The Write Path #43 - The Voice Behind the Pages, with Audio Genius Liza Jacob!!!

Liza Jacob is a seasoned, sharp, and spectacularly listenable audiobook narrator. Liza brings a behind-the-scenes look at what actually makes an audiobook work—from performance choices to production standards. Listeners walk away with a sharper ear, smarter expectations, and fewer expensive mistakes. With 30+ titles under her belt and over 10 accents mastered, she brings cozy mysteries, romance, and fantasy to life with a voice that’s as dependable as it is delightful. 

For indie writers navigating audio, Liza demystifies the process and raises the bar. She helps listeners understand how voice, pacing, and performance directly impact reviews, retention, and long-term sales. With 30+ titles produced across romance, cozy mystery, fantasy, and speculative fiction, she works at the intersection of performance, production, and author intent. Translation: she knows where audiobooks succeed, where they quietly fail, and why.  What makes Liza especially valuable to independent writers is that she doesn’t just narrate books—she understands the ecosystem. She’s worked closely with producers, engineers, and authors, and she brings that insider perspective to authors who are often making high-stakes audio decisions without a clear roadmap. She helps writers see their work the way narrators, listeners, and platforms do—before the money is spent and the reviews are written.

Her Website:  https://www.lizajacob.com/

Welcome to the Write Path Podcast, where being an author, an actual author, still matters. This isn't the place for the Chat GPT experts or the AI buffs to churn out soulless content with no heart.  This is the place where authors share their journeys, explore their creativity, examine the "Why?" behind it all and come together to celebrate each other. This is the podcast for authors, about authors, and by an author, where the truth still counts and words still have power. Join Us!  You have a story to tell!

Contact us on all our social media platforms and email us at thewritepathpodcast@gmail.com  

This is the place where authors know that every page... is a step forward. Let's move forward together, let's move forward today. Listen now.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Right Path Podcast. We're being an author, an actual author, not a Chat GPT person, but an actual author still matters. Folks, this is the podcast that's for authors. It's about authors, and it's done by an author. Uh, folks, this is where we share our journeys. We explore our creativity, and most importantly, we get into the why behind it all. Okay. Our guest today is this is an incredibly unique opportunity for us, uh, or all of us as authors, to get to listen to this lady. Uh, she reached out to me and I instantly was just intrigued. And I said, you know, I want to have this conversation. So if you're half listening, put down what you're working on. Okay. If you're like working on your book right now, editing, you know what? Take a break and listen to this because this really is for the authors in the audience to hear. All right. So we have this lady. She has um, let's see, she's been an illustrator of uh eight different books that were indie published. She's been an illustrator of six different books that were um traditionally published. She knows what she's doing over there. Um, she is offering out a downloadable PDF guide, which we're gonna talk about later on. And folks, she is an audiobook narrator. We're gonna talk about this a lot today. Please welcome to the show, Liza Jacobs. Liza, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_03 1:18

Hey, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 1:20

I appreciate you coming on. Um, I loved your reach out. Uh, this is so incredibly important. Every author I talk to, as soon as we start working together, it is uh, okay, I'm gonna do a hardcover, I'm gonna do a soft cover, I'm gonna do an e-book, I'm gonna do an audiobook. And it's like, are you? So before we get into all that, tell everybody a little bit about who is Liza Jacobs. You know, uh what brought you to all of this?

SPEAKER_03 1:44

Yeah, yeah. Um I definitely started life knowing I wanted to illustrate. And that was my core focus for all of middle school, high school, college. And then um I got to a point in my late 20s where I felt like I had achieved my goal with air quotes thoroughly around that one. And the industry itself was not what I thought it would be. I was so focused on getting to that end goal moment that then when I got there and I looked around and I was like, well, I want to spend my time illustrating. And they're like, no, no, no, no, no. You're gonna spend your time at book fairs and book author visits. And I was like, what? At this time, like I'm starting a having a family. I'm like, that's not a choice. Like, and I speak to other people in the industry and they're like, oh yeah, I'm on the road all the time. And I'm like, uh, this we I can't I need a break. I can't. So I had done, you know, um, in-person design jobs, like office jobs related to my field. Again, the hours were hard. Um, so I took a little time off. I was very lucky to get to do that and sort of get my head on straight. And um my old cheer coach from college put on Facebook, she was like, check this out. I narrated this. It would really help me out if you left a review. And I was like, I'm sorry, hold on. You you can just like get into this because my first job out of college, I um was a secretary. And the promise was like, Look, we know this girl is looking for another job. It's gonna be months, maybe a couple of years. You can have the chance to compete for her design seat, but we have this seat for you today. Do you want it? And I said yes. So then I go from literally talking nonstop all day, every day, to perfect silence when I got the design seat. I was like, ah, so uncomfortable. And so I got very into audiobooks very quickly. I listened to all of the Sherlock Holmes ones. I'm old enough, I listened to them on CD. And um, and I just fell in love with it. So then when um my cheer coach Heisha, she was like, Yeah, I did this. I was like, sorry, sorry, tell me more. And I just fell down the rabbit hole of not only what it took to do what she did, but what would it take for this to be a career? Like, okay, I what if I really pivoted? And the answer was years of training and coaching, really opening back up the book on learning about acting. Because this is an acting gig. It's not a reading gig, it's an acting gig. And like, okay, fine, you know, anybody who is like, wow, I could narrate, you probably could, comma, because you also probably could learn the skill of acting. But that is that is the thing. Um so you know, years pass, I record, I get better, I take classes, and it's sort of bizarre and amazing to get to do this every day. But um I wouldn't, I wouldn't pick anything else because not only do I absolutely love what I do, the actual day-to-day machinations of being a narrator are getting to narrate. And that was the disconnect for me with illustration was when I was like, yes, finally, I am a children's book illustrator, like top level achieved. And they're like, oh shud, sorry, oh fudge. I'm not actually getting to spend the bulk of my time illustrating. So that I I love it. I love it.

