00:00:00.000Hi, everyone. This is the Culture Study Podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Peterson.
00:00:12.460And I'm Julia Whelan. I am an audiobook narrator, an author, and the founder of Audiobrary.
00:00:17.700Okay, so we are recording this on the day after Spotify users got like their year-end
00:00:23.100reports thing. And there's this new metric. It's audiobook listening hours, and you were
00:00:29.340the most listened to author? Uh, narrator. Yes. Narrator. Sorry. Yes. You were the most listened
00:00:34.720to narrator. I think I probably got some of those hours are yes from books that I also wrote, but
00:00:39.140mostly, mostly it's Taylor Jenkins Reid and Emily Henry. When you find out about stuff like that,
00:00:46.260what's your reaction? Were you like, uh, yeah. No, it never is because first of all,
00:00:51.760because there's a lot of like massive books or even in genres that I don't do. And I kind of
00:00:56.740assumed um you know I thought that like some of the romance dudes would probably take that prize
00:01:02.480first of all because of volume these guys do like 70 books a year and those listeners are rabid and
00:01:08.200so I was I I didn't think that this was first of all I didn't even know it was a metric because it
00:01:13.760wasn't until this year totally um and so you know it's it's I think it's gratifying and surprising
00:01:21.880because I have cut so much back on the number of books that I do. But those books are are huge. And
00:01:30.300I still think I still think the scales were tipped a little bit by the women, which was such a1.00
00:01:36.300juggernaut from last year, but people are still listening to it this year. So it was just a I1.00
00:01:41.640think it's a collection of Emily's backlist, Taylor's backlist, Kristen's backlist, the new
00:01:47.700V.E. Schwab like it you know yeah it's been a busy few years yeah totally and I love that even
00:01:53.960like even when you are trying to do slightly less like you actually they accumulated back
00:02:00.160list can also still power you into that position um the way that you got into doing this work is
00:02:06.500really interesting to me and especially the way that you got into doing it like actually being
00:02:10.940like okay this is what it's going to be now so can you give us just a little overview yeah yeah
00:02:15.820So I was a child actor. When I went to college, I studied creative writing. And at my graduation,
00:02:23.120one of my best friend's mothers came up to me and she happened to work for an audiobook company.
00:02:27.880And she's the one who said, I think you might be really good at this. Have you thought about
00:02:32.400doing audiobooks? And very much like Maggie Smith and Downton Abbey saying, what is a weekend?
00:02:37.280Yeah. I said, what is an audiobook? No. And I had no idea. No idea. I mean,
00:02:43.580this was 2008. Yeah. Um, and, and I'd been in a stuffy liberal arts college for four years and
00:02:49.440like, we don't, you know, audio is beneath us. So I, um, I, I had no idea what it was. Uh, but
00:02:57.220after like a year of being back in LA and it was 2008, graduated into a recession and I was tutoring
00:03:03.420to make ends meet and doing on camera auditions and trying to get that career going again. But
00:03:09.680it was like such a different business than the one I left four years prior. Oh, yeah. That I
00:03:15.260emailed Laura and I said, so what's this thing? I like read books into a microphone and you pay
00:03:20.580me? Is that what happens? And so I put together a demo for her. And this is the happy accident of
00:03:27.380this career is that first of all, it she was right in that it happened to be the two things
00:03:32.760I love coming together and like the center of that Venn diagram of performance and books is
00:03:39.680audiobooks and it could not have been it was like designed in a lab for me but also the other happy
00:03:46.680accident of timing here is that at the moment I was getting into audiobooks YA as a genre was
00:03:53.100booming yeah and they didn't have young voices for it you know everyone who had been doing this
00:03:58.440job had been doing it for 20 or 30 years back when they were actually like splicing tape together
00:04:02.660and they needed people who could convincingly sound like 15-year-old Pixies. So I come into
00:04:10.040the industry at that moment and spent the first few years doing a lot of YA and kind of getting
00:04:15.460my feet wet and learning how to do the job. Like it's a job you can only learn by doing.
00:04:20.760And I started out, you know, I did a couple of books that first year and then a few more. And
00:04:26.020I remember thinking if I could just do a book a month, that would help take like the pressure off
00:04:30.640of the tutoring schedule. And, you know, it just started to snowball. I have a very distinct
00:04:37.100memory of checking out an audio book of Emma from the library when I was going back and forth between
00:04:44.120Eugene, where I was going to grad school in Seattle. So going past where you grew up in
00:04:47.480Salem and like it was on tape, it was on tapes. And that's what like made it viable in my 2001
00:04:55.480Toyota Corolla is that I could put it into the tape machine, right? But it had this very,
00:05:01.460there's a sound that I think anyone who has listened to these older audiobooks, like
00:05:05.440everything feels gothic. Like it doesn't matter where, like what time period, like everything is
00:05:12.440a little gothic in these audiobooks. And there's like chimes oftentimes that are just very...
00:05:19.160Also you would have, I remember, and I still do this occasionally because some books still go to
00:05:23.040CD, but you used to have to record, this is the end of CD six. Yes. Yes. Oh gosh. Like that sound
00:05:30.980right there. It's just so. This is the end of disc six. And then at that time also was the first
00:05:37.720time I got an iPod and then trying to figure out, okay, so like maybe downloading an audio book
00:05:43.640would take up my entire iPod. This morning I was just in the PRH offices and they have this
00:05:53.020beautiful new audio level and they've got their studios in there and great kind of communal
00:05:59.100workspace. And in there, they have one of the old, I didn't even know they did this.
