The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Hi, everybody, and welcome to Episode 20 of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
We’ve got a great episode for you today. We’ve got an audiobook narrator and casting director from Blackstone Audio, Mr. Grover Gardner. He’s a great guest.
He’s got over 30 years of audiobook experience today. But before we get to him, we’ve got current events. So what have you been up to, Paul?
So much! Unbelievable things happening!
All right, Jerry.
All right. Well, does that… why I went with that?
Okay. Now, a couple of exciting things, actually. I booked my first job on Podalgo this week.
So for all your… It was for an e-learning piece for a company in Holland, Netherlands. And for those of you who have been asking or worrying about your results on pay to play, sometimes it takes a long time.
I was discussing with somebody on Facebook about how I’ve been with Podalgo for two years now, and this is my first job booked. So not the greatest shooting percentage. But I stay with them because I love the founder and owner, Armin Hirschheder, so much.
And I love the way the company operates, that they are the only pay to play I’m with now. I think I mentioned that last episode. And finally, I’m glad to say I booked a job there.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
But yeah, I mean, there’s a lot to love about Podalgo. It’s probably got the most affordable plan for an online casting site. And they actually have more than one payment plan.
Most of the other ones, it’s just $400 a year. This one actually has a semiannual and a monthly one, which I feel is way more accessible. You’re not locked in.
You’re not going to regret it if your investment doesn’t come back at the end of the year. You wouldn’t be upset if you lose $20 in a month. You’re like, I tried it, it didn’t work, whatever.
Yeah, I did it month to month for quite a while, actually, and Armand will even let you put your membership on pause and not kick you out, so you don’t have to pay the monthly fee. So if you’re having a rough couple of months, you can stop the membership or pause it, and then when you’re ready, come back. So I actually have done that, too.
Yeah, and for being a one-man band, Armand is just… I mean, his customer service is flawless. He’s always available to answer questions or to help troubleshoot issues with the website.
He’s very open to listener feedback. The only thing I will say about Bedongo is that they do tend to have specific niches for the kinds of projects that they cast for. A lot of e-learning narration, a lot of narration that’s being translated from one European language into English, so overdubbing, things.
Like that. Corporate narrations, trainings, seminar audios that you might have in a big trade show audio for a boost and stuff like that. So if those aren’t niches that you’re strong in or that your voice is suitable for, you might not enjoy much success from that.
It’s just something to be mindful of. Also, since it is a foreign client, for the most part, they are looking for a mid-Atlantic neutral accent. Whatever that is exactly is debatable.
But it means as long as you’re easily understood, you don’t have any regionalisms to your voice, to your accent, then you might enjoy some success for them.
And one other thing I’d like to point out about Bodago is they do do quality checks. You actually have to have your audio approved by, I think it’s a production team, but I think it’s basically Armand listening. Probably Armand.
Right. And the standards are real. I’m here to tell you because last week I put through an audition and I got an email back from Armand saying, this audio has some issues and I’m not going to send it to the client.
And I listened back and once you know it, I copied over a breath into the room tone that I didn’t know I had done and put that through every dead space in the audition. So he was absolutely right. It sounded like garbage.
I had even more respect for the company because of that quality assurance being there. I didn’t feel slighted because he was right. It sounded like crap and he was right to point it out.
Yeah, that individual attention. Armand, if you’re listening, we love you. Thank you so much for Bodago.
So other current events, I had put together some demos for my children. I think I mentioned in one of the episodes that they were assigned to a casting agency in New Zealand because they were looking for parents who had kids around. They aren’t necessarily professionally trained voice actors yet, but they’re working towards it.
Yet. Right. So this agency was just looking for anyone who had kids because I guess they’re anxious to have some authentic voices on their roster.
So they were signed with them. And just for fun on a snow day, we put together some stuff here in the studio with my oldest two. And because I just have no hesitation about anything ever, I sent it to all my agents and said, Ed, you guys want some kids?
And I’m happy to say they were signed to four more. So I’ll give you mine. Right.
They’re now with four of my agents for a voiceover talent. So we’ll see if they get any traction. They have one audition in already and haven’t booked the job yet, but we’re hopeful.
Start earning your keep, kids.
Yeah, I was joking with one of our friends that the real reason is that I want them to understand acoustics and how much they’re banging on the floors downstairs when they’re trying to practice their roller skates in the kitchen or they’re wrestling with each other in the playroom. I can show them and say, look, your audition is ruined because of what your brother did downstairs. That’s my evil plan.
I thought you were just going to leave them in there to record and then you’re just banging pots together in the kitchen or something like that.
Well, the Whistler Room does have a lock. I think it only locks from the inside, though, so it might not work.
Careful. Don’t want them to pass out in the booth. I don’t know how good your ventilation is.
It’s pretty bad. So what’s been happening in your VO world?
Let’s see. This month, we’ve got some exciting new changes to our membership program with the Global Voice Acting Academy. We are sort of transitioning.
Originally, what we had right now, we had two peer-led workouts a month. This is an opportunity for people to work with myself or my coworker, Mario Nivale. You might have seen her on the various Facebook groups.
He’s an incredible talent and a real good ear for voiceover and some great directing. But anyways, we had two of those a month. And then we also had what was called these Elevation Q&A webinars, which is like an hour, hour and a half long webinar where you get to pick the brain of a VO pro.
Usually it’s Christina Melizia or David Rosenthal, but occasionally we’ll have another guest. But we noticed that as our membership grows, we, our attendance at our workouts started to be higher than our Q&A’s. So we’re like, huh.
So Christina Melizia had the brilliant idea, why don’t David and I lead workouts as well? So that we had like, so we officially, or effectively double our number of workouts. Everybody’s happy.
Everyone gets to practice giving and receiving feedback and getting some from a working pro as well. So everybody’s happy. So we’ll be announcing that at the beginning of the month.
And I’m really excited about it.
That’s awesome.
We also have a new coach that we’re working with, the amazing Carol Monda. She is a, does quite a bit of audio book work. She’s got 400 titles to her name, but she’s also very successful as a commercial, as a commercial actress.