SPEAKER_02 5:43

Wow. Okay. And remember the rules. Sorry, you can say whatever you want to say. So don't worry.

SPEAKER_03 5:46

I you know, I'm used to in the children's book worlds. There's no, no, sir. You cannot with the oh fudging darn is about as close as we can get.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

You unpacked so much just now. I'm just I'm uh at first, I mean you threw me completely off with the whole I'm old enough to, you know, have remembered CDs. I mean, that that was really adorable. Um, because I'm old enough that I grew up with eight track tapes. Okay. Fair so old enough, goodness gracious. What are you like 25?

SPEAKER_01 6:16

That's very good.

SPEAKER_02 6:17

Telling me right now. Um but that was uh to make the changes, the way that you described it, uh, I think so many of us, uh authors, uh podcasters, everybody kind of gets into their business with this idea of what it's going to be like. And you're describing what so many like creatives have gone through where I want to do my thing. I want to write, I want to be behind the mic, right? I I don't want to like spend all my time doing all the other stuff. And so you're loving the illustration, you get to the top, and now it's like, oh, well, apparently you need to go sell yourself first and uh connect and network and blah blah blah. And oh, you might get to you know draw.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:54

Once in a while. So that that leads to the shift to say, hey, I I need I need to do something different, even though I love illustrating.

SPEAKER_03 7:03

100%.

SPEAKER_02 7:04

The voiceover thing, I've never heard anybody say that about it in terms of its acting. And as soon as you said that, it was like this light went off my head and went, oh my gosh. Yeah. You're reading a script, you have to convey the emotion of the character. How did you come to that realization?

SPEAKER_03 7:23

Um if you are curious and get into different forums like Facebook groups or anywhere where people are talking about it, um that is the first thing that people will tell you.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_03 7:36

But yes. Because I think there are a lot of folks who come into the space with the idea that they just need a good voice, and they come in with that like sort of like very fake, very polished feeling um voice. And they assume that's that's the gig is reading. And I actually feel like the who's it, uh Scott Brick is one of the most famous audiobook narrators, and he has a YouTube video that's uh labeled something like, So you think you want to be a narrator? And in it he's like, Okay, go into a a room, a small room, close the door, and read out loud to yourself for eight hours and see if you still like it. And it really pulls out the okay, but what am I saying? Like, why am I saying it this way? It's more than whatever we all do when we read to our kids at night. It's more than what happens in your own head to some degree when you're reading quickly. You, I at least, I imagine we all do, when you read to yourself, you can really see it. You can really hear the pain in someone's voice. You can really, you know what I mean? Like the the dialogue is really, really alive in a way that your brain just sort of like fills in. But then to be able to make the connection from what's happening up here when I read to expressing it with enough connectivity and emotion to keep someone really engaged, that is the whole shift from thinking to acting. And it's not to say you can't learn it, and it's not to say that there aren't some people who come to it more naturally or who have other life experience that can help them get there. Um, because of course there's other parts to it just than acting. Acting is the core skill, but there's mic technique, right? Like we really don't want you up in another, and I'm sure in the podcasting world, you deal with a lot of this stuff too.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Right.

SPEAKER_03 9:44

Um there's breath work, there's, you know what I mean? Like, do you understand your rough setup? Because if it comes apart, you need to be able to put it back together. Even if you had an engineer physically set your space, which is such a lovely, oh my gosh, cannot recommend enough. If you have an engineer in your area and you're like, hey, will you, will you come look at my setup? And nine times out of ten, I've I've done it, I think, three different times. And they're very polite and they're always like, Why'd you, why'd you pick that desk, friend? Yeah, that desk is hard. You're like, oh, okay. Now I have a sh a thin sheet of Neoprene on my desk so that we don't constantly make little tippity taps. But you know, like it's cool.

SPEAKER_02 10:28

Right. Yeah. You're not you're you speak in podcaster language now. So that's why I'm laughing over on the side because I'm like, oh my gosh. Oh, 100%.

SPEAKER_03 10:35

But it's so right. You can't in our in our world, this, that noise, you've ruined your take. Start over, go back. You can't like there there is no room for the sound of your desk, for a sniffle, there's no room for any of that. And so an audiobook narrator's space is sort of like very padded cell. I work very hard at keeping it cheerful with my faux plant, my little fairy lights, my the art behind me is printed on fabric. Like that's how obsessive we are. Because if you are you're in the middle of it and like this is the death scene, and she's crushed, and he died saving her, and you get there and your voice, you can like you feel it. You are on a roll, and then there's like a reflective noise, or like your hand hits the desk, and you're like, ah, like I don't want to do this again.

SPEAKER_02 11:33

Like Oh my gosh. Um, we talked about this briefly in the pre-interview, and I really wanted to get into it. So I appreciate you bringing it up. The yeah, I'm this is something that's totally unappreciated by anybody who's not doing the audiobook thing. And even podcasters, we don't have to be perfect. Um, we can, you know, we can edit some things out, and I actually coach not to be perfect. I'm like, look, if if this happens, go with it. You know, who cares? Yes. Um, but for you, it's like you've got to have this sterile environment to be completely homogenized, and everything has to be a hundred percent perfect because you're doing it for somebody else.

