Audiobook Narration
Your story, voiced.
Narration drawn from everything you put on the page.
You’ve heard this book in your head. Every character already has a voice in there, and you know exactly how that one line is supposed to land.
I’m not interpreting freely. I’m reading what you wrote, including the subtext you built underneath it, and letting that come through in the performance.
It’s your story. I’m the vessel bringing it to listeners’ ears.
I take one audiobook project at a time. While I’m working on yours, it’s the only book in my booth.
I specialize in paranormal romance, romantasy, urban fantasy, and dark fantasy.
I read across adjacent speculative genres, and other genres are considered case by case.
Samples
Every book asks for something different.
Over 500 books in 5 years, some in print and some in my ears. That’s where the genre instincts come from.
Why a Human Narrator
Synthetic narration is cheaper and easier to produce: upload the manuscript, submit payment, and poof, an audiobook. What it can't do is know where to pause, because it doesn't know what the pause is for. The one right before a character finally says the thing she's spent two hundred pages not saying, while the reader has been screaming just say it already since chapter twelve. Or the beat after a realization lands, when her next words come out torn because she's only just surfacing.
Those pauses are decisions, and they come out of the read. Before I record anything, I've read your book the way I read a manuscript for a developmental edit: for the continuity threads, the dialogue and attitude patterns, and the subtext you built. That's how I know which lines have to carry more than they say. I can't help it. It's how my brain works.
Then there's the recording. Narration runs roughly six hours of work for every finished hour of audio (the hour a listener hears), so a ten-hour audiobook is sixty-plus hours, and thirty to forty of those are spent in the booth. "Just read it out loud" is not what narration is. I'm reading ahead while performing the current line. I'm re-placing myself in each character's position as the exchange moves—how one character treats another shifts line by line, and the performance shifts with it. All while holding every voice steady, managing breath, landing pronunciation, and staying inside the scene rather than watching it through a glass partition. What's left is editing, mastering, and an independent proofer comparing every finished minute against your manuscript, word by word.
That's the short version. The full seven-phase breakdown is on my Resources page: What Happens to Your Audiobook Between the Booth and Your Inbox.
Pricing
A finished hour is one hour of the audiobook a listener hears, not the hours I spend working on it. At the industry standard of 9,000 words per finished hour, a 90,000-word book runs roughly ten finished hours. So at $250 per finished hour, that’s about $2,500.
That number is a projection. Your final invoice is based on the mastered audio runtime. If it runs longer, you pay for the extra hours at the same rate. If it runs shorter, you pay less. Either way, you pay for the audiobook you actually received.
Per Finished Hour (PFH) Production Package · $250 PFH
Full production including narration and professional post-production: editing, proofing, and mastering to retail specifications. Your audiobook is delivered retail-ready.
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ACX platform distribution only.
The $150 per finished hour covers post-production costs. I receive my narrator compensation through a 50/50 royalty share with you, under ACX’s 7-year term agreement.
RS+ is a bet we both make, so it’s a conversation rather than a menu choice. Tell me about your book, and we’ll figure out which one makes sense.
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If you want to hear the book as it’s recorded: raw recordings every 3 chapters or 2.5 finished hours, with a 48-hour feedback window at each checkpoint, so you can flag course corrections before editing begins.
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Nothing is due until you’ve heard and approved the 15-minute sample. If you decide before then that I’m not the right narrator for your book, there’s no charge and no hard feelings.
PFH: 50% at sample approval, and the balance after your corrections pass, due within 30 days. You own the audio outright once final payment clears.
RS+: production cost in full at sample approval, then royalties over the ACX term.
After sample approval, canceling means the payment you’ve already made is retained as a kill fee, and nothing further is owed. That’s 50% of the estimated project cost for PFH, or the full production payment for RS+. At that point, I’ve committed my recording schedule to your book.
Full payment, revision, cancellation, and delay terms live in your service agreement. Ask me about any of it before you sign, and the site-wide version is in the Terms of Service.
Free custom audition, up to 5 minutes.
Nothing due until you approve the 15-minute sample.
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You tell me about your book: premise, word count, where you’re distributing, and your timeline. If you want to hear me first, send a passage and I’ll record up to five minutes of it, no charge and no commitment.
I send you a quote: the estimated finished hours from your word count, the price based on them, and a projected timeline. The final invoice is based on the mastered runtime.
If you want to move forward, I send the service agreement and onboarding guide together. You review and sign, then send your manuscript, your pronunciation guide, and your front- and back-matter preferences. Nothing is due yet.
I read the full manuscript, then record the 15-minute sample. This takes about two weeks, and you get up to two rounds of revisions on tone, pacing, and character voices.