She’s from New York, it’s okay. But as a commercial voiceover actress, she’s got some very large clients, like the Discovery Channel, Turner Classic Movies, the Guggenheim Museum, McDonald’s. Quite a versatile actor.
So I interviewed her yesterday to talk about an upcoming class that we have at the end of the month. So it was great, lots of fun. It’s all about subtext.
It’s for audiobook narrators. It’s called Subtext, Telling the Story Beneath the Words. So by the time this episode is released, the live webinar will have already happened on January 23rd, but you can still see the recording, but just by going to our website and purchasing it after the fact.
So if you want to know how you can… Yeah, definitely. So some more advanced techniques.
We’re trying to get those more nuanced and layered performances in your reads.
Cool. So, we will get to our featured guest in just a moment, but before we do, we’re back with this week’s…
Questionable Gear Purchase.
All right, so this month’s Questionable Gear Purchase is, I bought a 416. I’ve been lusting after them for a long time, and I finally found one at a ridiculous price. It started out almost as a joke.
I was shopping because Mo Rock, a friend of the show, was looking for one, and I said, I’m on the case. I’ll find one. So I started shopping on eBay and Reverb and Craigslist, anywhere I could find.
And right before I found this one, Mo actually bought Simon Vance’s, which is a great story, but she doesn’t need one anymore, is the bottom line. But I said I already found this one on eBay, and I said, I’m going to take it. So I brought it home and looked through all the online stuff I could find about counterfeit ones.
It looks to be legit. I actually opened it up and looked at the circuitry inside, and it looks pretty nice. So unless I’ve been duped really well, it seems to be legit.
Now, what I wanted to do was actually a comparison between the mic I have been using for commercials and promo and video game stuff. The Audio Technica AT4073A, it compares very favorably to the 416. I actually have them here lined up side by side with a mic switcher.
So I’m going to do a quick read with both. And you, the audience, tell me which one you think is better or if there’s really much of a difference. So first on the 4073A.
We’ve dreamed of this since Star Trek’s Holodeck. Immersive worlds that fool our senses and create augmented and virtual realities all around us. We want to interact with these systems and environments naturally.
Talk like we usually talk and use our body to convey meaning. And now I’m on the 416. Same bit of text.
We’ve dreamed of this since Star Trek’s Holodeck. Immersive worlds that fool our senses and create augmented and virtual realities all around us. We want to interact with these systems and environments naturally.
Talk like we usually talk and use our body to convey meaning. Alright, so again, that’s those two mics side by side. Let me know if you think there’s much of a difference.
I’ll tell you my opinion. They sound almost freaking identical. The audio technique is an amazing value for what it is.
And I’m having a hard time justifying having the 416 because they sound so close. But let me know what you think. Send us a comment on the website and we’d love to hear.
It’s a tough choice. I mean, I personally felt like the 416 had a little bit more clarity and might have been more sensitive. But as you’ve told us many times before, you don’t necessarily want the most sensitive mic.
And it’s a tough call because, I mean, it is an industry standard and it could help your brand if you list that on your website, but you have it.
That’s kind of the reason I’m thinking about keeping it. Yeah, I know. Okay, I finished.
I thought I know what you’re going to say.
I was just saying, some producers don’t give a crap about what mic you use, but others do want to know that you at least have some form of professionally recognized microphone. So, I mean, that’s a tough call. But I will say, because I use my 416 for just about everything, and it’s a wonderful travel mic, too.
It’s durable, it’s lightweight, it works well with any interface, even the budget ones, and I think it’s just a useful mic to have if you can afford it. But that 473 might not have been as accurate. It had the kind of…
I don’t know, I just want to say it had this kind of smooth… It smoothed the edges, that’s what it was. It was very pleasant on your voice.
So it’s a tough call. And I’d love to hear our audience’s thoughts as well. All right, so we will get to our interview with Grover Gardner in a few minutes.
But before that, we have our VO Meter shtick with fellow talent Stephen George. And Stephen’s going to tell you about how a little bit of confidence went a long way in joining his latest agency roster.
Hey, everybody, it’s time for the VO Meter shtick.
What did he say?
It’s time for the VO Meter shtick. Oh, nevermind.
The VO Meter shtick? Oh, got it.
This episode’s VO Meter shtick features Stephen George, voice talent based in Georgia. And he’s going to tell us about his very first agency and the unique way he went about getting signed to it. So Stephen, welcome.
And can you tell us how you got that agent?
Absolutely, Paul. Thanks for having me on. I was doing some research on some agencies because I had never really registered for one and really kind of wanted to get to know what was in the community and who was attached to what and that sort of thing.
And I came across this one and clicked on it and was reading around, looking at some of the staff and they also had a blog. So I jumped into their blog section and they had a fairly recent post about how they were trying to help their VO talent protect the rates that they were being paid. And that’s not something in this day and age that you hear a lot about.
And so I was really impressed with them with that. So I immediately sent them an email and just said, you know, hey, I appreciate everything you’re doing for us and trying to protect the rates. And that was it.
I didn’t ask to join any of that. So I sent them the email and didn’t get any response, which is not unordinary for us, right? We send out dozens of emails every week.
We might hear back from one. So it was not a big deal. Well, so I kept moving forward in my career and then over the holidays, I happened to be traveling where this particular agency was and on their website, it had said, you know, feel free to stop by and say hello if you’re a talent and be sure to drop off your demo when you’re here.
So I just thought, well, you know, I’ve got a couple of hours. I’m going to go in there. What do I have to lose?
So I walked in and introduced myself to the talent coordinator who was beyond friendly to me. And they also had one of their audio engineers there. Now, because it was the holidays, it was very slow and in the middle of the afternoon.
So they were very respectful of me just kind of walking in off the street. And they offered to even give me a tour around the facility. And when I…
before I left, they asked me to make sure that I submitted and follow up with them in a couple of days. And it was really a situation where, like I said, I had nothing to lose. And it was just an amazing opportunity.