SPEAKER_03 12:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 12:12

So it has to be that has to be just unmovable, like nerve-wracking in a lot of ways. But I mean, how do you and I have other questions, but let's start with this one. How do you do that? How do you cope with that part of it, having to be perfect?

SPEAKER_03 12:27

Practice, practice, practice, practice. Your first few books are going to be uh works in progress, right? Like my first, I can't remember how many, something like seven or ten books. I got the advice early on choose a pseudonym for your first ten books. Because then when publishers, producers, authors are like, ooh, great, I'll go on Audible and hear what Liza Sounds like, I don't have to have those live in that set, that canon set of work. And it's such a gift because did I go back and edit it out and whatever else, there aren't errant noises per se. But all of your skills are building. Um and when it comes to like uh errant noise, sound protection, a real amount of that is just getting a space that is just set up for this. This this room doesn't do anything else. I don't eat lunch in here. I don't, I try not to like do all of my office-y stuff, like answering emails and that stuff. I try to actually get out where there are windows. But um But I mean, everything is covered in fabric in here, like every single surface. There are no hard surfaces. Um, I have one pen. Do you know what I mean? Like it's and it's because all it takes is hearing that noise. And I'd say the difference, like the the sort of psychology difference between this approach in audiobooks and this approach in podcasting, is you already are you. You don't have to fight to make me believe you are you, right? That is not an uphill battle. I am not an elven queen in love with a vampire or whatever sort of wild tale we're telling today. I need you to believe that I am in the catacombs beneath the castle. I need you to believe that I am standing on a hilltop. And if you can hear my dog barking in the yard, it ruins it. Right. And it's the the sort of industry term is suspension of disbelief. And that's what we're always fighting towards. And it's one of the um it's one of the reasons why overacting in audiobooks is so deeply frowned upon, both from a listener's viewpoint and from a producer's viewpoint. Because it takes you out of it. Because you know what I mean? If I'm doing my boy voice, it's if I force it super low, it's like it doesn't sound even vaguely real. Like you completely lost me. Like, what? And um, some of the best male narrators who do female voices barely change their voice. They don't even change pitch, they change their breath work. It's very, very impressive to watch. Some of these guys have just genuinely lower voices. And it's a little easier for me because I get cast as young women all the time. This is where my voice naturally sits. And so it's super easy for me to just pitch it up a tiny bit. And now my boy voice can live just a hair below my natural speaking voice, right? It keeps that it's all one ecosystem, right? And when I get rolling, you don't have to worry about it. But for men, it can be this big challenge, right? If your natural speaking voice is in your register and you want to sound like a believable 22-year-old woman or whatever young person of the opposite gender you are trying to portray, it's sorry, I I could talk about this forever.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

I I love it. It's great. I'm over here going, There's no way in the world, with all the breath work on the planet, that I'm ever going to sound like a woman with my voice. It's just not. I can't even imagine.

SPEAKER_03 16:41

And you don't think about it until we're in a class or a workshop and we're talking about it, and they pull up someone's sample and they're like, You believed it. We're all like, yes. And they're like, right, but did he do falsetto? No, not at all. He gave it a little more breath. That's it. That was the only change, right? He's speaking here, like this. And it we're all acting nerds, so if you could see what we do in the booth, you would laugh, right? Like when I'm when I'm a man, I sit I say wood, right? Like, but so like his voice, he was talking here. You can sorry, my rings are moving, and I'm like, oh no, he won't be able to use that. Right. It's a podcast. It's a podcast.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

I don't care. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:25

But and then he goes for the lady, and he's he's just smoother and lighter, and you can feel more breath on everything, and there's no hard cutoffs in the phrasing. And you're like, that's it. That's all I needed to do. You're like, that it's magic. And I I really love working with independent authors. It's obviously in the mechanics of reading the book, very, very, very, very, very, very similar to working with a publisher or producer. But I love the back and forth and I love being able to like have a main line to the author and be like, oh my gosh, this was crazy. I actually recorded this part today and I cried. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I love that communication. And whenever an independent author is like, well, could I record it? I would say, unless you're willing to invest the time and energy in really learning voice acting and buy a studio quality mic and figure out your recording software and right, like and, and, and I think many folks feel like it's like, yeah, but like I'm not super focused on the audiobook. I don't really want to invest that much in getting it done. And you're like, I hear you. Just do the math on time and money for doing it yourself. Do you know what I mean? Like, I didn't paint my own car because I don't want to have to buy all the stuff and learn all the things to paint my car. Like, but the other, it's funny because you talk about podcasting. The few times I have someone who, and this was one conversation where I was like, oh no, you should do this. They it was nonfiction. And I was like, no, no, no, no. You want a podcast. You don't because when you're speaking to someone else, right? When you have someone who is used to um carrying conversation in this format, it's 10 times easier to sound natural, right? Like, I I can't imagine you have a lot of people on this podcast who somehow weirdly carry through the 45 minutes in some fake voice, like, you know what I mean? Like everybody relaxes into conversation and can express their opinions and expertise. And that was what this woman needed. We didn't, she didn't need an audiobook. That was gonna be an uphill battle. Her business model wasn't ready for it. She didn't have but but this, the podcast exchange, was actually gonna be the better thing for her. It's tough because that doesn't really work for fiction. Like I can't sit here and pretend to be a character and have it be my book. But you know.