00:06:04.600They, Audible used to send you a player back in the late nineties, like proto Audible was you
00:06:10.540would sign up for Audible and they would mail you a little player. And then you would have to put
00:06:17.460the files from like transfer them like an old ipod yeah from your computer onto the player
00:06:23.300oh my gosh so they provided you a player because the technology did not exist yeah wow i had no
00:06:32.140idea that was new to me i did not know that lore and they have it like do they have one there that
00:06:36.900you can yeah they had the box i think the actual device is i think i didn't look in the box i think
00:06:41.920she said it wasn't there but they have the actual original box of this player okay so we got such
00:06:48.720good questions for you i cannot you did and i think this is one of those jobs where like people
00:06:55.000are super curious about it but also just don't know that much about it right so i wrote a book
00:07:01.660about it exactly exactly like i was getting the same questions all the time and i was like you
00:07:06.820know there's no representation of this job in media like we all have a passing understanding
00:07:11.460of what a detective does or what an er doctor does because we watch them on tv and there's like
00:07:17.680nothing like that for audiobooks no one knows how the sausage is made i just i feel like if there's
00:07:23.060ever if if they make it into like a rom-com right like a like a movie rom-com yeah what's going to
00:07:28.600happen are they going to make it too glamorous like i feel about this about like how to lose
00:07:32.540a guy in 10 days about how like kate hudson is like the most glamorous journalist ever
00:07:37.220the best job this is why I've had some interest from film and tv for thank you for listening
00:07:43.400and of course they want you to just give it to them and I'm like in this case no I'm not saying
00:07:48.500never like I'm not saying I would never just offload one of my books and take the money and
00:07:53.120run but in this particular situation like you can't you really need someone who knows audiobooks to
00:07:59.580like help you paint that world and um I'm not going anywhere sorry just for people who don't
00:08:07.180know like there's in when you adapt something sometimes you just sell the rights and you're
00:08:11.300like go with God do whatever you want yeah and then sometimes you're like and also I will be
00:08:15.840a consultant right like and also I'm gonna make this one because you're just not there I it you
00:08:21.820could get it so wrong so wrong um okay let's go let's start with the questions they're gonna lead
00:08:26.740us in so many interesting directions. So we're going to talk about your specific work, but also
00:08:32.280about the industry and some of the work that you're doing to try to change the industry.
00:08:36.420Our first question is about the medium itself, and it comes from Susan.
00:08:40.100I think some books are better as audiobooks, and some are better read, and it can really change
00:08:44.880how you experience a book and how much you like one. Do you agree? And if so, what qualities do
00:08:50.840you think make a book better suited for audio versus print? That's a really astute, thoughtful
00:08:57.540question. And I actually appreciate it because I ask myself this every day because I did start my
00:09:02.820own audio publishing company. So in trying to decide which books we take on now, I have a
00:09:08.500different paradigm for this. And for me personally, just because of, to me, books live and die by the
00:09:16.220narrator. So we don't acquire a book unless I already have a narrator in mind when I read it.
00:09:22.020Like every other publisher, because they're a publisher, they have this book and then they
00:09:26.280have to go make an audio version of it or they sell the sub rights to someone else to go make it.
00:09:31.060And so their first and foremost consideration has nothing to do with audio. Yeah. But mine does.
00:09:36.340And so I think the books that work really well in audio are the ones that are very voicey.
00:09:44.740Yep. So whether it's a very strong first person or just great dialogue, banter, you know, when you can get the rhythm on the page to come through and you can identify clearly what the voice is and then match that voice with a narrator, that's when it really succeeds.
00:10:00.000the other thing is there's this i think duet or multicast is very popular right now um where you've
00:10:07.460got you know so it sounds more like a radio play and again in those situations i mean something
00:10:13.240like daisy jones and the six is like purpose built for audio where the conceit is it's an oral history
00:10:18.760so when you're able to do that and make it sound like a podcast that's just a really um vibrant
00:10:25.060listening experience. Notoriously, the things that don't translate well to audio are like,
00:10:32.020there's this statistic floating around that's saying 95% of books ever written, like don't
00:10:38.080have audio versions. And that sounds terrible. But remember that a lot of those books are like
00:10:43.360academic texts where there's graphs and, and maps and 14 footnotes on a page and like some books
00:10:50.360should just not be translated in that in that way 100 i so that when was that like a little like
00:10:58.5202021 there were so many audio startups and i think you know this from your involvement in this
00:11:05.520landscape and they one of them approached me and was like and a couple other newsletter writers
00:11:11.300and was like can we just pay you this flat fee for us to just make your newsletters into audio
00:11:16.080content and I was like uh sure whatever um and like and they they did use obviously they use
00:11:24.260like actual narrators and first person essays like it kind of worked but then I do a ton of
00:11:30.580like in-depth Q&As with academics yeah it's not the forum like it's just it was so weird yeah and
00:11:39.220I mean I'm all about accessibility and so there's ways to obviously you know just to have an audio
00:11:45.520version out there for people, of course, but it's not going to make for a compelling listening
00:11:50.420experience. So a friend of mine from BuzzFeed actually just released a book that is audio only
00:11:56.800in terms of like, from the beginning, the way that they thought of it was as audio only. And I think
00:12:03.600sometimes we might, like, this is where the semantics of what we call things is really
00:12:08.260interesting, because that is, like you said, like, it's like, that's a, it's an audio play.
00:12:12.500yes right it's a different i mean i had an interesting um experience with that myself
00:12:17.600where in my second book and thank you for listening which is about audiobooks right
00:12:23.220it's about audiobook narrators and they are recording a specific book in that book and i
00:12:28.600decided to go and write the book within the book from that book but i did it to live up to the
00:12:33.640promise of the premise which was it was meant to be an eight episode audio series and so i wrote it
00:12:40.860that way and writing something with the it's now sold print but like we I just sold a con I just
00:12:48.020sold it uh the print rights but at the time I didn't think it would be in print and so I was
00:12:53.640writing it just with the idea that it would be for audio and as a result it's the closest thing to a
00:12:59.380play I've ever written it's a small cast it's contained it is just dialogue and you know it's
00:13:07.200relationship centric and um it's a it was very fun because i had the narrator's voices in my head
00:13:13.840when i was writing yeah yeah no and i think not like most people who only write for the page which
00:13:19.880is me like that is not a skill that i have but you have really refined that skill through the
00:13:25.140process of turning things into like okay what narration actually works in this format yeah so
00:13:30.920it's like how do you feel about then turning it into something that people read on the page i
00:13:36.000I don't know. We're going to find out. I mean, because when I did it, and I did it to launch
00:13:41.200Audio Brary as well. So it was like these two major projects kind of coming to fruition at
00:13:45.820the same time. And they were tied into each other in a lot of ways. And it was kind of surprising
00:13:50.180to me when the first request I got was, well, is there an ebook? And I was like, what do you mean
00:13:58.040there's people who don't listen to audio? And it turns out there are. And there's even fans of mine
00:14:03.300who don't listen to audio because they just know me as an author and I realized I kind of had this
00:14:07.620like well duh moment where it was like I still want people to be able to enjoy this story but
00:14:12.660it's just not the way that I conceived of it right I mean it's written as eight episodes like what do
00:14:17.380I what yeah what does that turn into what do I do right it's like eight very long chapters in this
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00:17:36.060enter code culture to get 60% off your first box. I've seen a lot of different authors really
00:17:49.620identify, like authors of profiles of you, identify Gone Girl as like your pivot moment.