And I sent them a follow up email two days later that just said, you know, thanks for letting me sort of bombard you unannounced in the middle of the afternoon one day and giving me a tour of your facility. I really appreciate it. And here’s the demo that you asked for.
Within a week, I heard back and they said that the demo was where they wanted it to be and asked me to join their agency. This was my first agency attempt. I had never even thought about going to an agency before because I was still fairly new in voice over and I wanted to make sure that I had the talent that I thought could bring something to the table.
A lot of people are gung ho about asking to join agencies and I really wanted to make sure that I had something to bring to the table. And like I said, the other piece, the most important piece of that for me is, I did that research up front. I would really just like to say thanks to Kelly and Jarrar and Ross.
They were all super nice and I’m excited to work for them and to see what we have in store in the future.
Hello, everyone, we are now moving into our Bodago Call Conference Room with the illustrious Grover Gardner. Now, Grover has over 30 years of experience in the audiobook industry. He’s won numerous awards for his narrations.
He’s got over 20 audio file earphone awards. He’s been nominated for multiple audio awards from the Audiobook Publishers Association, and has actually won one as well. He was even named the Audiobook Narrator of the Year in 2005 by Publishers Weekly.
So I’m sure he’s got a wealth of information to share with you guys. So let me present to you our guest, Grover Gardner. How are you doing, Grover?
Fine, thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.
So, Grover, our first question, really, that we ask all of our guests, but our first question for you this evening is, how did you get started in the audiobook business as a whole?
Well, I was a big reader when I was a teenager, and I was also interested in acting. Well, I was, and I thought that reading books out loud would be the greatest thing ever. And when I was in graduate school in Washington, DC, studying acting, I had decided that I’d never wanted to wait tables.
I thought there was something better I could do. And I found out that there was a studio at the Library of Congress where they recorded books for the blind and physically handicapped. And I thought, wow, what a great job that would be.
It took me about six months to work up the nerve to call them and ask for an audition because I knew there were brilliant people like George Goodell and Alexander Skourby and people like that reading books. I thought, well, I don’t have a chance. But I called up and they gave me an audition and I went in and I read and they hired me on the spot, which I later found out was very unusual.
Usually took six to eight months to get cleared for the work by their numerous red tape things. Anyway, so I started doing that and then about three years, that was 1981. And about three, four years after that, a woman who worked there, Flo Gibson, started her own audio book company so she could record her favorite classics.
And that was called Audiobook Contractors. And to support her own catalog and work, she decided to outsource to a company called Books on Tape, which was one of the big early audio book companies in California. And so she got a contract with them and she brought a bunch of us over from the Library of Congress studio.
And we would go over in the afternoons and record in her studio. And that led to work in the commercial audio book industry, basically. That was kind of it.
And then Books on Tape asked me to work at home because they needed more books. And that was something publishers were starting to do, was to set people up with cassette decks and things in their house. Nice equipment, but not too elaborate.
And so I started working at home in a studio, take a powder room and turn it in to put pillows on the walls. And then one thing led to another. So that was kind of how I got started.
And then I did things for Books on Tape for many years. And then Blackstone Audio contacted me and I did work with them. And then the big publishers started getting into the business and not hiring celebrities, but just wanting regular old narrators to do their books.
And so I started working for them. And then in late 2006, Blackstone, who I’d worked for for a long time, asked me to come out to Oregon and give a seminar for… They had set up a studio and they had hired a group of local narrators, actors, narrators.
But they wanted to give them some training. And so a couple other people who had come, who lived on the West Coast, and they said, maybe you could come out and work with these people for a few days. So we went out for a week, took my three-year-old daughter and my wife, invited us all out, and we did lovely sessions during the day.
And at the end of the week, the owner said, boy, I sure could use somebody to run this studio. And I said, oh yeah. And my wife said, honey, I think he’s offering you a job.
Well, it had just never occurred to me. I was a freelance narrator. What do I, what, what?
So anyway, that’s, so three, six, about three months after that, to my wife’s shock and surprise, we moved out to Oregon. And I’ve been at Blackstone as a producer ever since, and narrator.
Wonderful.
I was looking at your background and saw you’d spent some time in Baltimore at the Everyman Theater. And I don’t know if you know, but I’m based in Baltimore now. So did you move from Baltimore to Oregon?
No, we were always in the, we were in DC area in Maryland, just outside of DC in the highest field.
Okay, so you commuted to work at Everyman. I did. Yes, I drove.
Well, you know, that’s not, now people here say, oh, you mean you drove all the way over to, you know, Home Depot. And I said, there’s five minutes. It doesn’t bother me at all.
After years of commuting.
Yeah, you’re well conditioned on the Beltway.
Yeah, right, exactly. So yes, I did. And I worked at Woolly Mammoth Theatre for a long time.
I was a director and actor there. In Washington. And so I did a lot of theatre, but when my daughter was born, I said, well, that’s enough of that.
And I had plenty of audiobook work and decided I didn’t want to give up my weekends and evenings anymore. So that was that.
Wonderful. So you just mentioned that you did have some directing experience as well. Was it difficult to sort of transition into that more casting role versus narrating audiobooks?
No, not with my theatre background and casting because it’s really like casting the play or casting a movie. So, no, I did. In fact, I enjoyed it.
It was easier than casting a play. You only had to cast one person, you know, who you knew kind of would be able to handle the book well and had the right vocal quality and the right sensibilities for the book and would take the right approach. And so when you only have to cast one, that’s easier than 10 or 20.
Yeah, certainly.
But I look at them as the same thing. What you’re really doing, you’re casting not just a voice, but you’re casting a director. You’re casting a whole bunch of actors, all wrapped up into one person.
And you get to know the people who have different aspects of the skill set, and the kinds of books that you know they’re going to be comfortable doing. You know, I’ve been given books that I’m not… I wish somebody had thought a little harder.
Not often, but in the past, I’ve gotten books and thought, boy, I don’t want to turn this down, but I’m not, you know…
I’m not the guy.