SPEAKER_02 20:10

Interesting. The um I I gotta ask you one more, one more question about the the uh the performance, the prep, the behind the scenes in this. I really want to get into how this relates with authors uh like you and I talked about before. But um what sort of I rarely read a book twice. I mean, unless it's a great book and unless I'm um it's like years later. You know, something like the compound effect, I'll read like 10 times, okay, in the last four years. Okay. But uh that's different. So but in terms of just like an enjoyable book. And I read a lot of enjoyable books, right? But but I'll read it and I'm like, okay, I got it. It's like I've saw that, I've seen that movie, I read that book, I'm good. But you don't get to do that. You I can't imagine that you're reading it for the first time. I mean, how much research do you have to do? What kind of repetition do you have to do? How many times do you have to read the book to be able to do what you're doing?

SPEAKER_03 21:04

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um typically twice.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 21:08

I will read it to prep it. And then I read it when I record it. And when I prep it, um it's sort of like a more fun version of those book reports we did when we were kids. You know what I mean? You're like, in chapter one. Um, and I do. I make a couple of sentences on or I write a couple of sentences, sort of giving the synopsis of each chapter. I have a unsurprisingly, a spreadsheet. If you ever work in fantasy, you're gonna have 50 characters and there's gonna be different magic systems. You'll thank me later, make a spreadsheet.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

Fair.

SPEAKER_03 21:46

And then, you know, next to that chapter, you put who has a speaking line so that I can for that day go through. And if someone has something that doesn't sit naturally in my register and I need to like warm up and get into Accents, you never want to go, I never want to go in cold on an accent that I did not know in childhood. Do you know what I mean? It's like my mother is from Alabama. So I can do a little southern real easy. I don't need anything to drop in. But if you're like cool, Scottish, like, ah, okay, I can get there, but I need 30 seconds of listening to the native speaker. I'm going to record a tiny snippet, listen back, make sure I hit all of the correct sound changes. And so if I know I've got like two Scottish people, a British person and an American person in this chapter, I'm going to quick run through their voices real fast before I jump into the scene so that the flow doesn't get consistently chopped up by my having to stop and cringe at, you know, whatever bad mistake I made. And oftentimes when I prep, once I've gotten the whole prep packet done, I have always a voice file for each character. So then that's linked in my um spreadsheet. And I send it to my author and I go, Hey, if you want to look through this, great. If you don't, just send me an email back saying, whatever, I don't care. No, it ever does.

SPEAKER_02 23:22

Just get it done.

SPEAKER_03 23:24

Yeah, correct. See you on Friday. Um, but then that's the perfect moment for like, oh, I forgot to mention, right? Like those, I I need those up front. Everyone's sad if I hand you the final book and you know, your wife listens to it and is like, oh, I didn't know that character was Norwegian, and you're like, oh, fork, right? Like because if you haven't laid out those things in advance, that can be an expensive mistake. Um, or if, and this one, oh, oh, please, oh, please, oh, please. If you're like, hey, I want to avoid expensive mistakes when hiring someone to do an audiobook, read your book out loud to yourself, please, for the love of Pete. Because the number of things people don't catch, and I may or may not catch. If I catch something, I'll tell you I'm not a monster. But I may not, right? Like I am not a writer. If you shift between like past tense and future tense or whatever, I'm not a writer. Like, I don't, I do not have a good eye for grammar. I do not have a good eye for if 10 chapters ago the neighbor's name was Sarah, and then I'm going through and my characters are like, oh yeah, don't worry, Stacey has the, you know, the door code to let the dog out. I may not catch that. And so when you read your own book to yourself, you catch all kinds of things. You won't catch everything, and that's okay, but you catch so much more. And to be fair, some of them are really fun for me to catch. So I have an author, she is cozy mysteries. We've done a lot together. And at one point I was reading through, and the the tension is building, and she's like getting into the and she goes, she goes, the smell grew louder. And I was like, Yes, it did. Yes, it did. I I love that and I emailed her. I was like, I don't know if this was a typo or brilliance. Please let me know. And she was like, a little of both. Like, perfect.

SPEAKER_02 25:34

Well, that's always gonna help. That's for sure.

SPEAKER_03 25:38

The smells do grow louder.

SPEAKER_02 25:41

I I just I mean, I wow. Okay. You know, when I was when my kids were growing up, I used to do different voices for them, you know, for the characters. But that's like fun, and they are way over the top because you're trying to get your kids to laugh. You cannot even imagine trying to do a different voice for something and trying to have someone believe that that actually was the person with the real voice and the real thing. So uh honestly, that's just an incredible talent that you've delivered.

SPEAKER_03 26:05

It's so much fun. And there's a huge amount of variation. So, like, if you uh from the viewpoint of being an independent author, if you think you're gonna hire someone, listen to people in that genre. Like if you go on Audible and you sort of hunt out a comp for your book on Audible, listen to the different narrators. Um because what was it? Someone had a very sweet way of describing this. Another narrator was feeling really down about some bad reviews because they had put their soul into this book. And this very sweet seasoned veteran chimed in and goes, Not everyone will love the song of your voice. And I was like, that's so sweet. But we all do have different ways of expressing ourselves. And um I think it there are some producers who hire subtlety. Like I can name them, I won't because I'm nice, but they hire subtlety. And if you want him to hire you for this book, you had better come in soft, like very minute shifts between characters, crisp, clear as day, but just tiny adjustments. Whereas there are other producers and even um publishers who are like, no, let me hear it. And you're like, okay, cool, right? So, like we're when we're broody, we're broody. And when we're excited, we're so excited. And like, that's what they want. And I think getting a feel for that in advance, because that won't change a huge amount. Do you know what I mean? Like, I'm always gonna sound like my acting, like painting, right? Picasso is never going to be Rembrandt, is never gonna be you, right? And so, like, if you look at someone's body of work and are like, uh, I love it, but what if it was this? No, thank you. Keep looking, find the right person. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 28:08