00:18:10.720And the timing of that book with the fact, like the number of people that tell me that's the first audiobook they ever listened to, because Audible was really just getting going at the time.
00:18:22.340No longer a player, no longer a separate device.
00:18:24.420you can have it on your phone. And so I think a lot of people who had never listened to an
00:18:29.940audio book before, the convenience of suddenly being able to just like, okay, I'll give this
00:18:36.700audible thing a shot. Right. Was it was a tipping point. And that the structure of the book works
00:18:43.440so well. So well in audio. Right. So well. Yes. I think that's why it also worked well as a movie.
00:18:50.000Well, actually a funny story about that. So Gillian told me years ago that as she was writing
00:18:55.380the screenplay, she was listening to the audio book because for her, which I think is, I just
00:19:02.520like as a writer, I love this idea because she said that she, in knowing that she was adapting
00:19:07.160it, she wanted to have someone else's interpretation of it in her head as she was writing the
00:19:13.680screenplay. And I went, that's so smart. Cause it's like, what stands out to you
00:19:18.020when you're listening to it you know what are the parts that really stay with you you have to have
00:19:23.000that distance as a writer from like okay this is this is a separate thing than me now this is its
00:19:28.360own material and how am I going to adapt it essentially yeah and I think that's why not all
00:19:34.600adaptations necessarily work when when the author themselves is doing the adaptation because there
00:19:40.640isn't that distance but I think it did work in that case really well our next question builds
00:19:45.140on this, and it comes from Heather. How does Julia choose which audiobooks she wants to perform
00:19:49.120and which to listen to? She's a narrator I look for when deciding what to listen to next,
00:19:53.540both because of her performance, and I think she has really good taste. Her name as a narrator
00:19:57.680is like a famous book club sticker, Oprah, Reese, Jenna, etc., for me, for her audiobooks.
00:20:03.200That is so sweet. That is very dangerous. So, okay, I think there's two halves to my career.
00:20:11.900So the first half of it was coming from an actor mentality of scarcity, of if they give you work, you have to take it. So I said yes to everything and promptly burnt myself out. I was doing 70 books a year. After I wrote my Oxford year while doing that, so I wrote that book fast. I had to write that book fast. And I was recording that many books. I almost had a breakdown and I said I would never write another book under those conditions.
00:20:37.820and because I wanted to write another book, I had to change the conditions. So I started
00:20:43.840cutting back on the number of books I would do. And then I started having a kind of metric
00:20:49.900by which I choose books. Some of it is obviously existing relationships, like authors who I know
00:20:57.040and love. Some of it is authors who are kind of on my own personal wish list that if I see
00:21:01.880an opportunity come in to do one of their books, I jump at it. I like to diversify genre. So I'm
00:21:09.440a generalist. So sometimes you get into a rut, especially after Gone Girl, for instance, I did
00:21:13.860every domestic thriller. And I was like, God, what I would do for a romance. So I like to bounce
00:21:21.400around. And if I feel like I've been too long in one genre, I will pivot. But my main criteria,
00:21:28.020and it's so basic is if I read the blurb, because I don't have time to read the books before I say
00:21:34.300yes, and they don't have time to wait for me to read the books before I say yes. So I turn on my
00:21:40.720reader brain and I say, if I read this flap copy in a bookstore, would I pay $27 for a hardcover?
00:21:48.260Yeah. Like, am I intrigued? Do I want to read it? And that's really, that's really it.
00:21:53.100First, can I say that you burning yourself out and then also deciding that you wanted to write
00:21:57.980a book while you were doing that. It's so classic millennial graduate into the recession.
00:22:02.440I know. The grandkids are going to be like, why is grandma always so intense? It's like,
00:22:11.900you weren't there. You don't know. Right. Gig worker. And then now trying to figure out like
00:22:19.580a way to better distribute profits in a way that is non-exploited. So I don't have to do that
00:22:25.100anymore. And trying to make it better for other people instead of, I think oftentimes the line
00:22:31.620is like, well, this is what I did. So you should have to do it too. You should also suffer this
00:22:36.380way. And you're like, no, I don't, I don't really want to do that. No. Um, no, that makes total
00:22:42.140sense. Especially since not only do you have to spend many, many hours reading it, you read it a
00:22:48.180couple of times yourself before, right? Yeah. Yeah. So that you know where it's going. So
00:22:52.900and you're not like surprised on the page right I can't be the person surprised you're supposed to
00:22:57.840be the person surprised listening I can't be surprised when I'm recording so I've I've had
00:23:04.080to record a couple of my books and I hate it um and it's like one of those classic like it it
00:23:09.960emphasizes that people should be well paid for this job and they shouldn't be me because this
00:23:14.920is not my job um but but at the same time like I should be so familiar with the words but because
00:23:23.700like when you're writing a book and I'm sure you've had this experience too you get so sick
00:23:27.960of those words that you don't want to look at them so it goes in and then you're like0.99
00:23:32.340oh these fuckers again because you bring all the trauma with you to the thing you're like not this0.99
00:23:37.900bitch um yeah it's a i i had the the a moment was recording my oxford year because that book1.00
00:23:46.120was kind of written fast and it has an interesting origin story but i was i was recording it and0.93
00:23:52.900that's the moment that the debut novelist imposter syndrome decided to kick in and so i was like this
00:24:00.140is terrible this is horrible what is even a sentence and i started like trying to edit it
00:24:32.580I mean, sometimes it's things that I actually have to, if it's just like,
00:24:35.820an obvious typo. I'll just read it. I'll record it. But sometimes when something
00:24:40.580is a reiteration or like it needs to be clarified, I have to send those to the producer.
