The Ms. Michaela Mae Show

Recording my First Audiobook at Home (Lessons Learned)

• Michaela Mae • Episode 34

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In this episode of the Ms. Michaela Mae Show, Michaela shares the behind-the-scenes story of recording her first audiobook — the Afterthoughts Edition of her memoir, The Barn Off of Colfax Lane. She opens up about why she chose to record at home instead of a studio, how her love of ASMR and childhood memories of being read to shaped the whole experience, and why she intentionally left in the page turns, the stumbles, and even the sound of her Corgis in the background. Michaela also breaks down the difference between "flawless" and "perfect," and why that distinction changed everything for her. She walks through the platforms she used — Buzzsprout, Hello Audio, and ACX — explains why she chose to release the audiobook as its own podcast feed, and shares her plans to eventually post it on Audible. Whether you're thinking about recording your first audiobook or just looking for a permission slip to do things your own way, this episode is packed with practical tips and a whole lot of heart.

LINKS & RESOURCES

CHAPTER TITLES

— Welcome & What This Episode Is About

— The Audiobook That Almost Got a Studio 

— Why She Recorded at Home (and With Her Dogs) 

— Flawless vs. Perfect: A Real Distinction 

— The Afterthoughts Edition Explained 

— Why the Audiobook Got Its Own Podcast Feed

— Buzzsprout, Hello Audio, and ACX Breakdown 

— Recording Tips for Your First Audiobook 

— Know How You Work and Work With It 

— How AI Helped Fill in the Gaps 

— Final Encouragement & Where to Listen

SEO KEYWORDS

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SPEAKER_00

Well, hey you, and welcome back to another episode of the Miss Mikayla May Show. I'm your host, Miss Mikayla May, here with my Corgiese Tank and Willie, per usual. And today I'm telling you about my first experience recording an audiobook. Like, what? I have an audiobook out. It's just insane for me to even say that sentence. And it was such a fun experience for me. So I want to tell you about it. And then also, if you want to record your first audiobook, I will give you my tips and tricks and etc. for self-producing your own audiobook. And then also why I decided to release it the way that I did and what I plan on doing in the future. So yeah, without further ado, let's get into it. So yeah, I recorded my first audiobook. Like what? I've just so this was one of my favorite projects I've ever put together and done. And I had a blast. And I really feel like I had a blast because I allowed myself to do it my way. I was originally looking into studios and I really got intentional and thought about how I wanted this book to feel. And when I really thought and sat with that, it may it didn't make sense for me to record it in a studio. So I decided to record it at home. And the main reason is if you have listened to my other episodes, you've heard me talk about my book. But my book, for those who haven't, I'll give you a little, a quick, quick little like behind the scenes or um backstory, if you will. So my book is the first part of my memoir, and it's called The Barn Off of Colfax Lane. And the tagline is an unfiltered memoir about sexual assault and the mixed mixed feelings that come with it. And so it's kind of wild. I just told you that, and it's kind of wild for me to say that I had a blast recording it. Obviously, given the context, uh you can imagine the stuff in it's pretty heavy, and it was pretty heavy. And what again, the fun part was not necessarily reading the book, because that that's never fun for me. Like even when I was editing, like it's just not fun for me. Um, but what was fun was the actual recording process because when I thought about this book and how I wanted this book itself to feel from the beginning, is I always wanted it to feel like it was just you and me sitting down across from each other at a coffee shop, just talking as friends about our stories and about what happened, and maybe a little deeper than like telling the story in a way that I never had before, would be the the level that I would add on to it. That maybe you wouldn't get into all those details at a coffee shop, but it had that that feeling, that vibe, if you will. And so, with that being the intention for the book itself, that's why to me it didn't make sense to go rent a studio and have it be super polished. And the other thing that I decided to do was because at some point I really did fall in love with like ASMR videos, and so with that, I wanted to, instead of um, speaking of dogs, I wanted to um tank is tank is um tank is being tank, and maybe you can hear tank, maybe you can't, but I can hear tank, and he's throwing a bone up in the air and catching it for himself and growling at it. So you might hear that. Just imagine a Corgi