No, I’m not the guy to do this. But I have turned down work. And you know, someone offered me a book about Vietnam grunts, you know, in the 60s, young, 27, and I said, no, I’m not the right voice for that.
You know, it was for a younger narrator with a tougher approach, not me. So anyway, but that’s what you’re doing is you’re really casting somebody who you know in their head just has a familiarity with the style and the people and the characters involved and is going to be able to direct the book themselves.
So what is the casting process for an audiobook like?
Well, you get the book, the audiobook, your publisher licenses a book, the rights, audio rights to a book, and then they send it down to the recording department and we take a look at it. I work with Brian Barney, who’s actually my boss, and he’s in New York and we have a bunch of people who work with us in the office. We’ve got some engineers who run our studios and kind of divvy things up and say, oh, you take these books, I’ll take these and so on.
And then we read the book and look at what’s involved, vocabulary, research. If it needs a lot of research, we have a research staff and we send it to them to do the research because we don’t want the narrators to take the time or to worry about getting things wrong.
Sounds wonderful.
Well, yeah, we’re pretty good about that. Then you read the book and you try to think of how it should sound. I mean, we have a stable of people that we work with, and it’s big.
They’re not all people we work with regularly, on and off. Sometimes, you know, they work with us all the time. Sometimes it’s just people we use occasionally.
But you try to think of a… You try to hear the voice of the book in your head. And then you reach out to a few people.
And hopefully, you know, you might ask for some auditions. Sometimes the author wants approval or the publisher wants approval over the narrator. So you find two or three people, four people who might be suitable and let them decide.
That’s much more common nowadays. Authors are much more involved in audio books. They used to not even know, you know, that their books were in audio.
They had no idea. But now they’re very aware of audio productions. And so it’s kind of an instinctive thing.
And you try to think of somebody you know, somebody you trust. You know, audiobook narrator relationships are based on trust. You’re handing somebody a 14, 10, 14, 20, 30-hour project, and you’re sending it off to them.
And three or four or six weeks later, you’ve got to know what you’re going to get back. You can’t take a risk. I mean, you know, it depends.
If you’re trying somebody new, you’re certainly not going to send them a project so difficult that you don’t know what you’re going to get back.
Well, that brings up a question. Sorry. Go ahead.
Finish up. When you’re sending out a project to somebody new, let’s say, or even if it’s somebody that’s been with you for a while, but it’s something you’re not quite sure how they’re going to approach it, what kind of choices they’re going to make, do you require check-ins, sort of like milestones? Five hours, six hours in, let me hear how it’s going?
No, no, I probably should, sometimes. Occasionally, yeah, occasionally I’ve said, oh, you know, I should have, you know, checked on that. But, you know, we have really good proofing staff, and so they’ll raise, often they’ll raise an alarm.
If there’s something going awry with the book, they’ll drop me an email and say, you know, the narrator’s kind of made this choice, I’m not sure, and it’s like, oh, okay. And you can always go back and fix things. It’s not the end of the world.
It’s just you’d rather not spend the time or waste anybody else’s time. But no, most of the time, people, you get some surprises occasionally, but most of the time, I feel comfortable. Once I’ve discussed the project and we’ve agreed, and sometimes I’ll say, send me a little sample.
But I kind of, you sense once somebody says, I understand, I get it. I say, I know what you want, and then it’s like, okay, fine. So no, don’t worry about it too much.
Once you’ve established that relationship.
So what I’m curious about, because I mean, you’ve been involved with audiobooks almost since the industry’s inception. So you’ve seen it change and evolve over the decades. Nowadays, we’ve got this, like, we have a real large change with the sort of advent of narrators recording from home and online publishers like ACX.
I’m curious if that’s really affected the production process from your side of things, from like the publisher’s perspective.
No. Well, you know, they started out, nobody, the business started out with home narrators. I mean, a company like Books on Tape or Blackstone, to produce unabridged audiobooks, there was no way you were going to spend money on a studio and a director.
Oh no. I mean, a 30 hour, 40 hour history book, like a Will Durant, you couldn’t afford to do that. The big publishers only did abridged versions and they would usually hire a celebrity or a semi-celebrity or, you know, someone like that to record two or three hour versions of the books.
Now, this was before CDs and before downloads. But the whole business started out mostly with home narrators, people sitting in their closets, as they used to disdainfully say, some of the big publishers. So we don’t use people who work in their closets.
Well, now they don’t have a problem with it because they want to save the money. But so, I mean, that was actually the modus operandi for the most part. Then the big publishers got into the business and they realized that they could make money on this.
So when CDs came around, they said, oh, we’re going to get a studio. We need perfect sound. We need to hire a real professional actor, narrator and all this stuff.
So that was fine. But the rest of us just kept, you know, going along with our big, long, unabridged books. What really changed everything was download.
That’s what changed the audio book business, was audible. And that was a huge change. And it just meant, it meant that all of a sudden, everybody was playing on a level field.
In other words, the independent audio book companies, audio book publishers like Blackstone and Books on Tape and Recorded Books, they had this unabridged thing, and the library market, and they made huge amounts of money from libraries, selling these big boxes of cassettes, plastic cases for $200, and all these library plans. That was a huge business. The download thing changed all that.
All of a sudden, everybody was playing on the same field. And so, it didn’t cost a big publisher, had no hesitation to put out an unabridged audio book. So all of a sudden, the smaller companies are competing for unabridged rights for all the books with the bigger publishers.
So that was an enormous change. But it hasn’t changed the way we produce books, and I’m actually kind of impressed for the most part. I’m impressed with the industry overall.
The standards have remained pretty high, but you have audio book listeners. You don’t get away with anything. They’re tough.
They’re a tough crowd.
I know, I’ve read my reviews.
Yeah, I know. They are. I’m here all week, folks.
They are a tough crowd, and I think that they have kept and audible with their ratings right up there, has, you know, they’ve kept the publishers honest. So because the feedback is immediate and vociferous. So I think that has helped to remind publishers that there’s a very, very selective and picky audience out there for books.