00:24:46.620And then if I'm friends with the author, I will usually just like have an open text thread where
00:24:51.560I'm like page 38, check it out. And yeah, so you catch a lot. I mean, it's it really is the last
00:24:59.760line of defense on the typo situation yeah yeah there were a couple that I think we caught just
00:25:06.200in time in various books that I've done can you confirm to me my thinking on this which is that
00:25:11.740part of the reason that they get like books like the ones that I have written that are not like
00:25:16.380they're non-fiction and they're not massive books but it's a lot cheaper to dangle a little bit of
00:25:22.000money in front of the author instead of payment yeah well yeah although it's not like it's not
00:25:28.600like narrators get paid all that much I mean I think the author contracts depending on which
00:25:32.960publisher you're with and whatever but they'd probably spend almost the same on you that they
00:25:36.700would spend on a narrator yeah but the difference is is that they with non-fiction I think listeners
00:25:43.440tend to like having the author be the narrator so I think it's like part of the marketing tie-in
00:25:48.620decisions um so tends to make sense I'm not saying it's always the best decision for the quality of
00:25:56.000the performance in the book but for other reasons it can make sense yeah no that makes total sense
00:26:00.820I also like I have a friend who was super nervous because they were quote-unquote trying out for
00:26:05.080their own non-fiction audiobook and I was like they're just making sure that you're decent yeah
00:26:10.180yeah yeah exactly they're just making sure that there's not some like unlistenable quality to
00:26:16.180your voice but I also think that's changed in recent years and I think it's because everyone
00:26:19.380is so used to podcasts now that the idea of like what even is a professional voice
00:26:25.360has changed. Yes. That is such a good point. I also get fewer complaints about my vocal fry.
00:26:33.540Yeah. I think that because like people are more used to different types of voices
00:26:38.040in their ears, that it's not just like either audiobook performance, like we're saying,
00:26:44.240like the gothic style or NPR voice. Yeah, totally. That's so interesting. Okay. Now we're
00:26:50.140going to do this question from Joy. What's it like from your perspective as a voice actor to
00:26:55.040read at a true one-time speed for an audiobook? Is there an industry standard pace? Is it hard
00:27:02.820to slow down? Or is that genuinely a pace that you would read out loud at? And then as a listener,
00:27:09.020do you have opinions on how some people listen to books super fast and some people listen at
00:27:14.360one-time speed? Personally, I feel like a 1.5 to a 1.6 sounds the most natural. But for some
00:27:21.980audiobook narrators, I slow it down to 1.25. Okay, this is such a bag of questions that
00:27:29.100all of them are tripwires. But let me just I actually love this because I love to explain
00:27:34.620the thinking here. So first of all, I do think audiobook pacing has changed over the years.
00:27:41.400When I was starting out, and you can actually hear this in Gone Girl, I was told explicitly
00:27:45.980to read slowly. And I pushed back on that because I said, this is a psychopath whose brain0.98
00:27:53.140is moving at a pace that she does not think or speak slowly. And I felt very hogtied by having0.56
00:28:02.200to slow down for quote unquote, audio book speed. Again, I think this has to do with a proliferation
00:28:08.380of audio media where people are just talking faster and they're listening faster. And this
00:28:13.960TikTok generation that like, can listen to stuff at warp speed that I can't even hear. But that's
00:28:21.420what they're used to. And so I think that we have a generational gap in listeners. And so that's,
00:28:29.560that's kind of number one is that I do think things have changed. I am very conscious of that
00:28:33.360now where I think my own rhythm naturally has sped up. But it is also the speed at which I read,
00:28:40.780I'm not intentionally slowing down. That is the speed at which I am able to process the words
00:28:46.240that my brain is seeing on the paper. And then they're coming out of my mouth in some kind of
00:28:49.960sensical order. Right. So I'm not at this point listening to anyone who's telling me to slow down,
00:28:55.740but I also can't go any faster. Yeah. As far as listening speed goes, I can't listen to anything
00:29:02.060above 1.0 because I don't like the distortion in the voices. That's just the audio critic in me.
00:29:07.180Yeah. But I also appreciate the fact that especially for anyone with any kind of neurodivergence, the audio has to go at the speed of their brain or they're going to get distracted. So I've stopped fighting this. And like, I think people should just listen at whatever speed they want to, but I can't listen to my voice at Minnie Mouse speed. It just drives me nuts.
00:29:29.040It also, to me, it makes it sound more like AI, which is a sound that-
00:29:59.040unlistenable? What are they talking about? And I told my friend that like I had this light bulb
00:30:03.080moment where I was like, oh my God, what if all of my success, what if my entire career is owing
00:30:07.180to the fact that I still sound okay at two times speed? And she was like, you need to go touch
00:30:12.760grass. You are out of your mind. Like put your phone down, walk away. I was like, what if they
00:30:20.540don't actually like me? They just like the way I sound at two times speed. She's like, oh Jesus
00:30:23.900Christ. I cannot imagine. I don't listen to anything at two times speed. Melody, Melody,
00:30:29.400do you listen to anything at two times speed? No. I will bump up podcasts sometimes when they're
00:30:35.420poorly edited. I will bump up TikTok videos because just people talking extemporaneously.
00:30:42.160Oh, that's true. Yeah. I press and hold a lot. Exactly. It can be painful. But when it's
00:30:47.160actually like crafted, when it is a written text and I am performing it or listening to
00:30:53.440someone else perform it. No, I would like it at the speed that God intended.
00:30:59.700Okay. Our next question is something that I think people would love to hear more about. And that I
00:31:05.560certainly, I had a great audiobook coach, even though I hated every minute of it. This question
00:31:11.160comes from Elizabeth. Are there directors and or editors for these productions? Do authors offer
00:31:16.540pronunciation guides? I listen to a lot of audiobooks and feel like every single one has
00:31:21.120at least two to three words mispronounced. Often they're common words that maybe we don't say
00:31:25.660aloud regularly. Sometimes it's uncommon words from another language. I listen in English.
00:31:30.500But isn't anyone helping the narrators out? I guess I'm being picky here, but occasionally
00:31:34.640it's a word that is repeated throughout the book. And I confess that at least once I've abandoned
00:31:38.900an otherwise great audio book because I can't take it. Is it that recordings are made and
00:31:43.780distributed that quickly? Is there no one listening to the recording before it goes out?