If you approve the sample, that locks in the artistic direction and the first payment comes due: 50% for PFH, or the production cost in full for RS+. Once it’s in, the production clock starts. If instead you decide I’m not the right narrator for your book, we end the agreement there, and no money has changed hands.
Now production begins: recording, self-proof, technical edit, mastering, the independent proofer’s pass, and pickups. If you added the Checkpoint Review, you receive raw audio every 3 chapters or 2.5 finished hours, with a 48-hour window to flag course corrections.
I deliver the retail-ready files via a password-protected OneDrive link. You have ten business days to listen and send one corrections log.
Once you’ve approved the files and any pickups are done, I send the final invoice for the PFH balance, due within 30 days. When it clears, ownership of the mastered files transfers to you.
For ACX projects, the sequence is the same; the audition, sample approval, and delivery run through ACX’s milestones, and the service agreement supplements ACX’s terms for what they don’t cover: AI and voice protection, and distribution.
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A custom audition before anything is booked
A 15-minute sample you approve before I record the rest
Your finished audiobook, narrated and produced to the specifications you approved
Chapter files, split and labeled, ready to upload
Opening and closing credits, the spoken intro and outro on your audiobook
A retail sample, the short clip listeners hear before they buy
ACX-compliant mastered audio, meeting the technical specs every major platform requires (192 kbps or higher MP3, 44.1 kHz, 16-bit, correct noise floor and levels)
Final files come through a secure, password-protected OneDrive link with a 30-day download window. I keep backups for a full year, so you have a safety net if anything happens on your end. Re-sending within that year is a $25 admin fee; after a year, files are securely deleted.
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Five things. Ask if you get stuck on any of them.
Your final manuscript, proofed, edited, and record-ready (.docx preferred). The requirements sound strict, but the point is only to make sure I record the version you actually want.
Confirmation that you own the rights to the material.
A character and pronunciation guide. Phonetic spellings, voice memos, or both, whichever is easier for you. If a blank page is the obstacle, ask and I’ll send a template.
Where you’re distributing, and any timeline you’re working toward.
Front and back matter preferences. Whether to record the dedication, epigraph, author’s note, acknowledgments—and how you want the opening and closing credits worded. I default to the standard format if you’d rather not think about it.
Of these, the pronunciation guide best protects your timeline. Speculative fiction runs on invented names and spellings that don’t map to standard English. If I hit a word that isn’t in your guide, I stop the chapter and email you instead of guessing. That protects your book, and it costs the timeline a few days each time.
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These are general estimates. I confirm a specific timeline in writing upon booking.
15-minute sample: approximately 2 weeks
8-hour audiobook (~72,000 words): 13–16 weeks / 10-hour audiobook (~90,000 words): 14–17 weeks
Two clocks run here, and they start at different moments.
The sample clock starts when I have your final manuscript, pronunciation guide, and signed agreement. That's 1–2 weeks to your 15-minute sample. That window includes the full prep read.
The production clock starts at sample approval, once the deposit (PFH) or production payment (RS+) is in.
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Manuscript rewrites or edits
Sound effects or music
Marketing services
Distribution services
My Commitment to You
Genre fluency.
Pacing, tropes, and emotional beats are built into how I read every line.
Every character gets a distinct, maintainable attitude.
I track those details across production, so chapter one and chapter forty sound like the same person—changed by everything in between but still recognizably themselves.
Retail-ready audio.
No surprises, no quality issues, and no failed uploads. Every audiobook passes through an independent proofer and a final technical inspection against ACX and Audible specifications before it reaches you.
Free custom audition, up to 5 minutes.
Find out whether you want to listen to me for ten hours.
No AI Touches Your Book Here.
Your manuscript
Your manuscript never goes into an AI tool. Not for summaries and not for “just checking.” Not at any stage, and not without your written permission.
The work you’re paying me for is my work. Narration prep and character/pronunciation work are done by me. Narration prep and character and pronunciation work are written by me. A microphone, my own two eyes on your manuscript, and thirty to forty hours in a booth are the whole toolkit.
My voice
Your audiobook is narrated by a human who chose to be in the booth. No synthetic or cloned audio appears in any deliverable, at any point, for any reason.
I don’t submit auditions or voice samples to platforms that use recordings for AI training or voice cloning.
That stance protects you too. The service agreement prohibits enrolling the finished audiobook in any voice replica or AI narration program, and bars distribution through platforms that require AI training rights as a condition of listing. When listeners hear your book, they’re hearing a performance that can’t be replicated or repurposed.
That’s what I can promise you. Anyone else who touches your book, you’ll have to ask them.
The formal version lives in the Terms of Service.
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The short version, in plain language. The full terms are in your service agreement.