doing all of that, and it's quite hysterical, but anyway. Um, so I wanted I didn't want to read it from my laptop and have there not be any patroning. What I wanted to read it from the book because again, with trying to create that personal connection, not just in the book, but within the recording process, I wanted, and now Tank's walking over here. So, like I said, if you hear the little t t, it's a corgi. Um, because tank like drags his feet when he's on the ground. It's just a tank thing. If you know Tank, you know. If you don't know Tank, you could probably get the vibe. But anyway, so I didn't want it to feel super polished. I wanted it to feel, and this was something that I had thought about one of my favorite when I was in elementary school, one of my favorite things was when the teacher would read to us, and I wanted it to feel like that. I wanted you to hear the turning of the pages. If I had to someone reread a sentence, like I wanted that to be in there because I wanted it to feel real and raw and not super polished. And because I let myself do that, I think that's why I had so much fun because I didn't get in my head about, oh, this is not pertinent, like, no, it's and this was something I got into, and this was another thing that I added is I read the book, and then just like it would be in a classroom discussion, I did what I called afterthoughts. And so I read the the chapter, and then I gave you my afterthoughts. Like, what were my thoughts after I read the chapter? And one of the things that I ended up talking about is how we confuse flawless with perfect. And the book and the way that I read it was not quote unquote flawless. Obviously, there were mistakes, there were stumbles, there were times I accidentally hit my mic because I was turning a page. I left all that in there. And if I felt like it was too distracting, because I'm really sensitive, I restarted, but I didn't find it to be distracting, and so I left it in there. And um I I was really proud of myself because yeah, it wasn't flawless, but it was perfect. Perfect meaning it was done exactly the way it needed to be done, because that's actually the definition of perfect, is it went exactly like it was supposed to go. It was done exactly as it was supposed to be done, but we tend to conflate the word perfection and flawless and flawlessness, and they are two different definitions, they have two different meanings, and so there was a a version of me once upon a time that would not have let that happened. If there would have been one little bump or I would have restarted everything, I wouldn't have let it, I wouldn't have had the pages in. I would have tried to, I would have gone, and not that this is wrong, if this is how your book is meant to be recorded, that's amazing. And I just didn't feel like mine was. I and that's why I didn't go rent a studio, but some someone may find you know it is, but there was a version of myself that would have beat myself up a lot for not going to rent the studio, for not trying to make it feel like it was produced in a music studio because that's where a lot of uh people record their audiobooks is in music studios. And so, but I loved it. I loved that I let it just be what it was, and that's why I had so much fun, even when I was reading content that's obviously really hard for me to read and like go back through. I did it in the way that I wanted to do it, and that's what made it fun. So that was the first like permission slip I just wanted to give you today is, and this is something I talk about if you go back to my my episodes where I talk about writing a book. Write your book your way, record your audiobook your way. There is no right or wrong way to do it, especially in this time when we're in the independent media space. Like there are no rules. There are guidelines, but there are no rules. So write your own rules and break them if necessary and follow them where you need to follow them. Me sitting in my bedroom and recording this audiobook with my dogs with me, with the mic, with the turning of the pages was exactly how I wanted to record my audiobook. And I wasn't gonna let anyone tell me differently. And so let's get into the second piece, which makes me reminded me. Um, I did publish my audiobook onto podcast, and so I've linked that below. So if you want to listen to my audiobook and listen to how it is, that is linked below in the show notes where you could go listen to the audiobook. And so my original plan was to produce the or distribute, distribute, not produce, yeah, thank you. Um was to distribute the podcast on uh a private podcast feed. That was my original plan, and I was gonna use it to grow my email list. Like that was my plan for my next book was to continue to build up my email list. And so I was always gonna put the audiobook on to a private podcast feed. And when I was getting ready to distribute it, like there