How expensive is it to get a voice actor to read a whole book for an audio book. I'd love to do it myself but my story narrator is male and I'm female. It's a book I wrote and published on Amazon. Does it go on hourly rates? Wordcount?
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There are as many price ranges as you can imagine from people willing to work for free to people charging thousands per day. Here in the States talent usually charges a day rate rather then by the hour. Perhaps it's similar in NZ. Contact Liana Piranha at Piranha Talent or Thierry Wieder at PerfectVoices. They will be glad to quote you a number
Thank-you for that. Much appreciated.
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There are alot of freelancers that have their own studios that will do a flat rate for you. http://www.timfriedmann.com/ is an example
Kelleigh, that is so cool that I could go on to that web site and listen to the actual voice! Thanks for that. I'll be out there now listening to voices on sites like that and one day I'll find my perfect Father Clement and then I'll be drooling over the voice but won't be able to afford it. Then again maybe one day I will. So I'll keep looking just in case that time comes sooner than I expect. It's just so wonderful that I can cruise around looking and listening without the actors even knowing I'm doing it. It's like auditioning people without their knowledge. One thing that I do puzzle over is that I'd kinda like to have a kiwi (NZ) accent narrate it, since it is a NZ book, but not sure how the US market would respond to that. Might be unsettling. Must go and see if any kiwi actors have sites like this.
If you use Final Draft software it actually has a variety of voices you may use as narraotor, different characters etc.
computer generated voices at the moment, are annoying. anything that annoys the audience is a no no.
Poor writing will definitely annoy an audience and empty seats fast. Read my advice. I did not say she should record the FD 8 computer voices I said to listen to them to see how the flow of her material goes.
LOL Obviously you have different methods of achieving success than I do. Considering I have several films in production and preproduction, what I do works. Whether you understood what I meant about Final Draft reading the lines etc or not, you have no idea what I mean. So YES the flow of her script will show in detail by having the software read it to her. Especially if she reads the script while listening to the voices. AND yes you can assign several different ages of characters and voice inflections. It is still computer generated but a valid way to see if the rythmn of the voices or cadences are effectively flowing and smooth. If not then there is time to repair them while listening to the script being read. Let us know what you have in production at this time Ric. By the way I have a recording studio in my home and could record the book for her myself.
I imagine a deep resonant kind of male voice for my narrator. He is an ancient spirit of the universe - a deity in fact, a slightly conceited one. But how does it work with most audio-books? Do you have to have different voices for each different character? Or just one voice to read the whole thing. Because, while my narrator is this male deity, my main character is actually a breathlessly over-emotional young female. So perhaps it wouldn't be so bad to have a female narrator after all. In which case I might be able to do it myself. I have bags of experieince reading aloud, having been a teacher all my life. I do know how to breathe life into a story. If anyone wants to read the book to tell me what you think, I will give you a free copy - you'd have to put it on your kindle wishlist, make your wishlist public and I can do it.
I could not afford that. Maybe in the future perhaps.
I'm in a similar bind. Check out ACX. You post your project there and there are different payment arrangements. I'm going to use them as well.
I checked it out but I think it is just for US residents. There is no country choice in the country field.