You retain all rights to your manuscript
I retain rights to the audio until payment is received in full, at which point ownership of the mastered files transfers to you
I keep the raw recordings and production files. What transfers to you is the finished, mastered audiobook
I can use finished work in my portfolio, demos, and samples—which is how you’re able to hear other authors’ books on this page
My voice stays mine to license. Nothing here gives anyone the right to clone, synthesize, or replicate it.
Narrator credit is required on the final audiobook
FAQ
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Two different things at two different moments.
The custom audition comes first: send me a passage, and I record up to 5 minutes of it, or approximately 750 words. Free with no commitment. This is where you find out whether you want to listen to me for ten hours. If we’re not the right fit, it’s better to know early. I understand “no.”
The 15-minute sample comes after you’ve decided to work with me. It’s where we finalize artistic direction—tone, pacing, and character voices—with up to two rounds of revisions before full production begins. Your approval of that sample is what starts production and triggers the first payment.
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After you approve the sample, the next thing you hear is the finished audiobook. That’s the standard process, and it works because the sample is where artistic direction gets settled.
If you’d rather hear it in progress, the Checkpoint Review add-on gives you raw audio every 3 chapters or 2.5 finished hours, with a 48-hour window to flag course corrections before editing begins.
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My default is my natural speaking voice, and for most books that’s the right call. It’s where my range, stamina, and consistency are strongest, and it keeps characterization grounded across a full-length production.
That said, if your story calls for a specific accent on a character or the whole book, send me a short passage and I’ll record it so you can hear how it lands. If I can’t sustain that accent across the whole manuscript, I’ll tell you.
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Steam does not scare me.
That said, heat levels vary and so do narrator comfort zones. If you’re worried, send me a description of the heat level and any scenes you’re unsure about, or the scenes themselves. I’ll review it and give you a straight answer.
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I perform solo narration: one voice for the whole book and all characters. For dual narration, where two narrators split POV chapters, I’m glad to be one of the two—you’d find and coordinate the other. Duet and multicast are case by case.
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There’s a ceiling on how much I can record in a day. Performance quality drops before stamina does—my voice tires, and a tired voice sounds tired on the recording.
For every finished hour of audio, there are approximately six hours of work across seven production phases.
Rush delivery isn’t something I offer, at any price. What can sometimes move is the start date.
The full breakdown is on my Resources page: What Happens to Your Audiobook Between the Booth and Your Inbox.
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I record in an acoustically treated home studio using an LCT-440-Pure condenser microphone and a Universal Audio Apollo Solo interface, and I edit in Reaper. All recordings are mastered to ACX and Audible specifications unless otherwise requested.
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PFH costs more upfront and ends there. You pay the production rate, own the audio outright, and share no future earnings.
RS+ costs less upfront. You cover production, and I take my narrator compensation through a 50/50 royalty share with you for 7 years, per ACX’s agreement. It’s ACX-exclusive and distributes through Audible.
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Your final invoice is calculated on the actual mastered runtime at your contracted rate. If it runs long, the extra hours are added at that same rate. If it runs short on PFH, your remaining balance shrinks; on RS+, where you've paid in full upfront, the difference comes back to you.
As for why it moves: 9,000 words per finished hour is the industry's estimating figure, and mastered audio rarely lands exactly on it. Dialogue-heavy scenes, dramatic delivery, and invented names that take longer to say than they look all pull on the ratio. In speculative fiction, it pulls long more often than short, so if you're budgeting, budget slightly over.
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You can, but every change means re-recording, re-editing, and remastering the affected section. Changes run $25 per 300 words, with a $25 minimum—so a six-word fix and a 300-word rewrite cost the same. Revisions past 5% of the runtime are quoted individually.
This is just the long way of saying: finalize your manuscript before we begin, if you possibly can.
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Tell me. Life happens, and a short pause costs nothing but time—the timeline just shifts.
Longer pauses do carry a holding fee: I schedule my proofer around your delivery date. A long silence moves someone else’s calendar too. The specifics are in your service agreement.
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You have 10 business days to review the final files and send corrections in one log. I provide a formatted spreadsheet for it.
If ten business days have passed and I haven't heard from you, I'll take that as approval and send the final invoice.
If you need more time to listen, tell me before the window closes.
Anything that’s my error—a misread, an audio glitch, or a mispronounced common word—I fix at no charge, no matter how many there are.
Corrections that come from performance preferences, manuscript typos found after recording, or pronunciations not in your guide are quoted by volume. If there are only a couple, I’m not going to invoice you for two lines.
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I treat every manuscript as confidential by default. If you’d like a formal NDA, I’m happy to sign one.
Tell me about your book
Free custom audition, up to 5 minutes. Nothing due until you approve the 15-minute sample. I respond within 1–2 business days (Pacific Time).