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Brick has been sharing the nitty-gritty on the process of creating an audiobook every day of June is Audiobook Month, in his 140-character Twitter posts using the #NARR8 tag. But he’s caught video star fever, and is posting his tweets on his MrScottBrick YouTube Channel, read by some of your favorite narrators, including Booklist Voice of Choice narrators Barbara Rosenblat, Katherine Kellgren, Simon Vance, and top producers such as Paul Allan Ruben. Short, and definitely sweet!

The 2011 Audies Awards featured on Talk of the Nation today, with Arnie Cardillo (Live Oak Media), narrator George Guidall, and Janet Benson, president Audio Publishers Association, the guests. Cardillo spoke about about his production Here in Harlem, by Walter Dean Myers, the winner of this year’s Distinguished Achievement in Production award, and mentioned ALA’s Odyssey Award. Guidall shared his opinions on the value of listening and how he became a narrator. Benson spoke about current challenges facing publishers with the transition to digital, and mentioned synced text & audio – the toggle effect I am SO waiting for!!

And here’s a conundrum – NPR uses the term “audio book.” The Audio Publishers Association has championed the adoption of the single-word name audiobook. And just recently I picked up a flyer in a local public library where both terms were used! Of course, there are plenty out there that still call CDs & digital downloads “books on tape.”

Meet the man with the Midas touch. A lifetime spent in the YA & Children’s audiobook publishing field has given Tim Ditlow an unparalleled depth of knowledge. From his groundbreaking work leading Listening Library, the company founded by his mother & father, to his current position as Vice President, Young Adult and Children’s Acquisition Editor for Brilliance Audio, the Ditlow touch has resulted in countless unforgettable audio productions.

Setting the standard for unabridged children’s novels? Ditlow. Securing U.S. rights for for the Harry Potter audiobooks and casting Jim Dale as narrator? Ditlow. Spearheading the full cast recording of The Golden Compass with author Phillip Pullman as narrator? Ditlow. Initiating the availability of visual content, such as photos and illustrations, on disc as audiobook bonus content? Ditlow. You can hear the result of his Midas acquisition touch on two of this year’s Odyssey Honor titles: The Knife of Never Letting Go and will grayson, will grayson.

Today’s video is courtesy of Ed Spicer‘s spicyguyreader YouTube channel. Enjoy this nine minute video – here’s Ed’s description:

Tim Ditlow talks about the world of audio books. He talks about how students could explore becoming a narrator, about what makes a good audio book, and the differences between audio and print. He makes a great case for why audio books are an important and necessary addition for schools and teachers. He does all this and still seems like someone we would want for our best friend.

An insider’s look at Odyssey-winner The True Meaning of Smekday. I had the opportunity to talk with one of the very best in the audiobook business, Random House Audio’s director of studio productions Dan Musselman, after the 2011 Odyssey Award winners were announced by the American Library Association. The task of Sarah McCarville’s Odyssey committee of expert listeners was to choose ONE best audiobook out of all the titles produced for children from birth up to & including age 18. After narrowing the field to 429 (!) eligible titles, they selected Musselman’s Random House Audio/Listening Library production of The True Meaning of Smekday, written by Adam Rex and narrated by Bahni Turpin, as the winner.  I was thrilled to hear the announcement of the winner, as Smekday is on my list of all-time favorite audiobooks (as you can tell from my starred review review here). So I was curious to hear what Dan – who has produced over 3,000 audiobooks in his career – would share about his reaction to the Odyssey Award. Read the whole interview here for a fascinating look inside the audiobook studio.

If you’re looking for a great family listening audiobook for your Spring Break car trip, get you hands on Smekday. You’ll laugh your way down the highway – and have some food for thought to trigger thoughtful conversation. And be sure you have all the Odyssey titles in your library collection, including this year’s Odyssey Honor titles:  Revolution, which Musselman coproduced with Orli Moscowitz, Alchemy and Meggy Swann (both from Listening Library), and Brilliance Audio’s The Knife of Never Letting Go and Will Grayson, Will Grayson.