00:31:47.980I want to be clear. I'm not blaming the narrators. To me, it's the audio equivalent of a typo.
00:31:52.740But I'm annoyed that no one is looking out for them here.
00:31:56.240Me too. So again, I have a lot of opinions about this. Yeah. So to understand how production works,
00:32:05.160a lot of the time it is just the narrator in the booth by themselves. And they are response,
00:32:10.760we are responsible for the most part, usually for our own research. And so you have to have the kind
00:32:16.860of analytical reading skill as a narrator to have enough curiosity around certain things to
00:32:23.440not make assumptions. So when you're reading a text, I pull out everything because I have been
00:32:27.640burned before. If a character's name is T-A-R-A, I'm going to ask the author how they want that
00:32:33.340pronounced. I'm not going to just like swing and miss on that. Sometimes there is a director
00:32:38.540involved. So at some of the bigger publishers, there are still occasionally directors who should
00:32:46.300be doing that. There is always an editor editing the stuff. And there is also typically a QC round.
00:32:55.140So when something is mispronounced, it is a failure at like every checkpoint. But that said,
00:33:02.100again, these are not things that they train you in. This is not research is not something that
00:33:07.720I think it should be something that we train everyone who works in audiobooks on. But sometimes
00:33:13.860things slip through the cracks. So here's a couple of examples. I got feedback within like
00:33:19.080probably a couple of weeks of The Women by Kristen Hanna being on sale that I had said
00:33:25.000Coorsman instead of Corman. And I went, that's weird, but okay. So I emailed the producer at
00:33:34.660Macmillan immediately. And I was like, apparently I mispronounced this word. And there's like eight
00:33:38.400instances in the book can I do pickups and can we push it out and so I did and we pushed it out
00:33:44.240and we fixed it but I was sitting there going why would I have that's not something I would assume
00:33:49.880and I've also had that book another at the word in other books and how did this happen and there
00:33:53.400is a director and an editor and and I did the pronunciation guide so I went back and I looked
00:33:58.380at the pronunciation guide and sure enough I had linked to Merriam-Webster saying Korsman with an
00:34:04.900S. That's how it's pronounced in Merriam-Webster. So sometimes the proper pronunciation is not the
00:34:12.640common pronunciation. And I get these when I was working at Autumn, which was the app that put
00:34:20.540long-form journalism on audio, and I was in charge of research and pronunciation stuff, we'd get a
00:34:25.320lot of people emailing in being like, you mispronounced this word. And I would go back to
00:34:29.500them and say, I'm so sorry to report, but you have been mispronouncing this word your entire life.
00:34:34.900Um, and here's the evidence for that. And, um, I still get that occasionally. This just happened.
00:34:41.140I just got an email from someone who brought up a mispronunciation and I had to say,
00:34:45.320it's actually not a mispronunciation. I'm, I'm, I'm sorry, but, um, this is the correct
00:34:49.540pronunciation. Wow. Yeah. That's so interesting. And it also like speaks to me to the way that
00:34:55.120like pronunciation is a living thing, right? Yes. And it's regional and it's, it's cultural
00:35:01.240and there's a lot of considerations to be made i mean even at autumn one of the first decisions we
00:35:06.140kind of had to make was how we were going to pronounce kiev the ukrainian city and it was
00:35:11.680like especially once the war started there was we were like we're not going to default to the
00:35:16.420russian pronunciation we're going to default to the ukrainian pronunciation and then what is that
00:35:21.640and and every it's a it's a choice and it is it can be very complicated but the point is
00:35:26.980these things do happen. They slip through. Sometimes they can be corrected. Sometimes
00:35:31.360they can't. But I understand why it's annoying. It's annoying to me.
00:35:38.540I'll say from the less professional standpoint, like when I have done it,
00:35:42.600I have there's a director who is in the booth, like going through with you. And anytime
00:35:47.800you even slightly flub a word, they ask you to say it again. And anytime you come up against like,
00:35:53.360let's say like the words that i always struggled with were like the last names of authors whose
00:35:58.180work i had cited yeah there would never be a reason real reason for me to like know how to
00:36:03.300say their last name yeah exactly how their last name should be pronounced and so we would look up
00:36:08.500like in the moment go on youtube find a time when they're saying it out loud like melody does this
00:36:14.800for me now like when we're doing the podcast like we come up with how to pronounce it and so there
00:36:19.920Like this work is happening. And I think if it's not happening, sometimes it's, it is like a typo, but there are people looking out for this.
00:36:28.140There is. And sometimes, and a lot of it is just a volume problem. Like there is so much audio production going on. And there is, like I said, when the onus of research falls on the narrator, which is what we did at audit, we took that off of the narrator. I was like, we can create a kind of Bible of pronunciations. This is news. It's journalism. Like let's just create a compendium. We called it the great document.
00:36:48.980which were the pronunciations for things that would come up repeatedly in news articles but
00:36:55.500i don't think there's any other publisher that has that and they should because this is like
00:37:00.280at this point 40 years of like lost research of um you know all the pronunciations we could have
00:37:06.980in some kind of archive that we don't yeah it's this it's the audio version of a style guide
00:37:11.960yes right yeah um and it allows you to default to that and i and there are certain words i would
00:37:17.580not have known. Like, I didn't know before I started doing this job that the word that looks
00:37:21.520like timber is tambour. Yeah. And that tussled is tousled. Like, there are certain things I would
00:37:27.020not know before I started doing this job. And I had a director say very kindly, no. Yeah, that's
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00:41:43.160Okay, so we're going to talk about the industry now. This is a version of a question we got many
00:41:47.060times because many, many people in our audience listen to Fated Mates. That's so great. I love
00:41:52.280that crossover. My people. Let's hear from Margie. I heard you discuss this on Fated Mates in July
00:41:59.240and haven't stopped thinking about it. Why don't audiobook narrators get royalties? And where
00:42:04.220should the line be between creative work that gets royalties or that doesn't? How can an
00:42:09.520independent audiobook company gain an audience? How does your company, Audiobrary, work for the
00:42:15.400consumer. Also, what is the latest on whether people are actually talking faster today or
00:42:21.260whether producers want narrators to speak faster since many audiobook listeners listen at faster
00:42:26.440speeds? All very good questions. So yes. Okay. So I don't know. I don't have, I cannot come up
00:42:33.840with a good answer for why narrators shouldn't get royalties. Every time I have asked publishers
00:42:38.200why they don't pay narrators royalties, I have just been told no one does. That's just the way
00:42:42.680it is. Totally. And so I just said, well, then what I'm what I'm hearing is I need to start my
00:42:47.400own audio publishing company and do it so that you can't say no one does it anymore. That was
00:42:52.480that was the only recourse I could I could come up with. So for the end consumer, it doesn't
00:42:59.340affect you like our books with the way that audio brewery works. So yes, we are an audio publisher
00:43:05.560that licenses audio rights from authors or publishers to create audio versions of books.
