition of their work is ‘truer’ than that of an actor narrator.

However, she said, ‘the cons of having authors narrate are several.’ Bolinda’s production suites are in Melbourne, but many of their authors come from interstate, meaning additional administration and costs around transport and accommodation. Timetabling is another problem. ‘Often we have to really squeeze things,’ Jill said, in order to make the busy schedules of authors and Bolinda production mesh. And, ‘actors are better at acting than authors,’ she laughed, ‘we only choose authors to narrate when they have a background in performance or public speaking.’ Recording an audio book (as Peter Hill discovered in the interview below), is not simply a matter of sitting down and reading into a microphone. Pace, inflection and modulation must all be controlled in order to give the listener the best experience possible.

Coming full circle

After years of submitting reviews to ‘one of my favourite publications,’ the London Review of Books, (and getting nought but rejection slips in return) artist—and now author—Peter Hill told them about his time as a young man working in a remote Scottish lighthouse. Now this was something the Review wanted to hear about. The editor commissioned an article and the resultant 4000 words got such a strong response from readers that Peter was encouraged to expand it into a book. Two years and a further 80,000 words later the manuscript was agented by Lyn Tranter and Random House picked up the rights for Australia and New Zealand. Stargazing: Memoirs of a Young Lighthouse Keeper was published in October of 2003.

‘A year or so ago’ ABC Audio approached Peter to see if he would be interested in recording an abridged version of Stargazing for Radio National—he was. ABC Audio’s Laurine Croasdale told AB&P that while authors are often keen to record their own titles, many are unable to do so, whether because of time commitments or the unsuitability of their voice. However, Peter passed muster and over two days recorded an abridgement of his book (that he cut down himself to a script of around 22,000 words) in 10 episodes, which went to air in August of last year.

Every episode had to be recorded twice, a process which allows the sound engineers to splice bits of one recording into the other if there is a word fumble in one recording that is clear in the second. In Peter’s case, some episodes had to be recorded three times, so by the end of the two-day session, he’d recorded the book two and a half times—a heavy load. While he was concerned that he might lose his voice, the challenges lay elsewhere. ‘The hard thing that I found was getting consistency in my voice and speed of reading,’ he told AB&P. Most audio book narrators are actors and have formal vocal training, Peter does not.

For Peter, audio books were already a part of his life. ‘I’ve got a few myself,’ he told AB&P, ‘I’m an artist and it’s quite good when I’m working on a painting to have an audio book playing in the background. I enjoy listening to them.’

Before Peter came to record his version of Stargazing, it was read for the BBC’s Book of the Week program by Royal Shakespeare Company actor David Tennant (who will take over from Christopher Ecclestone as Dr Who in the second series of the new BBC TV series—you read it here first!). Tennant chose to record using a strong Scottish accent for the narrator’s voice. Peter’s own accent is ‘a softer Glaswegian’ one and he told AB&P that his brother in Scotland has played part of both recordings to a primary school class who declared that Peter sounded like a happy man and Tennant did not!

The inspiration for Peter’s book came from the stories that he and the other lighthouse keepers would tell each other in order to stay awake during the nightshifts. It’s a lovely example of full circle that a tale that began with aural renderings of stories has now been produced in an audio version. Peter also noted to AB&P that the stories they told in the lighthouse went for around 15–20 minutes. The tracks on the audio version are all around 15 minutes long.

Playing a role

For Humphrey Bower audio books play a crucial role in his life—‘they are an important source of work for me.’ Humphrey is a Perth-based, Melbourne-raised actor, which one would imagine would make getting to Bolinda’s Melbourne studios a little time-consuming, but he has narrated around 20 Bolinda audio titles so far and there are more to come. ‘I’d done a lot of work for Vision Australia,’ Humphrey told AB&P, ‘and just started with Bolinda before I moved to Perth.’

Humphrey will be best known to audio book listeners for his work in narrating Bryce Courtenay’s books: Tandia, The Potato Factory, Tommo and Hawk, Solomon’s Song, Jessica, Four Fires, Matthew Flinders’ Cat, The Power of One, The Family Frying Pan, Smoky Joe’s Cafe and Brother Fish. Five of these—Tandia, The Potato Factory, Tommo And Hawk, Solomon’s Song, The Power of One—were all recorded in one block of continuous sessions. The Bryce Courtenay recordings won Humphrey four Earphone Awards, AudioFile magazine’s awards for the most exceptional performances reviewed in each issue.

Bryce ‘decreed’ that Humphrey would narrate his work after a number of actors and narrators had auditioned for the job and the result was so successful that he was asked back to narrate all of Bryce’s books since then that have been adapted for audio.

One of the distinctive features of Humphrey’s narration of Bryce’s work is his use of accents. ‘I think I’ve always been an accents person,’ Humphrey said, ‘I do it if I’m reading a book to my kids.’ Listening to The Power of One, for example, the switch in accents between British, Afrikaaner and black South Africans gives added authenticity to the narration. ‘For me, it’s about making sense,’ said Humphrey, ‘it’s as simple as that.’

Bryce Courtenay told AB&P that he has a policy of not rereading or listening to any of his work. So—with the exception of two pages of each book that he’s listened to in order to approve the recording—he’s never heard Humphrey reading his work. Despite that, ‘I trust him implicitly,’ said Bryce. He chose Humphrey to read his work out of all the other actors that auditioned because of the range that Humphrey has. ‘Humphrey’s range was so spectacular … it was effortless,’ enthused Bryce, ‘I felt that there was no part that he couldn’t play.’

When asked what role audio books play in his life, Bryce told AB&P, ‘I give a great deal away’—a somewhat unexpected response! It turns out that, in lieu of a fee for speaking engagements and appearances, Bryce asks for print and audio books that he then donates to various charities and groups. They then use the books as prizes for raffles and so on. A particular recipient has been groups that work with the illiterate, ‘I think they [audio books] are absolutely critical for illiterate people,’ he said, noting that his office donates somewhere in the order of 1000 audio books annually.

Readers who have listened to the free audio book sampler CD giveaway with this issue will have heard Bryce’s story about the truck driver who rang from the road to share his passion for listening to audio books while driving. It is responses like that that have made him an advocate of the form. In some of the outtakes from recording his introduction to the CD sampler, he made the following comments. ‘I find audio books are an enchantment, they allow us to go anywhere, be anywhere. For those people who unfortunately can’t read, they are an astonishment … I am delighted that more and more people are turning towards audio books for more and more reasons.’

This article from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2005, Thorpe-Bowker