You know, you change the narrator in a series, or you don’t give somebody, you know, someone mispronounces a lot of books and a lot of words in a history book or something. Boy, they’re merciless. So, you know, the listeners, audiobook fans, keep everybody honest.
Well, Grover, you mentioned that the industry started very much with home narrators. Do you feel like the pendulum is swinging the other way now that people like Burt Reynolds, Betty White, even Bruce Springsteen are narrating their own audiobooks?
No, no, it hasn’t changed a thing. You know, it takes a tiny bite. More and more authors want to read their books, even if they’re not celebrities.
And especially for nonfiction. And that’s… you know, you really try to discourage them.
It’s awfully hard work. It is. It’s grueling.
And they don’t understand. They do it, and then they say, oh, that was exhausting. And we say, yes, yes, we told you it was.
And, you know, listeners prefer, unless you really need that authenticity of, you know, like a very personal story or something. Listeners really prefer a professional reader. They, you know, and you look on Audible and they say, oh, couldn’t they have gotten a pro to read this?
Why does the author have to read it? So sometimes it works out and some of them are good, but by and large, you know, as a producer, you really say, are you really, this is not a good idea. But no, no, it hasn’t, my gosh, I mean, we’re producing…
I mean, how many audiobooks a year are being produced now? We do, Audible must do 2,000 or I don’t know, an enormous number of books. Blackstone does, we do 60 to 70 titles a month.
So what is that? Six times, 700, you know, we probably do 800, 2,000 titles a year.
Wow, and that’s just one company, yeah.
Yeah, so you’re talking, I don’t know, 10,000 audiobooks a year coming out? No, between Audible and ACX and all that stuff, no. No, I know, the fact that Betty White reads her book doesn’t…
It’s too expensive. Actually, you know, in the old days, when they did abridged books, then you were competing with stars. And a big publisher like Random House or Penguin would never hire just a no-name narrator.
They would always get a well-known actor to read their abridged audiobooks. But they can’t do that now. They can’t afford to do that.
They’ll do it for a big… You know, there’s some celebrity readers, Will Patton, Ed Herman was gone now, very sadly, but you know, he was a wonderful reader. Will Patton’s a great reader.
Joe Montania did a lot of audiobooks. Tony Roberts does some books. You know, they’re out there, but they’re not taking the work away from us, the rest of us.
There’s plenty of work out there.
So with this sheer number of titles every year, I’m sure you guys are always on the lookout for new talent, and I’m sure you have plenty of talent reaching out to you, trying to see how to get on your roster. What kind of skills or qualities do you look for when you, for people that you try to hire on your rosters?
Now, now you ask the question, and you’re gonna get my answer. And a lot of people won’t like it. This is not a voiceover job.
And your listeners and friends need to understand that. This has nothing to do with voiceover work. And I’ve done voiceover work, but I don’t care for it.
It’s easier to do audio books, even though it’s more work, it’s just easier. This is not a voiceover job. The quality of your voice is really irrelevant.
It’s irrelevant. It’s not about having a nice voice. It’s the prerequisite is, yes, you need to have a voice that’s pleasant to listen to.
But that’s just the beginning. And the best audio book narrators have very unique voices. If you listen to George Goodell, or Ed Herman, or Frank Muller, or Will Patton, or any of the other really terrific narrators, they’re very different.
Mark Bramhall, I’m just throwing out some names. Alyssa Bresnahan, she’s a funny, quirky voice and a quirky approach, which she has, it is. But it’s a voice that reflects who those people are.
They’re interesting voices. They’re not beautiful voices. They’re interesting.
They reflect who those people are and how they think and how they treat the material, how they absorb the material, and how they convey the meaning of the story and the meaning of the book. So to get one thing out of the way people say, my friends tell me I have a nice voice. I should read audio books.
Well, it has very little to do with it. The second thing is, no, it doesn’t. It’s about a sensibility.
The nice voice is just the one piece, tiny little piece, but it’s about a sensibility. It’s about acting skills. You have to be a good actor.
And we commonly say in the business that really stage actors almost invariably make the best audio book narrators. They’re well-read by and large. They’re trained.
They go through a lot of training. They’ve studied Shakespeare, plays, language, different languages. They participate in a…
Stage actors participate in a process where they understand the whole arc of the process, of the play. They’re there all the time. You know, it’s not like a film where you’re brought in, it’s like, just do this scene, make a face.
Okay, here’s your little bit of the script and you don’t even see the whole script. And you just do this little bit and then goodbye, you’re done. Stage actors participate in a process of storytelling.
And they learn how to effectively tell a story and what it is to dramatize something. And they’re also very well, they’re used to playing multiple roles in the same evening sometimes. They’re used to doing character work.
They’re used to changing, immersing themselves in a character at the drop of a hat. They’re very good at audio book narration because they also, they watch directors work. Sometimes they are directors and they understand what it means to direct a story.
To cast a story in your head. They understand what it means to populate the story with people. They understand what it means to visualize the settings and wherever it is the story takes place.
So that’s one thing. It doesn’t pay all that well, not nearly as well as voiceover work, but probably for the average voiceover person or person trying to get into the voiceover business, it’s not bad pay compared to not working at all. And voiceover work, it’s such a competitive business.
But that’s the thing that it’s not a voiceover job and you can’t approach it. So when you approach me and say, I have a great voice and you send me a thing where I’m supposed to listen to your voice, I almost immediately lose interest because it tells me that you don’t understand what audio book work entails. Now, I’m not, don’t misunderstand.
I’m not saying voiceover people are bad at it. That’s not the case. And I’m not saying that I never consider people who go do voiceover work.
Some of the best narrators I know, Ed Herman did voiceover work. He was wonderful at it. But he didn’t, I think a lot of people trying to get into the voiceover business are encouraged, and you can correct me if I’m wrong.
They’re encouraged to develop a sound that distinguishes them from other people.
Now that’s the exact coaching almost everybody gets.
Right? Well, here’s the problem. You start focusing on that sound.
Now I went to the Voice Arts Awards last year in Los Angeles, and that’s a different world. It’s amazing. And it was actually very interesting to me.