00:43:12.720We also do some original content as well.
00:43:14.760But in the audiobook landscape, our books, because I don't believe in gatekeeping, are
00:43:20.380available wherever you get your audiobooks.
00:43:22.860But we are also a direct-to-consumer retailer.
00:43:25.540So when you go and you purchase or rent, we started rentals, through the AudioBerry website,
00:43:31.180All of that money is going into the pockets of the people who actually created it. So us as the audio publisher, the author, and the narrator. We also provide bonus material like interviews and bloopers or just interesting things like that on Audiobrary. So you can get the books anywhere, but when you purchase through Audiobrary, it really goes into the pockets of the people who made it.
00:43:54.740And the difference is you would just then be listening in the audio brewery app. So you purchase on the website and it goes into the app. The main thing that I have been, I mean, like the Spotify thing, right? This is great that most listen to narrator globally. It means literally nothing to me financially.
00:44:13.260Right. Which is bonkers. And coming out of an acting background where I still get royalties or residuals for Lifetime movies I made when I was 12, I cannot reconcile how if the author continues to make money and the publisher is continuing to make money, why would I not be continuing to make money when in many cases my name is attached to a book, helps people find the book?
00:44:43.260you know yeah so I don't know where the line is I mean I know that Jenny Croft who's a translator
00:44:49.580had kind of had the same fight for translators like credit on the cover and royalties and it's
00:44:56.460absolutely also ridiculous to me that they don't get they didn't until Jenny started doing this
00:45:01.440fight um you know great cover artists I personally from a publishing perspective
00:45:08.360I've always wondered why editors don't necessarily get a portion of a book success I think what
00:45:14.920they're incentivized to do is eventually if you have enough success you will become a publisher
00:45:18.680in your own like we'll give you an imprint yeah right but there I have a lot I have a lot of
00:45:25.280questions about how people should be compensated in this industry but right now I can only focus
00:45:31.880on narrators do you have opinions about that yeah no I think I mean for me as an author
00:45:37.460the only books that i've earned out on earned out is when you meet what you were paid for the book
00:45:43.660your advance and then you are paid royalties after that and to be clear like the royalties
00:45:48.160that i get are like five hundred dollars every six months like they are not like a massive amount
00:45:53.880but the only way that i have ever earned the way that i've earned out is when i was paid
00:45:58.540relatively little so like i get five hundred dollars every six months on scandals of classic
00:46:03.580Hollywood, my first book, I was paid $12,000 for that book. And so sometimes I think what royalties
00:46:09.820work well for are scenarios where a book becomes massive. It's in the case of success. And I think
00:46:18.060that's what it comes down to is in the same way that an author gets an advance for the book,
00:46:23.100I also get paid for my time to do the book. Now, again, this is the biggest challenge that we have
00:46:29.640is that I was doing 70 books a year audiobook narration is not well paid to begin with a lot
00:46:35.260of people think my buyout rate should be massive it's not and so all I'm asking for is in the case
00:46:43.540of or books that have second lives like there's this beautiful YA book I did years ago called
00:46:48.500Girl in Pieces that has had this like new life because of TikTok and I'm so happy for the author
00:46:55.460because it's such a good book. But it's like also now my status as a narrator is very different than
00:47:02.800it was when I first recorded that book. And it's just about equity. That's it. I'm not saying I'm
00:47:10.580the reason that people buy these audiobooks, especially in the case of somebody like Kristen
00:47:15.720Hannah or Emily Henry. But I do know for a fact, like I've talked very clearly with Emily and
00:47:21.900Taylor Jenkins read about this, like at the beginning of their career, people were finding
00:47:25.840them through me because I was narrating their books. Right. And it's it's just it's just the
00:47:33.680ethical thing to do. It's just the right thing to do, because especially as we move into this
00:47:37.780new future where a lot of audio book narration, I think, is going to be synthetic. So we have a
00:47:43.760possibility of narrators are out of a job and yet the whole catalog that they've spent 20 years
00:47:52.660recording is still selling and is still making other people money except for them right well
00:47:57.580and this also i think like the the sag model screen actors guild model is is really i think
00:48:03.880an interesting one to consider because part of the setup is like at least how it has been
00:48:09.380historically before streaming came in and yes right right um is that okay so you work and you
00:48:16.120do like let's say you're in a really massive like sitcom or even like a middling sitcom
00:48:20.580and maybe you don't have like a ton of work maybe you do like supporting roles like the rest
00:48:26.240you're a working actor how do you retire in part through the residuals from that yes that text
00:48:32.660right it's what makes it possible to like retire with grace right and i think right i think that's
00:48:38.900that's also kind of the thing is as i've been doing this long enough and i have friends who
00:48:42.700are older and and they are now trying to retire and it's like you still see them trying to record
00:48:50.040or trying to get enough books to keep recording like you shouldn't have to do this right right
00:48:54.740like thank god we unionized the industry about 10 years ago so we do our earnings for the most part
00:49:00.700do go into pension and health for SAG-AFTRA. So at least that. But audiobooks are, I mean,
00:49:09.680publishers made $2.5 billion on audiobooks last year. It's had double-digit growth year over
00:49:15.240year for the last decade. And it's not like narrator rates have gone up double-digit year
00:49:20.640over year for the last decade. And we're also going to be the first people replaced. And it's
00:49:25.380Like I have I'm trying to create a sustainable future for this because no one else has any incentive to the publishers have every incentive to move over into digital voice to just like streamline the process, get rid of us.
00:49:44.620They know it means something, but it's so cheap.
