Essential to the success of an audiobook is the “voice talent,” or narrator. If the narrator doesn’t deliver a rich, authoritative voice and range of characterizations and emotions, the listener will likely move on.
The minimum cost to produce an audiobook in a studio is around $5,000, but it can go much higher — into the tens of thousands of dollars — depending on the size of the production and the status of the narrator.
For instance, Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards handpicked actor Johnny Depp to narrate his best-selling autobiography, “Life.” The 22-hour Hachette title won this year’s Audie award for audiobook of the year, the equivalent of a best-movie Oscar (www.theaudies.com).
There are hundreds of narrators in New York and Los Angeles, mostly members of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, a national labor union.
Sometimes, an author will record his or her own book, such as novelists Joshua Ferris (“The Unnamed”) and Joshilyn Jackson (“Between, Georgia”). Most author-narrated audiobooks, however, are nonfiction, especially memoirs.
Robert Petkoff, 47, an actor who was born in Sacramento and lives in New York, has recorded audiobooks for four years. Among his titles are “The Pale King” by David Foster Wallace and “So Cold the River” by Michael Koryta. He received an Audie nomination for “Beat the Reaper” by John Bazell.
Q. What’s it like in the recording studio?
A. There’s an engineer and a director. You sit in a recording booth and start reading. When you make a mistake, you stop, go back and re-record.
Q. How did you get into it?
A. I do a lot of commercial voice-over work, and my agent asked me to try audiobooks. I was doing a Broadway show and didn’t have the time, but that show ended, so …
Q. What’s your average output?
A. Four a year, but this summer I’m recording the 21-book Travis McGee series (by the late John D. MacDonald) for audible.com. It’s fun, but a little strange and shocking to see the mores and ethics of the time (1964-1984).
Q. How do you cultivate your voice?
A. Years and years of Shakespeare got me to the point where I can read a whole day without getting tired. But when I’m in the studio, doing six to eight hours of recording with dialects and emotions, I have in front of me a glass of water, a glass of tea with lemon and pineapple juice, because the enzymes help reduce swelling of the vocal cords.
Q. It’s really acting, isn’t it?
A. Absolutely, with comedic timing, dramatic pauses and voice inflections. Which is why the best narrators come from the acting realm. They’re not just people who have tremendous voices.
[Listeners] certainly want to hear a good voice, but once the characters start coming up, you want someone who can really engage the listeners as an actor.
Q. What’s the salary?
A. The actor gets paid for the finished recorded hour. So even if it took you 40 hours to record a 10-hour book, you get paid for 10 hours. That can be from $150 per finished hour to $400, depending on the narrator. Of course, that number jumps much higher if it’s a celebrity [narrator].