And what was really interesting to me was that they’re guest of honor for the evening. And I’m not mocking. Please don’t misunderstand.
I thought it was fascinating. And I understand why they did this, but their guest of honor for the evening was the guy who, the ringmaster. And I forget his name.
I apologize because he’s pretty well known in the voiceover business. But the guy who developed the tag phrase, are you ready to rumble?
Oh, Michael Buffer. There you go.
And that was, he was their guest for the evening. And it was a big, they had a movie about him. And they, and he came out and he was lovely.
He was elegant and he was, you know, gave a beautiful speech and he was very generous. And everybody talked about what a lovely guy he was. But the whole point of the thing was, here’s a guy who conquered the voice, you know, who became a famous voice.
And this is, you know, something you should learn from or something, you know, you should admire. Well, here’s the thing, in the audiobook business, that’s the farthest thing from what you want. Does that make sense?
No, it makes perfect sense.
I mean, you guys, you want like a chameleon who can honor the author’s intent more than you want someone who just sounds pleasing to the ear.
Yeah, you know, what’s a compliment to me was when somebody says, I don’t remember who the narrator was, but the book was terrific.
It’s true. I’d rather people don’t even remember my name. But if they say, well, that was a wonderful story, that was a great book.
I forget the narrator’s name, but it was just, it was great to listen to. Well, great, you know, because then I’ve done my job. No news is good news in this business.
So that’s the thing for, it’s something that I had. Now that doesn’t mean the people who pursue a voiceover career can’t do audio books. That’s not true.
A lot of them do. Ray Chase, I don’t know if you know him. He does a lot of video game stuff and big time stuff.
He’s a wonderful narrator. And in fact, he just said, you know, guys, I can’t do books anymore because I’m so busy. And I was ready to cry because he was terribly good at audio book work, but he doesn’t have time.
And he’s making more money and making more quickly, you know, doing his video game stuff. So they can’t, they do do it. You can’t, it’s, the problem is if you don’t have the flexibility or the understanding to distinguish between the two and to make that crossover.
Ed Herman could do it because when Ed Herman did voiceover work, who did he sound like? He sounded like Ed Herman, right?
Well, yeah, that’s the gold, that’s what you, the golden rule is the same.
That’s the gold standard, right? Exactly. Alexander Scorby, he sounded like Alexander Scorby.
They didn’t put on something to try to attract attention, they just were who they were. And that’s of course, that’s a gold standard in the voiceover business, but it’s very difficult to achieve, I think.
It is.
And so people work to establish a sound that makes them. Now, here’s the difficult thing is when you come over into audiobooks, you have to forget that because here’s the rule. Whatever, as an audiobook reader, narrator, whatever you’re thinking about is what I hear.
And I want you to remember that because it’s absolutely rock solid truth. Whatever you’re thinking about, that’s all I hear as a listener. So if you’re thinking about how your voice sounds as you’re reading the book and how you’re making the sentence such an interesting inflection, you know what I hear?
I hear that.
And by contrast, when I’m thinking about when I’m making the kids for dinner, I hear that when I play it back too.
Well, exactly. But if you’re thinking about where this guy is, he walked down the stairs and he opened the door, the postman was there. Suddenly the postman pulled out a gun and waved it in the air.
He started screaming. The postman was screaming. Why was he screaming at him?
He looked around the neighborhood and he couldn’t understand. See, I’m visualizing that in my head. And you can see it.
And the best narrators, I can hear a visualizer in a second because I know exactly where their head is. And their head is in picturing everything that’s going on in that book. And if they’re doing it, I can do it.
If they see it, I see it. But if all they’re thinking about is how good their voice sounds or how nice they’re making that book sound, that’s all I hear. And I have to work to get past that.
I have to concentrate. I have to say, okay, God, this guy’s voice is getting in the way. But I’ll try to listen and try to get the story.
But it’s just distracting. I can’t lose myself in the book. So, and it’s hard because some people go into the voiceover business because they have a voice that draws a lot of attention.
And that’s why they go into the voiceover business because they have a really interesting voice. Okay, whatever. But when you turn around and think about audiobook work, it’s hard to get away from that for some people.
So, let me move on to the question about who, how, and how do I get people’s attention.
It’s a very strange business. There’s a lot of word of mouth. Oh, I have a friend who’s an actor, and I think he’d be really good at audiobook work.
You should audition him. He reads a lot, and he’s really smart. And he reads a lot.
That’s always a good sign. When longtime narrators recommend somebody to me, they don’t say, this person has a great voice. They say, he’s a really good actor, or she’s a really good actress.
And she has a nice voice, but that’s not the emphasis. So anyway, word of mouth, people get recommended to us. You know, Bronson Pinchot was in a show with a guy who worked with us, Ray Porter, who worked with us, narrating.
And he said, you know, I think Bronson would be a really good narrator. Well, he’s brilliant. And he’s very, very busy now.
ACX works. It’s a great training ground. And I’ll tell you, if you can deal with authors and all that stuff that you have to deal with on ACX, you’ve got a good head start in the business.
Some people, you know, I’ll get a demo from someone who says, I’ve done 10, 12, 20 books on ACX and I’m interested. Sometimes I think it’s good. Sometimes I think they need more work and more practice.
You can send… You know, it’s a catch-22. It’s hard to get work as an audiobook narrator unless you work as an audiobook narrator.
But you know, you can scout around. The thing is, you can try small publishers. If you can move your way toward…
If you’re doing some industrial work, industrial narration, even like training films or training audios, things like that, that’s a good way to start. If you’re good at conveying information, if you’re doing industrials and you’re good at that information thing, that’s a good start. And for me, that’s sometimes a key.
You may not have done an audio book, but I listen to some industrial work that you’ve done, educational work, something like that, and I say, yeah, you’re pretty good at that. And that can lead me to a motivational book or a non-fiction, a self-help book, something along those lines. And that’s one way to transition in.