Interesting. Okay, I I could talk to you about this and the behind-the-scenes stuff forever. I think I have like 14 more questions, and I I I can't do them all. I gotta go a different direction. I apologize. No, you're fine. Um, because man, that's uh I never really thought about it this way. And it's like your mind just starts to open from the author side, going, wow, um, that is great advice to the authors. I want to make sure I put an exclamation point on that one. I recommend that to folks, you just said it like very clearly. Um, folks, we all want to have audiobooks, you know, as part of our deal, part of our package, right? Our foundation for selling. But read it out loud to yourself first and then start making some decisions. So, as an author, I've done this now. I've I've read it out loud. I'm like, okay, I think I know what I want to do. Now, you've talked about um being able to do all these different things and being uh, you know, lots of different accents and different pitches and all the breath work. So it sounds like you're very uh capable of doing a lot of different things, you have a big range. But then you also were talking about there at the end about um, you know, we kind of like this is who I am, and maybe I'm in this niche uh in your business. Do you sort of end up being like, oh, this uh lady is a fantasy reader, or this guy is a science fiction guy? Or do you end up getting kind of categorized like that? I mean, that happens to us in podcasting all the time. But is that a thing that happens, or is or is that are you not going for that?

SPEAKER_03 29:38

Short answer, yes. There are always unicorns, right? Like there are people who just surpass genre. And you're like, great, of course. Like you you are unbelievably good. Um but for most of us, a real amount of self worms its way, leaks into your performance, which is actually kind of great, right? Because it makes me not AI. It makes me not green enough that it's wooden, if that makes sense. Um but it does mean that like I, Liza, am a naturally kind of plucky person, and so I'm not a great fit for like the gritty, dark crime thriller. I'm just not.

unknown 30:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 30:29

It's why I do get cast in Cozy Mystery, because that's an acceptable tone, right? Like it's not like there was a body on the floor. It's like there was a body on the floor, right? Like and one just comes naturally to me and one I work towards. And the funny thing I feel about audiobooks is you, as the listener, are alone with this person for eight to twelve hours at a stretch, which isn't something I ever experience in any other medium, right? Like, not even with friends. Can you imagine sitting for eight hours and just having a friend talk at you?

SPEAKER_02 31:09

Like, no.

SPEAKER_03 31:11

And so you you notice things consciously or subconsciously that sit right or don't. And you may not articulate them, but when and this is the magic of a really good um producer or casting person, is they can listen to 10, 30-second samples of mine on my website and be like, I know exactly where she lives, right? Like, and and they help you find those projects that are right for you. So I don't sit in a book that just feels sisyphian, right? Like, and I have said no to things, right? Like where I'm like, I I'm not your girl. I can send you five names that I think might be. I don't know if they're free, um, like if they're available, but it's it's just not me. And everybody takes one book outside of what they should, and they never do it again.

SPEAKER_02 32:09

That's I appreciate the uh the openness and the honesty in the answer because I'm I'm over here wondering, you know, we all talk about wanting to be authentic in like everything that we do. Authenticity is like one of the most overused but still most needed things in our culture. For sure. And so, you know, in podcasting and writing, in you know, audiobook, in voice work, you know, the whole bit. All of us, I think, want to be authentic and authentically us and that type of thing. And I've always been curious, like, how can you be authentic and authentically you when your entire job is to be somebody else?

SPEAKER_03 32:42

That's a good question. And I think it's um the answer is the main, your primary protagonist needs to be someone where you as an actor can sort of build that emotional bridge to who they are and what they are going through. If you can't do that, you don't belong as the narrator. Um which is why I get caught cast as American women all the time. I don't think I've ever been cast as yeah, I think that's all I've ever been cast for. But I don't belong as a South African soccer coach. I have never played soccer and I have never been to South Africa, right? Like that doesn't sit for me. And I would have to really work at, you know, researching all the slang and all of the turns of phrase, and what does this mean? Wait, was that an insult or is that like a buddy buddy? You know what I mean? Like all of that subtext. When you're with someone for eight hours in your headphones, you feel it. And if someone's just fighting uphill to get there, you feel that too. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 33:52

Yeah. Wow. This is uh it's very interesting. My eyes are like opening up as I'm sitting here listening to you about so many things. Um, whenever I'm talking to authors, I think everybody a lot of people think, hey, I'll read my own. And that's a great idea. Till you start getting into it, like you you mentioned. Most don't, yeah. Most don't end up, in my experience, anyway, is that most don't end up doing it themselves. What they'll do is they'll either hire somebody like yourself or they won't do it, and then they just won't have an audiobook. And I hear that way too many times. Like, you know, uh, it I'm just not gonna do the audiobook thing. I'm like, okay, you're gonna leave an entire foundational block out of your business model, that's cool. Um, and I don't know if it's that they don't want to pay for it, or maybe they can't find somebody. Um if I want to do an audiobook on my book, how do I find you if I haven't like met you through some other circumstance? How do I go about finding, you know, Eliza or somebody who might want to do my audiobook for me?