were two different things. One, when I got to the private podcast feed, it said if it was gonna go on Spotify, it was gonna be public no matter what. So when I got there, and it was really important for me to have it on all podcast platforms like Apple, Spotify, et cetera. So when I got to that point, I thought it is more important for me to make it public than it is for me to not have it on Spotify since so many people listen through Spotify now. And so that was the first reason I decided to just put it as a public podcast was because, well, it's gonna be public anyway. The second reason is it dawned on me for this book specifically, tanks coming back. So we're probably gonna hear tic-tacks again. We the way he he scrapes his feet, we call it tic-tacks because he just like yeah, who knows what tank. Anywho. Uh the second reason was um it dawned on me that visibility was more important to me. And I am still using it in a lot of ways to build my email list, and I know because I've been podcasting for so many years, there's also so many ways to get organic using the podcast to get organic searches. And I decided I wanted the podcast to really like with visibility with my writing and my author career, that was more important to me than the email list. I have other ways I'm growing my email list, like I'm good. So um, that was the reason I decided to just post it as a public podcast, which it is just a public podcast. I did think about putting it just on my podcast, and ultimately the reason I decided not to do that is because I did want it to feel like an audiobook. I did want it to feel like its own thing. I didn't want it just to feel like it was a podcast episode. And I've had there's been like Brendan Bruchard did it, uh, Alex Hermosy put their audiobooks on their podcast, and I didn't like it because I felt like it got lost. Like if I had to go back and listen to a chapter, if I didn't listen to it all in one sitting, it got lost, and I just didn't like that. So that was the other reason I decided to make it its own podcast. And again, I guess I'm just not worried. Like there is some parts where it's like, yeah, it's smart to cross promote and try to just build this one thing up, and that's just something I'm just not worried about. So yeah, that that was ultimately why I decided to put it on a as a podcast feed, was to make the priority of visibility but also easy access. And then the other thing is I am gonna post it on ACX, which is Audible's audiobook platform. I have to re-record the intro, but other than that, I am gonna put it on Audible and I will like it will be for charge. Like I will charge for that. It won't be free. The free version is mainly for people who find it organically and then people who find it through my social media, and then yeah, of course, on on Audible I'm gonna charge for it. And so that'll be the way that it does bring in royalties. And so it was kind of a happy way of doing multiple things, I guess. And I don't, I don't know. I think on Audible I will eventually post the Afterthoughts edition. I will, because I'll just post the the actual audiobook, and then on um when I get the because I am gonna put the afterthoughts edition into print as well. And so when I get the print version done, then I'll I'll I'll post that on. So I'll have two by the by the end of it, I'll have two versions of my first book, and then I'll have two versions of the audiobook, which would again, it was just fun for me to do that. So that is ultimately why I decided to publish it the way I did. Like I said, if you're gonna record your first audiobook, you can literally do it however you want to. You could use something like hello audio to do the private podcast feed, you can use something like Buzz Sprout to make it a public podcast feed, or you can use ACX to distribute it and get paid for it. So there's no right or wrong way to do it. Those are the three resources that I know about. And ultimately, I will use, I was gonna use Hello Audio, and like I said, when I got in the back end, it was gonna make Spotify public. So I thought, well, I might as well use Buzz Sprout since I'm already paying for it, so I don't have two different things that I'm paying for. And then um, two, it was um, I'll put it on ACX to actually like put it on Audible and stuff, and then it'll also be linked through, it'll be under my book in Amazon. Amazon really makes it really simple for authors to like link stuff up. Like I'm for self-publishing for authors, like Amazon is amazing, and I'm actually I have a lot of quarrel with Amazon if I'm being honest with you, and this is the one thing that Amazon really makes amazing. So the last thing we'll get into is really like any, I guess, tips and tricks that I have. And I will say, especially for your first one, like what helped me is again doing it my way. I recorded where I was comfortable. I did it in a way