Look for small publishers, independent publishers, even not on ACX, but outside of that. If you’re interested… Generally, to me, if somebody’s interested in industrial work, especially in training or informational or, you know, like manuals and things, where you really have to be clear, you have to be really good at settling down, not overdoing it and really selling the…
really conveying the information of the book. To me, that’s a good head start. So if that’s something that you’re currently doing or something that you’re interested in, that’s another doorway to me to do it.
Now, if you’re doing character voices, if you’re doing video work, video game, character commercial work, that kind of thing, that can work too, but you have to be careful because again, it’s not about how clever you are with character voices. It’s about telling a story. I recently did a training session with a guy who was…
boy, he said, I’m really good at character voices. I’m really good. And I said, oh, that’s nice, but you got to be better than that.
And he just desperately wanted to show off how good his character voices were. And I said, you know, that doesn’t matter. It’s really…
it’s a nice plus if you can do them. But this is not what this is about. And I really had to kind of hammer at him and say, it’s not about how good your character voices are.
It’s about the story, you know, and what’s happening. We, as listeners, we have to be able to see what’s going on in the book. It’s the only chance we have to understand the story and to enjoy ourselves.
And if you’re busy, you know, showing off, that misses the whole point, you know?
So it’s not for people looking for validation.
No, it isn’t. And you get that sometimes. You know, you say, well, you get it.
Someone sends an audition and you say, well, it’s not bad, but you’ve got to kind of lose that voice over sound. You’ve got to not worry so much about the character. Well, I have done this for 25 years and I have, you know, and it’s like, well, I’m sure you have, but you can’t be defensive.
You know, when you send something off to an audio book company and they send back a reply and say, well, you need more work. You kind of relax a little bit. There’s too much energy.
You can’t either listen to them or don’t. But if you don’t, you’re not going to get anywhere. They’re very honest.
The other thing, the Santa Claus video with the ho ho ho, and he has to do it 500 different ways, and there are 18 people in the studio giving him suggestions on how to say ho ho ho. Well, we’ve all been through that. I’ve been in sessions like that where it’s like, can you say the a little differently?
And people are breathing down your neck. And that’s the voiceover business. And those people, they want what they want for very specific reasons, and we all understand that.
But the audiobook business isn’t like that. It’s not at all. People are looking to you to say, can you tell me a 12-hour story?
Can you relax and sit back and take charge and tell me a 12-hour story so that I can just… so that I can sit back and relax and just take it in? Can you do that?
Because if you can, that’s all we want. We don’t want to… We’re not going to tell you every…
to change every word or, you know, that you need to be a little higher or a little lower or, you know, any of that. We’re going to trust you to do it. The question is, can you do it?
Can you tell me a story and make me forget that I’m listening to you?
That’s amazing advice. I’m just like scribbling pages of notes right now. And I hope our listeners are too, because this is just…
you’re really just blowing up any misconceptions that people might have about trying to join the industry. So I really appreciate all of the knowledge you’re sharing with us today.
You’re welcome. The best producers will tell you, audiobook producers, when they get an audition, what they’ll do is they’ll put it in. And one producer spelled this out for me very clearly.
She said, I put the CD in my little boombox in my office, and I listen for about a minute. And if I get interested in the story and keep listening, I know that I have a potential. If I don’t, and I want to, you know, if I’m not interested and I turn it off after a minute, that’s that.
And she said, I listen to see how quickly I forget that that person is reading to me.
So simple, but so stage.
Oh, it’s hard. That’s hard, though. It’s hard because you have to you have to you have to forget about how you sound.
And that’s one of the that’s one of the hardest things for voice over people to do because it’s drilled into them that you have to pay meticulous attention to how you sound. But in order to do that, in the studio book work, you have to forget and you have to practice and practice and practice. Even someone who has good potential, they’ll come in the studio and you can still tell that there’s hesitation, that they’re, you know, they’re listening to themselves and they’re stopping themselves.
And you say, don’t do that. Just keep going, keep going, keep going. And after three, four, five books or ten books, all of a sudden it clicks in and you say, you know what, I don’t have to think about this anymore.
I don’t have to think about how I sound. I just have to get into the story and picture it in my head and just read the characters because that guy sounds like this because, you know, he weighs 400 pounds and this person sounds like this because he’s really short and he’s really small and he wears little thin glasses, you know. So all of that stuff is just coming out of how you visualize a story.
People say, should I pause more? Should I go faster? Should I go slower?
What do you… What do you see? What do you see in your head?
You know, those are… Those are choices… Those are things that have to come organically out of your sense of how you see the story happening in your head.
And then you just tell that story and go. And sometimes, yes, you need to slow down a little bit or you read too fast. But those are sort of overall adjustments.
But should I pause here? I don’t know. Do you need a pause there?
Is there something happening in the pause? Is he going to answer the door? You know, it’s like the old joke was that…
I forget who it was. One of the New Yorker writers at the Algonquin Roundtable, they were arguing about a comma. You know, he got up comma and went to the door.
And someone said, well, you know, why do you need a comma there? Because he has to have time to put his napkin on the table. He got up and went to the door, which was a joke, you know, that they were kidding each other about.
But it’s true. Do you need a pause? Because the main character is thinking for a moment or…
You know, all that has to be organic. It all has to come out. Right.
Does it help me as a listener visualize the story that’s going on? You know, I don’t hug the microphone. Don’t hug the microphone.
Because again, you’re worried about, oh, you’ve got to get nice, tight sound, deep bass on the microphone. I’m going to talk real close. No, put it away.
Get it back. Get it back afoot. Get it back 18 inches.
You know, seriously. And move. That’s another thing I’ve had people come in and say, well, you know, I just feel like I have to just be so careful about the mic.
Oh, forget it. No, you don’t. I’m all over the place when I…
You know, if someone’s calling from across the room, I turn my head. You know, hey, over there, you know. You have to use the microphone.
I gesture. I move my head. I’m terrible.
People say, how can you move so much in the booth? But, you know, I’m aware of the microphone, and I’m always directing my energy toward the microphone. But I don’t sit still.
I move around a lot. And it’s all kind of controlled. But that’s because I’m doing dialogue.