SPEAKER_03 34:58

Um there's a couple different ways. And I certainly have my personal opinions as to if you put me in those shoes, what would I pick? Um there are casting sites. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um there are casting sites. And I think there's nothing wrong with using them. If you put up an audition, you will get a face melting amount of replies. So be prepared to go through those. Um and depending on the site you choose, you are gonna get 90% um amateurs who are not actually prepared to produce an audiobook that will pass quality control for Audible. So yes, you absolutely can do it. Yes, you just, you know, upload your segment of text you want read, and things fall into your doorstep. The you then have a lot to sift through. You know what I mean? Um you can use those casting sites to simply hunt someone down. Um, you know, like I'm looking, a lot of them have filters. Well, I'm looking for a female voice around this age range, these characteristics. The only thing that can be a hiccup is many of those sites, the results that come back are based on who has um like altered their profile or added their profile most recently, which has nothing to do with how good you are or how good of a fit you are, right? So, like if Susie changed her thumbnail photo last week, but I haven't done anything since June, you know what I mean? Like it's it isn't necessarily working solely in your favor, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 36:47

Sure.

SPEAKER_03 36:48

What I would do is depending on your book, budget, those types of things, if you feel like you really have your base core audience, you are really ready for this from a business perspective financially, look at um Audiophile magazine and look at who's getting mentioned. Look at who is uh winning awards, look at who is getting called out for exceptional work. All of these narrators, like we're very friendly people who need to fill our calendars. No one is going to scoff at you for having reached out. Also, all of us have independent websites. So if you Google Liza Jacob narrator, I have a website. If you Google Suzy Q narrator, yeah, she's got one too. And all of them have emails and contact forms. Um another really, really good way to find uh sort of mid-career narrators and get a broader scope. Um, if you're sort of not a thousand percent sure already of what you want and what you want to be hearing, I would go into Audible on your subgenre. So, like, not just fantasy, we want like cozy fantasy mystery, right? Like dive as specific as you can and just start listening to samples, right? And get a feel for, okay, two reasons. One, in my genre, this is what the listener expects. Because the promise of the premise is real. And if I, as a fan of cozy novels, expect to hear a voice that kind of sounds like this, and you are in love with gritty fiction and you've decided even though yours is cozy, you want someone who's talking like this the whole time. You are gonna get so many angry reviews, right? And it's not gonna mean that the narrator wasn't good. They're going to use words in those reviews that describe the disconnect between what you hired and what they thought they were gonna get, right? They'll say that that delivery was flat. They'll say that it was repetitive. It wasn't. It was nuanced and it was dark because that's what you decided you wanted. But you didn't listen through and accept the fact that in this subgenre that you have written for, they sound more like this. And everybody expects a little more pitch variation, everybody expects a little punchier, brighter delivery. You can make your own choices, just know what you're picking. And let's say you like what you're hearing in your subgenre. Well, now you've got a list of people who are working in that space, right? Now you've got this fabulous list of 20 narrators to choose from. There's always a website to go with each narrator. I'll be darned if there isn't. I'm like, um, and you can start reaching out and saying, hey, and I would pick like your top five and say, like, hey, found you on Audible, love your work. I've written a cozy mystery. I'm looking to have an audiobook produced in the next, you know, pick your time frame. It can't be a week. You don't need to give me a year, right? Because you've got to fit within their work schedule. Um, is that something you'd be interested in? And do you have availability? I'd love to send an audition your way if it is, right? Don't, don't ask, don't send the audition just yet, because you might get a lot of quick replies back that are like, hey, just so you know, I'm booked for seven months. And you can then say, like, nope, I love your sound, put me on the calendar. Or you can say, like, wow, seven months. Do you have anyone you feel uh has a similar vibe that would be a good fit? We all go to conferences together, we talk together, we take classes together. Most narrators know a lot of other narrators and will happily, if I'm too busy to take it or it's not the right fit for me, give you five other names. I would only send out once you get to the point of like, yes, I'm interested, send me the audition. I would send out three. Because at this point, you already know who you want, you've wheedled it down, you know these people are right for you, right for the genre, you know, free and able to take the work. You don't need to send 10 auditions out. It's a waste of people's time. And then when you get them back, you should feel free to like ask a question or ask for a change. Certainly if you're like, it it drove me crazy that you mispronounced my lead character's name. I I really want to love this audition. Will you please just change the name? You can ask for that. Uh but the generally you should take it as face value, right? Um if their delivery was just not even close to what you were thinking, that might be, as that very sweet narrator said, the s the music of their voice, right? Like that just might be like how it is. And and that is okay. You want to ask for a change, ask for a change 100% yes, but don't expect a night and day shift, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 42:24

Absolutely. Yeah, I appreciate the info again. Um, I mean, you're giving gold to authors right now. So I really appreciate you, you know, just telling everybody everything. You mentioned budget a couple of times in terms of that. Um, and uh you always have the right to say, hey, pass, you know, if you don't want to discuss it. But I'm curious what should a what should an author? I mean, we don't have any idea of costs. So when we get into it, the publishing part of it alone starts to blow our mind, you know, in terms of working with a traditional publisher, a hybrid publisher, self-publishing, all the costs involved. And I don't think anybody has any idea what it costs to have a good uh you know, voiceover professional do a good quality audiobook for them. Is there a range? Uh does it depend on pages, uh genre? Does that matter? What what should the writer expect when they start down this path?