that I wanted to do it. I do have experience with well, one podcasting. So I mean, for me, it was just very similar to recording a podcast, and it was important for me. Like I I've been recording most of these podcasts with my headphones, and it was really important for me to do it with my mic. So because I I got a new laptop and my cord didn't work, it's kind of a long story, but so I ended up buying cords for it. I ended up um, you know, getting the headphones that plug into my mic, so I had that all set up. So I would say find what's important to you and then make sure you execute on that, and then the things that are important to you, just know that yeah, it may not be flawless, but it is perfect. And have fun. Like it it can be a grueling process, but you can also make it fun. And back to because my book, The Burn Off of Colfax Lane, is not very long. So for me, I busted it out in a day, like a day and a half, I would say. And uh, I ended up doing it all in one day. Well, very long day, but it was a day. And to me, I don't like dragging things on, so it was better for me to just bust it out like that than it was for me to carry it on. And for you, it might be best to just do one chapter a day for 30 days. I mean, I don't know you, I don't know how you operate, but you do. You know you and you know how you operate. So figure out how you operate and don't compare yourself to anybody else. Like, this is one of my favorite sayings is and it's from um her name's Alison Armstrong. Like, I don't argue with the way things are, I learn how they are, and then I learn how to work with it. And she's like, that that applies to you too. Like, just learn how you are and work with it. Are you someone who does better in like big blocks of time, like where you can just like hyper focus and bust it out? Or are you someone that does better with small chunks? Again, there's no right or wrong way to do it. And I think what could even be fun is if you are someone who likes to do things in small chunks, like just publish as you go, like get your introduction done, like and then oh, I will add that. Like get your introduction done and publish it. Get your chapter one done and then publish, like just I think it can be really fun for people to have that suspense too, especially if you have an audience built in, like build the suspense of them not knowing when the next chapter is gonna drop. I think that could be really fun. And again, that's another thing in the independent media space. Like you can do it however you want to, and you can make it so fun, not just for you, but for your audience as well, of doing the drop, or you know, maybe they get five chapters at a time and then they have to wait two weeks and then they get another five chapters. You know, it kind of can keep people enticing. Like, there is downsides to publishing it all at once, especially if you have an audience already built in and can kind of drop it to them. Like that could be really fun. Um, the last thing that I will add, I did just to double check, and I think this could be a really good use of AI. I did double check to see if there was anything I needed to record that wouldn't be in my book, like a copyright, a disclaimer, because obviously for the audiobook, you'll say like a written and narrated by, because you may have hired somebody and you're not narrating it. But if you are narrating it, you would put like, I'm narrating this. So I did go to AI and say, like, hey, is there anything that I would need to record for the audiobook that's not just not going to be in my book? Like if I read it all the way through and AI just wrote that script for me, and I did do that, and I I do use Claude. So that's the kind of last thing that I forgot to mention that I would add is that's where AI could be really useful as far as creating a checklist. Like, is there anything that telling AI your plan and saying, like, hey, am I missing anything? And so yeah, that was how I recorded my first audiobook. I had a blast, and um, I encourage you to have a blast too. So yeah, thank you for listening to this episode of the Miss Mikayla May Show. Like I said, if you want to listen to my audiobook, The Barn Off of Colfax Lane Afterthoughts edition, I've linked the Buzz Sprout link below. And if you go to the Buzz Sprout link, then you can click for Apple, Spotify, or any other pod. It's uh literally it's everywhere where podcasts are found. So if you go to the Buzz Sprout website, it you can just choose where you go. Um, but other than that, yeah, thank you for listening to another episode of the Miss Mikayla May Show. If you found value out of this episode, I would absolutely be honored if you would rate, review, and subscribe to the show. And without yeah, I was gonna say without further ado, but that's what I say at the beginning. Um, with all of that, thank you for listening, and we will talk to you next time.