And one person’s sort of on this side of the room, and this person’s over on this side of the room. So it’s all being played out in my head visually. Does that make sense?
Well, it does.
I don’t want to go on too long about it.
No, no. Believe me, it’s just pure gold. And we’re just sort of sitting here, gap jawed, taking it all in.
We’re at rapt attention. Yeah, don’t worry.
But we have been talking for about 50 minutes now, so I don’t want to hold you up for too long. And there was one more question we wanted to ask. I think I know the answer given what you’ve just told us.
But given your vast experience, I want to hear your take on this. How do you think artificial intelligence and speech synthesization will affect the audiobook industry, if at all?
Well, they have a long way to go, for one thing. I just heard there’s a new thing called TACO or something where they come very close to the human voice. Here’s the thing.
When it can do… You know somebody at Amazon or Audible is working feverishly day and night on this thing. There are two things, I think.
It’s possible that they’ll develop something that will comfortably and convincingly read nonfiction. When it can do accents and character voices and convey emotion, well, maybe I’ll be worried. But I think there are ways from that.
The second thing is that you’re going to have to convince authors that a machine can read their book, their precious work of art, better than a human being. And that’s going to take some work. It’s going to have to be absolutely indistinguishable.
And I’m talking about for a complicated novel with a huge cast of characters. You know, you’re going to have to convince the author that no one’s going to know the difference or that the machine cares. That’s the other thing.
The machine doesn’t care about how your book sounds. It’s just doing the job.
And my only worry is that convincing will be done by price, where, like you said, Audible or Amazon will say, you know what, it’s free to use. And then we’re all sunk.
Free for who?
For the author. I mean, if they didn’t have to hire a narrator, let’s just say Amazon rolls it into the membership.
Oh, into ACX or something like that? Yes, exactly. Oh, well, that’s possible.
For ACX, yes. I think for any established author, they’re not going to buy a machine reading their book. And then you have to convince listeners that they’re actually getting the best product that they can.
I’m not… well, I’m old enough that I’m not going to worry about it too much.
Gotcha.
Because I think they have a ways to go. For younger guys, I don’t know, they said Pixar. That we’re going to…
there wouldn’t be any more acting jobs. Because everything was going to be animated. Well, it’s not true.
I’m sure there are people who take advantage of it. You know, it would be great for textbooks, for maybe for some non-fiction stuff. I don’t know.
They keep saying the machines are going to replace us, or, you know, animation is going to replace actors, and it hasn’t happened. And I just think there are some aspects, I mean, there are just some aspects of the arts, and of books and literature and things where people, they really just don’t want to hear a machine read to them. And you might be able to fool them, but if they find out it’s a machine, they just won’t be happy.
Well, let’s hope for all our sake you’re right.
Yeah.
I don’t know.
I don’t worry. There might be… I could be wrong, and there might be some use for it, but I mean, I’m trying to imagine like Robert Caro, those Lyndon Johnson biographies, like Volume 5, if it ever comes out, being done by a machine.
I just can’t imagine. Maybe for some people it would be good enough, but it wouldn’t capture what he’s put into those books. I don’t know.
So maybe you guys should worry about it. I don’t know. You’re younger than I am, but I don’t know.
I think I’ll hold out until then, but I think it’s going to be a tough sell.
How do you teach a robot to tell a story?
Well, that’s what I don’t understand. A character has a German accent or a French accent, or… I don’t know.
Not to underestimate it. They’re very smart about what they can do with these things, but I don’t know. It’s hard for me to imagine enjoying listening to a robot telling a story, but I could be wrong.
And since we’re recording this, and they might be listening 50 years in the future, we have no disrespect for our robot overlords.
No, seriously, I love you guys, whoever you are.
Well, I love your idea about us somehow getting it to co-exist, like having essentially automated narrators for projects that real people wouldn’t want to narrate. So maybe we can find that golden medium at some point.
Thank you guys. It’s been great.
Yeah, I just wanted to thank you so much. I mean, this has been a real treat. And just, like I said, just destroying those misconceptions about people who might be trying to get into audiobooks is like supplementary income or like an easy way to get into voiceover.
Not for you. People who are natural storytellers or want to develop their storytelling ability and who have solid acting and really want to just author, or excuse me, honor the author’s story. Then audiobooks may be for you.
It’s been wonderful having you, Grover, so thank you so much.
I’ll just say to be encouraging, for a lot of people struggling in the voiceover business, this could actually be a huge beneficial switch for them. They could be struggling to make some mark in this incredibly cutthroat competitive business, and then they turn to audiobooks and they say, well, really, I like this telling stories things about people flying in spaceships or dragons. And it could be liberating for them.
So I certainly hope that’s the case for some of your listeners.
Well, I’m inspired at least.
So am I. Grover, thanks again so much for being on the VO Meter.
You’re welcome. Thank you, guys. It was a pleasure.
So once again, thanks to Grover Gardner. That was just an amazing interview. What did you think, Sean?
I can’t agree with you more. I mean, he’s been in the industry for so long, for three decades. I mean, he’s been on both sides of the glass.
He knows exactly, I mean, he’s an accomplished narrator himself. He knows exactly what he’s looking for as a casting director. And like I said, just the information that he was sharing is just so useful for anyone who wants to get involved with audiobooks and who like it really challenges the current misconceptions that we see today as because every year, like you can just see the floods of new talent trying to get involved and then falling by the wayside when it’s like, oh, it’s not what I thought it would be.
But I think like we just need to direct into this episode and be like, see, that’s why you fail.
And once again, I want to say for the record, we three welcome our robot overlords. I love that line from The Simpsons.
I know, I know. Before we wrap up, I just wanted to thank our guest, Grover Gardner. Thank you so much for joining us.
And thank you to Sean Pratt, audiobook narrator and coach. He’s a fantastic guy. He actually referred us to Grover.
So thank you, Sean, if you’re listening.
So that wraps up this episode of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. And as our good friend, Sean Pratt always says, tell me a story, damn it. Thanks for listening to The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. To follow along, please visit www.vometer.com.