SPEAKER_03 43:15

Um yes, there's absolutely a range. And like a lot of things, you get what you pay for, and you can you can pay for a name the same way someone might buy a Maserati to be like, I have a Maserati. And that actually can have value in the market, right? Like if you're like, no, I got so-and-so to narrate this book. Like, yeah, wow, you did. Okay, amazing. Like that name will draw people. Within sort of us mere mortals, um the sag after, which is the big union for you don't have to be in the union, but it is the big union. Um the minimum is 250 per finished hour. Which is to say, regardless of what I spend on prep time or recording, I can flub over and over and over, spend 10 hours to get, I don't that sounds terrible. 10 hours to get one finished hour of audio. That is what you're getting charged for, the finished product length. So as you can imagine, if you have a short middle grade novella, it's gonna be a very different price tag than the Lord of the Rings. You know what I mean? Um and there are, when you say you get what you pay for, there are royalty share programs where let's say I do it with little to no money up front, right? Maybe it's royalty share plus, meaning like you give me half of my going rate up front, and then we split royalties moving forward. The only thing I would say on that is don't expect it to work some magic miracle because I can do math just as well as well, I can do okay math. I can do medium, medium math. But if I can see that your book has already been released six months ago, it has three reviews and you know, like it just feels like it's sort of you put it out there and then there were crickets, and now you're looking at me and are like, hey, do you wanna narrate this for free? And maybe, maybe you'll make some royalties. That will not be appealing to anyone except for folks who are brand new in the industry. And those were my first books, like a hundred percent, those were my first books. Um but if you want someone, sorry, who's going to be seasoned and help you through this process, or someone who's just gonna deliver a really lovely product, because again, like putting your business hat back on, this is a product from your brand and it doesn't help you to have an audiobook if when I open it up, it's like you know what I mean? Like it's just sad. And you're like, well, wait, I thought this person was a good writer, and you're like, yeah, but you know. So that's that's what I would say is your your base pay rate is 250 per finished hour. And depending on the narrator's situation, their per finished hour rate may or may not include other things. There are some narrators who do their own editing and mastering. There are many who don't. And so either they are like, oh yeah, I work with Bob all the time. Here's Bob's rates. Or they are like, you should go find a you should go find someone to edit that for you, friend. Um mostly that last one doesn't happen. Either people who are work with people who ruin the whole take.

SPEAKER_02 47:14

That's it.

SPEAKER_03 47:15

I know it's trash, I'll just go, I'll leave. Um people who work with independent authors a lot either edit their own or have someone they have a constant working relationship with, the other half of their team. Um but that's just to say there can be a huge amount of fluctuation in there. You know what I mean? 250 is not and there are some people like, you know, the the top tier are at like 400 per finished hour. Um and there's just a lot of space in between there, you know.

SPEAKER_02 47:52

My goodness. All right. Um, it is not what you picture it to be by any stretch of the imagination. I appreciate the look behind the curtain. Um again, we have a lot of authors who listen here. I could I could literally talk to you about this for two more hours. We've I haven't even gotten to half the questions that I wanted to ask you. It's like, you know what? I that there's too much because I just want to know all the stuff. Um, so let's we'll bring it back down here. Um, and as uh we're kind of hitting our time, but as we sort of bring this down to a close, the um we're delivering messages to authors right now in a big way. You know, a lot of our relationship is authors. I want to make sure that I'm respecting them and the questions that I ask you instead of just me being a 10-year-old kid in a candy store wanting to learn more. But um, in terms of of how the author um goes about the process, uh you know, finds the person, everything else, you've given a lot of really good advice for this kind of thing. Um is there anything the author can do on their end? If they go into this going, I really want to do a good audiobook, I want to make sure that this comes out, and I'm not just writing uh, you know, for the ebook. I'm writing for you know the hardcover, I'm writing for the soft cover, I'm writing for the audiobook. Is there anything they can do in their writing process that maybe makes the audiobook better or easier? Or um That's a great question. Higher quality, you know, just for them to take into account.

SPEAKER_03 49:13

That's a very good question. In the writing process. Um I think most of what I would say honestly makes the written text better too. So it may be something that they're already being counseled into doing. So um when you think about world building, I can tell when no when you haven't done it, right? Like I can tell. And I'm gonna do my best to help you out, and I'm gonna do my best to sort of help build that. But you'd be amazed at how little may fly under the radar when you write it, and then when you hear it in audio, it hits so strong. So, like a good example is let's say it's chapter one, she's walking through her hometown village and you are trying to help set up what this village is like, right? Like who are the people? What's the feel? If you give me little moments with secondary characters, or you know, extras, if you will, if they have a speaking line, whether you write it out in the text that like their voice sounded different or their accent was different, or if you write me and are like, hey, here's my list for each chapter. Here's stuff that I envision that I'm not sure is immediately apparent, right? That like uh this village girl is actually sort of more educated. And so when she talks to the blacksmith, he needs to have a rougher take on the local accent because he's not educated the way she is, right? Like those little things I feel like a casual reader might sort of write over, but I'm gonna get to make you listen. I'm gonna make you hear those accents a little more of like the words rumble together and but she is speaking very crisply. And all of a sudden you're like, oh man, like okay, there's some social dynamics at play here, right?

SPEAKER_01 51:19

Like, right?