Egan, author of The Invisible Circus, Look at Me (a finalist for the National Book Award), and The Keep, discusses her newest title A Visit From the Goon Squad with AudioGo’s Michele Cobb at last summer’s Get Caught Listening interviews during BookExpo America. Sit back and enjoy this conversation where both author & audiobook producer share their craft, in a half-hour chat. The Audio Publishers Association coordinated the book/audiobook interviews as part of the Author Stages live presentations at BEA – you can watch all of the sessions in the archive here – including those featuring narrator Katherine Kellgren, narrator Scott Brick & author Nelson DeMille, 12 year old narrator Everette Plen & author Lenore Look, the Galaxy Press Drama Group, and author & narrator David Pouge.

Tantor in the news & the top downloads of September:

A great story featuring Kevin & Laura Colebank, co-founders of Tantor Media, in the article “Audio Book Firm Makes Itself Heard” by Anthony Cronin which profiles the company that is a

“successful business that today employs 75 and produces 50 new titles a month from its Old Saybrook headquarters. Not bad for a husband-and-wife team that had no prior experience in the industry. In one decade, Tantor Audiobooks has transformed itself from a small startup with three people (including the husband-and-wife team and his brother) into a major independent audiobook publisher on the East Coast, with a roster of more than 70 narrators across the country and a wall full of industry awards and honors.”

And OverDrive Media releases the September stats that highlight the top downloads of both audiobooks & ebooks, for adults & kids/teens. Great variety of titles, all in all. Thanks heavens the Hunger Games trilogy has made it to the the juvenile audiobook list! But geeze, is there NO putting a stake through the heart of those Meyer vampires??? Thirty three weeks on the juvenile top ten, along with Percy Jackson. And so interesting to see the adult & juvenile nonfiction titles, too. A reminder to me to get some foreign language audio titles, ASAP!

What do Harry Potter audiobooks and Odyssey Award Honor titles have in common? Solid team work that turns an outstanding text into an awesome listening experience through careful preparation. I had the pleasure of chatting with three audiobook pros about their role in creating the very best in literary listening: David Rapkin, director & producer of scores of outstanding titles, including the Harry Potter series; Paul Topping, the linguistic expert who handles research for Recorded Books; and narrator Katherine Kellgren, the voice of three Odyssey Honor titles. Each echoed the same theme: it’s what takes place BEFORE the recording booth mic is turned on that results in the very best audiobook experience. Read my entire Voices in My Head column “It’s on the Tip of My Tongue” on the BooklistOnline website for a fascinating peek inside the production process. Here’s a memorable quote from David Rapkin:

The audiobook director is a specialist. It doesn’t stop at pronunciations. You must give a sense of where the characters are from and the attitudes of the people at that time. The sharper a director can create the image of the book, the more enthralling and magical the experience is for listeners.

The next time you encounter a soul-stirring audiobook, remember to include the entire production team in your applause, from narrator and director to researcher and sound engineer. Even though their names may not be on the tip of your tongue, their talents are ringing in your ear!

David Byrne moves from music into meditations on life experienced while touring on two wheels in Bicycle Diaries. Byre’s book will be released September 28th as a downloadable audiobook exclusively through his website www.bicycle-diaries.com. As each chapter focuses on Byrne’s world travels via bicycle, the episodic reflections create podcast-like chapters which can be purchased individually and listened to in any order. The introduction, focusing on New York City, is now available as a free download here, complete with Bryne’s narration, music and atmospheric sound. I’ve always called this type of audiobook production “soundscapes” – layering environmental sound effects and a musical bed with the narration taking center stage, such as in Live Oak Media’s Odyssey Award winning titles  Jazz and  Louise, The Adventures of a Chicken.  Boston DJ Oedipus quotes a letter recieved from Byrne on his website http://www.oedipus1.com, with Byrne’s reflections on soundscape creation:

