Olivier Rebiere - How to create an audio book: Create your audio book easily!

Create your audio book easily!

- English,version 3, 2019 -

Cristina & Olivier Rebire. All rights reserved.

Welcome!

T hank you for purchasing this eBook and welcome to your new ebook "How to create an audio book", a practical guide which we hope will help you create your audio books.

You will also find tips to make quality audio recordings that can be used also for the promotion of your books or in other areas, such as podcasts.

You should know that the tips you will find in this guide, ideas and resources, come all from our concrete experience in this field.

T his guide is part of the collection "Tools for authors" which aims to help independent authors ("indies") to professionalize their production and marketing on social networks.

Depending on the capabilities of your eBook reader, you can enjoy zoom features on photos. You can also click on the hypertext links (or hyperlinks) underlined throughout the eGuide. We tried our best to make your reading experience as enjoyable as possible, despite the wide technology gaps between various reading systems.

Be sure that we will propose to you more interactive versions, as the formats and eBook readers should be standardized in the future!

Well, enough chatting. Let's go!

Sincerely,

Cristina & Olivier Rebire

Maybe you do not realize because it is part of everyday life for all of us, but we are surrounded by sounds, and especially... voices.

Before birth, it is the voice of our parents we hear and which allows us to recognize them easily. We recognize the voice of our loved ones when they are not in the same room with us, we love their voices heard on the phone when we're apart. We even recognize the voice of our favorite actors, singers, some politicians, etc. You get the idea!

The strangest thing is that we do not hear our own "true" voice, or at least that which characterizes us in the ears of the others. Have you have noticed this? When we are listening to a video or when simply hearing our own voice, we may feel embarrassed, even in an uncomfortable position.

We will learn how to record your voice, and especially tame this strange wave that is sound. Because the sound is very important, especially for creating an audio book. The sound is king, actually.

For example, at the cinema you can watch a movie with a medium quality image, but not with a poor audio, right? Have you noticed the purity of the sound in a movie theater and all the facilities needed to restore the sound: the speakers, the bass, treble, Dolby surround, etc.? Have you also thought of all the techniques required during the filming?

A media where the sound is capital is, of course, the radio. Maybe you like listening to radio broadcasts, right? Anyway I think that, from time to time, it happens to you.

In this guide we will not pretend to expect this level of quality, but we will learn to record with a well above level that you could do with your computer microphone. For that we will work on 3 essential factors:

1. Your voice: you should improve your diction and your power
2. Your room: you should reduce acoustic problems of the room where you record
3. Your microphone and equipment
   

You will see that working hard to improve the quality of your recordings, you are going to express yourself better and better and the benefits on your professional or personal life, will be real!

MY ADVICE

You have understood the importance of a good quality sound, and I recommend you to keep this in mind when you go through the steps of creating your audio book.

Thank to all the kind souls who offer online tools and free resources to use for those who always want to learn and improve themselves!

We have already seen the importance of the sound in our environment, what a "bad sound" and a "good sound is.

We know that in addition to voice, the most important element to have is the equipment. To make by yourself an audiobook, the minimum is to have a quality microphone that you plug into your computer via an USB port.

I will not expose you different microphone types. We're going straight for what you need: USB cardioid microphones. Lets go and visit the Amazon.com website and launch the research.

We have the results immediately. All these microphones connect easily via USB to your computer.

MY ADVICE

How to choose the good one will you ask me?
What I can tell you is that the top sales for online trainers is the "Blue Yeti, quite expensive. Audio Technica AT2020 is a good choice too.
I have the Samson Meteor, retro look and I adore it.
I suggest you to follow the links and choose the best for you. Read the technical specifications of the three microphones and choose that one you like the most for their design ... Then read the ratings and customer reviews.

I use my microphone for my webinars on internet, my screencasts, podcasts, and for recording my voice in general.

It is very important that in spite of its technical performance, you have to "LIKE" this mic: this is a personal tool, it is very similar to the feeling you have when you write with your favorite pen :-)

It is not enough to have a good USB cardioid microphone for a good recording of your voice on your computer. It would be a serious mistake to believe that this is enough!

We must also prepare the room where you will record, in the same way that we would prepare a photo studio to have good light.

You will use a headset with headphones that you can plug in principle on your microphone to listen directly to the recorded sound.

I'll give you some tips to easily improve the acoustics of your room and avoid the sound bounces and creates an echo, as we have seen previously.

It is necessary that the majority of sound waves emitted by your voice goes into your microphone, and the waves that go in other directions are eliminated by "absorbent" surfaces around you.

The idea is to soften the flat and hard surfaces: do you remember the scene in the bathroom?