00:49:48.180And I want to be able to keep doing this job.
00:49:51.040I want I know that there's listeners who want this and I don't know how else to create a sustainable career unless we do it this way.
00:50:02.420Right. Well, and I'm also seeing so many more Hollywood stars, which like you have relation to this, right? Like Hollywood stars who are like who are now narrating books. And to me, that doesn't say like, oh, well, if they should get points. Right. But like no one else should.
00:50:19.480To me, that says this is a job like acting. This is acting. This is voice acting.
00:50:24.060It is acting. And I don't understand. Someone needs to explain to me. I've been saying this
00:50:27.520for years, but I don't understand how we can be at the crossroads of acting where you get
00:50:33.420residuals and publishing where you get royalties. And yet somehow we don't get either. I really,
00:50:39.760really will. I just will never understand this. I'm sorry. I can hear my voice pitching up,
00:50:43.820but like that's why people ask me like, are you entrepreneurial? Like, have you always wanted?
00:50:48.280And I'm like, no, left my own devices.
00:50:50.400I just want to write and I want to record.
00:50:52.320But I was filled with so much righteous rage that it had nowhere to go.
00:51:04.500When you feel that you have been in this precarious business, when you were so scared that the other shoe was going to drop, that you were recording 70 books a year and also writing a book just in case, right?
00:51:18.280Because who knows what's going to happen if that's the scenario.
00:51:22.040And you also, it's not just like you want to get your own bag and run.
00:51:25.320It's like, how can I make this a more sustainable career for other people?
00:51:43.640But as a result, we're self-funding this, my husband and I.
00:51:46.440and so we're starting out obviously with the books that I'm I'm recording most of our product
00:51:52.280because I'm cheap so um but but the whole goal is eventually yes like telling authors if you
00:52:01.020believe in this like bring us your stuff bring us even your ready-made audiobooks we're about
00:52:06.280to open up the platform to people who already have existing books because we can do a direct
00:52:11.680we can be a retailer for you. Yeah. If you know, if you believe in giving your narrators
00:52:16.000royalties, like, please join us. That's that's how it's a it's a big experiment. And it's a
00:52:23.320gamble. And it's one I was willing to take because otherwise, I was gonna have to stop doing it. I
00:52:27.800couldn't keep doing it. It's not worth my time. I need to write if I need if I'm looking at future
00:52:32.440financial security, I need that comes through writing another book that doesn't come from
00:52:35.880narrating another book. Yeah. That's so interesting. Right. And I think most people would never assume
00:52:42.740that about someone in your position. No, I know. And this is that's what's the joke this year has
00:52:46.980been. I mean, it's a it's an embarrassment of riches and accolades and stuff. And it has not
00:52:53.340changed anything materially at all. And I don't know another industry where that's true. I mean,
00:53:00.600i think kind of music right maybe maybe just in terms of like you can be the most listened to on
00:53:08.300spotify and that would not actually significantly change your material position unless you're also
00:53:15.080touring and selling merch yeah right um okay so last question we're gonna get into my least
00:53:22.260favorite part of all of this which is synthetic voice this question comes from serafina and
00:53:27.480Melody's going to read it. How big a problem is synthetic voice being sold as having been done by
00:53:32.720a human? I don't have any proof, but one of the books I've listened to recently had huge sections
00:53:38.060that sounded robotic, for lack of a better word. Maybe not the entire book, but most of the non
00:53:43.700dialogue sections. Certain phrases sounded strangely paced with odd breaks, but identical
00:53:49.400when the phrase was repeated. It's the first time I've had this happen with an audio book,
00:53:53.520and it was very jarring. The right voice with the right book means I'll listen to it again and
00:53:57.940again, whereas the wrong voice can make it unlistenable for me. So is using a real human
00:54:02.840voice to feed an algorithm to then quote unquote, read the rest of the book unknown thing?
00:54:08.780I have no idea. That's very interesting. I have not, I have not personally encountered that yet.
00:54:14.740Have you? I have not encountered something like this, but it actually makes a ton of sense to me.
00:54:19.780like maybe they had someone read a couple of chapters. Right. You can do this now. I mean,
00:54:26.180you can voice clone off of like two sentences. Right. So maybe, but the, okay. So to your point,
00:54:33.040the labeling is really what we're up against. That's what it comes down to. I think people
00:54:38.440probably think I have a stronger opinion about synthetic voice than I do. My whole take on this
00:54:44.280is to be combative is not helpful. I, Audiobrary and kind of like our philosophy around this is
00:54:51.880that it's actually been helpful in terms of creating a comparison. So when you hear synthetic
00:54:59.840voice, and especially as it gets better, I think we have to accept that we're going to get to the
00:55:05.120point where we can't necessarily tell the difference. But I think there's still an audience
00:55:09.960for people who know the difference and who want to know that they are having human narration so
00:55:16.960that's the audience i'm serving is these are for people who these are like the vinyl records
00:55:21.560yeah people and it's incredibly disruptive to the industry just to be clear and again because of
00:55:28.320what we're talking about because the financial compensation is so bad already that any loss of
00:55:35.700work is felt in the industry. I see a value to it for, as we were talking about earlier,
00:55:44.240accessibility reasons. And being able to have quality synthetic voice is not a bad idea.