SPEAKER_03 51:21

Like it's not the everybody went to the same one, what is it, the one room schoolhouse? You know what I mean, where everyone got the same education. Right. Okay, apparently she's we're we're talking about a world where maybe she had a private tutor. Maybe her mother taught her to read, and that's not something other people are h like, there's a little social inequity here. And all you did was give me a note, whether it was in text or in the email, about his voice, his speech, his delivery. And I can't handle that on every single one, right? Like I really am gonna be sad if you send me an 80-page email being like, and then, and then, but you don't need much to really help build that space. And then I can live in that space more successfully. Because if I have to pull it out of thin air, it's better than nothing, but it's not gonna be as good as if a writer wrote it. Do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 52:17

Yeah, absolutely. That's that's great advice, honestly. Um, sort of give you an idea of of who they are. Uh to the it's the character development, but it's like letting you in on the character development that they built so that you can take that on and how you portray them.

SPEAKER_03 52:33

100%. Yes, please.

SPEAKER_02 52:35

Amazing. Okay, yeah. And I bet that's something that we don't think about either over on this side of it.

SPEAKER_03 52:40

So maybe you do. I don't know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:41

Wow. She's like, hey, hey, it's not me. Don't shoot the messenger. I'm just answering your question, man. All right. I uh I love it. I really and truly. All right. Um, Liza, I'm gonna give you one last shot to talk to authors out here. Uh, maybe there's a piece of advice you want to give them, maybe there's a note, something you want to uh consider. Or hey, maybe you just want to go ahead and you know, plug yourself and your business and what you do. You can rap any way you would like. I'm totally catching you by surprise right now.

SPEAKER_01 53:06

There you are.

SPEAKER_02 53:07

Um, if we can help you get more books, you know, and and increase your business uh in any way, I would love to do that. Um, I've really enjoyed talking with you. And I've only heard a couple little accents so far, but they're really, really good. And just the little bit that you keep shifting, you know, with the uh the levels in your voice is already really intriguing. So I'm gonna have to go look you up and and see some of this finished product. Um but go ahead, wrap any way you would like in the last maybe you know 30 seconds here and and uh deliver a message. What do you think?

SPEAKER_03 53:36

Um I had not prepared my TED talk. Um wear your seatbelt, eat broccoli, uh read your own books out loud.

SPEAKER_02 53:44

Totally caught her by surprisingness, folks. It's not it's my fault. I didn't prepare her for this.

SPEAKER_03 53:48

I don't normally do it, but uh honestly, I think it's a minor miracle what independent authors manage. Because not only are you the author, you are all these other parts of the business. It's insane. It's absolutely mind-blowing. And narrators are at our heart, we are super soft, friendly theater nerds. So if you are like, oh man, like I I was gonna write Tavia Gilbert an email, she is she is one of the like golden unicorns. She will probably write you back and she'll probably be very nice, right? Like, don't feel shy to reach out to narrators, would be my for real tip number one. And tip number two is I'm a hundred percent one of those super nice people who could talk about this clearly for four or five hours. If you have any questions and you're like, I am not gonna choose you, I am not gonna pick you, Liza, I don't want you to read my book, but I do have 10 questions. That's okay. Email me. And um I I have a PDF. I have a PDF, I forgot about that. There we go. On my website, because unsurprisingly, most folks have a lot of the same questions. I have a PDF I've worked on over the years that explains a lot of what we've discussed today. Anything else I've missed is probably on there. And it's just a decent rule of thumb. It's not gospel, but it is an excellent jumping off point for anyone who feels like they're unsure. They kind of want to do it, you know they're supposed to. But this isn't their natural wheelhouse to know magically about the audiobook industry.

SPEAKER_02 55:32

Wonderful. I love that. So I know you'd be able to navigate your way through that. So I mean we do have the link for the free PDF. So I'll make sure that's on our show notes, folks. Um and then Liza, how can they contact you directly? Uh, social media website, any other way? How do you want them to contact you to say, hey, you know, I do want you to do my book?

SPEAKER_03 55:51

Yeah, yeah. Um probably the easiest, most memorable way is my website. It's just my name, Lizajacob.com. Um my email is on there. Uh there's a contact form, anything like that. I am on social, but I'm really bad at it. So if you message me and hear nothing back, yeah, I'm not being mean. I'm being negligent.

SPEAKER_02 56:12

So I okay, good to know. And I want to correct something because if I called you Liza Jacobs, I threw the S on the end of your name.

SPEAKER_03 56:21

It's okay. That is a lifelong trend, my friend. Oh my goodness. I am super not worried about it. I'm super not worried about it.

SPEAKER_02 56:27

Y'all know I don't edit, so I'm just gonna eat this one. Okay. My fault, my mistake. Make sure that it's Liza Jacob B, okay, is the last letter there. And I introduced her wrong. So that is a huge cardinal mistake in the podcasting world. And while we committed it, oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 56:43

But wait, we're gonna edit everything, right?

SPEAKER_02 56:45

I don't edit. I know, I'm getting this is a teaching moment for all of my students out there, folks. Even I made a mistake. Okay, there it is. So it can happen to anybody. All right, wonderful. Um, goodness gracious, uh audiobook narrator, and just absolutely awesome person, Eliza Jacob with a B. Thank you so much for being here. It's been absolutely delightful, and I can't I can't tell you how much I've learned already. And I would love to have you on again in the future to maybe dive deeper into some of these other angles if you're open to that.

SPEAKER_03 57:13

Yes, please.

SPEAKER_02 57:14

Perfect. Perfect. All right, thank you for being on.

SPEAKER_03 57:17

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 57:17

Folks, uh, that's been another just amazing episode of the Right Path Podcast, where truth still matters and words still have power. This is the place for authors who know that every single page is a step forward towards finding the right path. Until next time.