00:55:50.760It's anything that's better than putting it through like your Alexa reader. But it's to me
00:55:56.040a very different product. It's just a different product. And what we offer is human interpretation
00:56:01.300and human performance and that's it that's it'll never do that i mean it doesn't even know what
00:56:06.860it's saying it doesn't think about the book it doesn't to your point from earlier it doesn't
00:56:10.500read the book it doesn't know how to tell you the story it's just really sophisticated text
00:56:15.120to speech so labeling is a huge issue um i mean audible i think you know finally was like we have
00:56:23.320to make sure these things are labeled virtual voice but who's checking this like as they get
00:56:27.380more sophisticated and people are just uploading it through acx let's say which is how indie people
00:56:32.260put their books on audible is this all being manually checked is someone going to have to
00:56:36.860be able to listen and say oh this sounds synthy right or like what's the protocol here guys all
00:56:44.260i know is that you know for all i can say is for audioberry we just it's a hard no we just don't
00:56:48.280we won't accept it so but when you've got these larger platforms this is going to be a massive
00:56:53.760headache for them as well as for listeners to try to swim through it. I think my issue with increasing
00:57:01.460use of voice to text, like sophisticated voice to text, is just creep in terms of like, oh yeah,
00:57:08.480it's totally normal that we are like using this instead of using actual voices, right? Like people,
00:57:15.240I think if they listen to this interview, they would be like, oh, it is kind of fucking weird
00:57:21.280that on Substack you press this button and you get to choose whether it's like sophisticated man0.73
00:57:26.300or sophisticated lady who is who is reading out your newsletter right and like I couldn't turn
00:57:31.860that off but people got used to it because they're like oh what a nice little thing right
00:57:36.440convenience trumps what your yes your other ethical like your best intentions in terms of
00:57:42.280what you would like to consume and so how that like gradually erodes and we certainly saw this
00:57:48.420happen with music too right like the convenience of having absolutely every single album ever
00:57:53.880available which to us even you know when we were in college was unthinkable no like we even had
00:58:00.040napster and limewire we we had to work we waited eight hours only to know that we only to realize
00:58:06.240that we downloaded the korean karaoke version accidentally and also got like 17 viruses
00:58:11.640and a cease and desist from the university of organ
00:58:15.840memories no that's that's very that's very very true and i i think that this is why like i've
00:58:24.600been so outspoken about um talking about the humans behind this work because first of all
00:58:31.840so many people don't authors don't even know narrators don't get royalties right so we're
00:58:36.020we're starting from that and it is such an invisible job and that makes us very replaceable
00:58:41.880Yeah. Very few people actually look at who is narrating their book, the name. Very few people actually follow narrators. They certainly don't know what we look like. They certainly don't know anything about us. And so there is an invisibility there that is dangerous to, as you said, that creep of just replacement.
00:59:00.280And I think that we are, we're in a place of replication is something that is kind of in the natural course of things, but replacement is the problem. And not to mention that most of these models are obviously built on stolen labor. And the ethics around that are a nightmare.
00:59:20.960um but it's it's also just not a pleasant listening experience like it's just not i mean
00:59:27.560people are very impressed with some of some of it um which i understand because there's an uncanny
00:59:32.340valley part of it where you're like oh wow it really does sound kind of human like we'll try
00:59:36.020listening to it for 11 hours it's painful seriously uh well it's like i listened to this great episode
00:59:41.960of switched on pop recently about this um ai generated pop song or country song that like
00:59:48.780it's a curiosity right yeah yeah and but at the same time like i listened to it and it is it's
00:59:55.480uncanny valley and i'm like this is so derivative like even the the pop music that i feel on the
01:00:01.700radio that i'm like oh this is just recycling something it still has like it has aura right
01:00:06.780in a way that this other stuff it's also there's no there's no risk like my husband talks about
01:00:11.360this a lot where you know if you had like the robot olympics and you watch a robot do like the
01:00:16.720balance beam there is that first moment you're like holy shit a robot's on a balance beam like
01:00:21.500wow a dog is walking around on its hind legs but there's no risk or if there is it's all0.81
01:00:28.080programmed so is it going to fall is it not going to fall i don't care the thing that keeps us
01:00:33.280engaged and watching is that human fallibility and it's the same thing with a performance you
01:00:40.380know that's what makes theater so engaging is it's like is are they going to pull this off
01:00:43.820Right. There's a real white knuckling through a lot of performance. And I think that that's the truly human element that can't be replicated because its job is to just be perfect and to just do the thing it's programmed to do. But that's not engaging to a listener, watcher, viewer, whatever. We like to see the risk.
01:01:09.960Yes. Well, in that, I think the risk is part of that larger understanding of aura that is impossible to describe or to value in some ways, right? Because it's ineffable. You cannot monetize it, save to pay actual humans, right?
01:01:28.640What are some projects that you're working on right now that you're excited about?
01:01:33.800So I'm doing the new Frieda McFadden book. I'd never done a Frieda McFadden before. So I feel like, you know, I really, yeah, I know. I was like, oh, yes, finally, I got to be one of the cool kids. And then a guy I know, we met at Bread Loaf Writers Conference like 10 years ago, Stephen Fishback. He has a history in reality television. And he's been working on a book about reality TV for, well, since we knew each other 10 years ago.
01:02:00.420And it finally is coming out, and I'm narrating part of it, and it's wonderful. And it's such a good hang. It's great. We have a lot of Audiobrary stuff coming up, which we haven't quite announced yet, but there's a new historical by J.B. Harris, a debut novelist called The Immigrant's Wife.
01:02:23.100and it talks it's like unbelievably prescient because not only is it 1913 boston and the kind
01:02:29.480of immigrant experience but also um pandemic and vaccine and public health stuff and she just like
01:02:36.500hit it out of the park it feels very kristen hannah to me that's what i like about this book
01:02:40.620so yeah there's just like so there's so much in the hopper i'm trying to even think of because
01:02:45.180you know publishing timelines i know i know i like live in the future so what is even no that's
01:02:52.600great that's great okay all right okay and where can people find you if they want to hear more
01:02:58.040from you about you all that's well I'm most active on Instagram at just Julia Whelan also on Twitter
01:03:05.780or not Twitter Jesus um Irish goodbye Twitter I'm not on Twitter anymore um uh which is that you
01:03:14.780were like one of the best parts of old school Twitter it was so sad um I know TikTok is the
01:03:20.720one I meant. Um, as you can tell, super, super up on the Tik TOK. Um, I, but honestly sign up for
01:03:28.860the audio brewery newsletter. Cause that's my only newsletter. And that's where I send out
01:03:32.620everything from like appearances, uh, events. Um, and we're not, we don't spam you because I don't
01:03:39.520have the time to spam you. So we only send out emails when there's like a new release coming,
01:03:45.200or we're doing a sale or something cool has dropped on, on this website. So it's, it's a
01:03:50.840very low impact newsletter follow. Love it. We will link very prominently. Oh, thank you.
01:03:57.980This has been a true pleasure. I really, really. Thank you so much. Like I said, for me too,
01:04:03.680I really, I've, I've been a fan for so long. And so this was just so much fun.
01:04:10.060Thanks for listening to the Culture Study Podcast. Today, paid subscribers got a bonus
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