After Bicycle Diaries came out in hardback about a year ago, I wondered to myself, what if the audiobook for this project was more like a cross between a podcast and a radio show instead of the usual author or actor reading in silence? I was thinking about the kind of radio show that NPR stations do from time to time, with background music, street sounds and other ambiences that help put the listener in the picture. So, I did one chapter (“New York”) as a test, with me reading, and though it took a lot longer to assemble than I expected, I felt it did indeed do what I imagined it could; when you heard the tinkle of glasses and silverware during a restaurant “scene,” boom!-you immediately felt you were there. Your mind fills in the details and these little sound cues help paint a fuller picture. If only I could have added smell! When the text went off on one of many tangents, and I began ruminating about a subject off the beaten path, a little bit of music I happened to have available helped tell you, the listener, that, yes, we’ve left the “story” temporarily, but will return soon. It started as an experiment and then turned into a complete DIY project, with the Hendler Brothers keeping the ball rolling.

I also realized that this particular book could be consumed in any order, and it didn’t matter which chapter you started with. So one could download and listen to the chapters as individual podcasts, in any sequence. I could even make the chapters available to download separately-you wouldn’t need to buy the whole audiobook to see if you liked the experience. This all would have been impossible if these were made available only via CD (or cassette!)…or with many other types of books.

Technology had, it seemed, created an opportunity for a whole new format to

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Winner of the first Odyssey Award for Excellence in Audiobook Production, Arnie Cardillo of Live Oak Media is a meticulous craftsman of children’s audiobooks and readalongs. I had the pleasure of interviewing Arnie for Booklist after he won the Odyssey for Jazz, written by Walter Dean Myers and illustrated by Christopher Myers – you can read here his description of the process of creating original musical pieces to underlay the sung & spoken narration of each poem in the Myers’ journey through the history of jazz. Let’s hear what Arnie has to say in response to my weekly Inside the Audiobook Studio questions…

1. What’s on your MP3 player?

MP3 Player?  I prefer listening to CDs, not downloads (and I’ll tell you why later on).  But did go to see David Sedaris, on the first night of his fall tour, and got to hear him read some of his new material. Not the greatest voice, but an incredible reader and storyteller; and someone who is deeply committed to the spoken word.  His delivery and pacing are impeccable; and, when you are listening to him read his stories, the stories themselves transcend his vocal qualities, and he transports you into the stories themselves, into his genius.

2.  Tell us about your role in the audiobook community.

When I’m wearing my production hat, I’m responsible for finding the right books, (a ongoing process that I share with my editor in CHIEF and wife, Debra) obtaining audio rights, drawing up contracts, researching information in text to make sure recording or facts are authentic (and solicit the aid of the author when appropriate or necessary), spotting the book with my engineer and composers to plan out the production (places music will appear, type of music and instrumentation that will provide the appropriate emotional support to the reading, places where sound effects should be used and placed so that the text/words make a greater impact and imprint on the early readers memory and mind), hire narrator(s) and musicians, work with narrators at the voiceover sessions, working on final mix of all audio elements and components with the engineer to make sure production sounds the way we want it.  Boy I should give myself a raise…but really, productions are a collaboration with many talented artists, and my main purpose is to make sure it all get done, and of course, pay everyone!

3. What was your most interesting/embarrassing/hilarious moment in the audiobook studio?

Many hilarious moments at the voiceover sessions—and what language comes out of these actors.  But the funniest narrator we’ve ever worked with is John Beach (titles he recorded for us include Punctuation Takes a Vacation, Mystery On the Docks, Art Dog, Moo Cow Kaboom, the Grandpa Spanielson series).   It’s like he channels voices that come out of nowhere.  During a recent recording session for Grandpa Spanielson #3 The Shrunken Head, we were trying to find the right voice for the rotund Queen of the Headhunter pooch tribe, and all of a sudden he comes out with an impersonation of James Mason!  He is so spontaneous, and every session with him is an adventure into hysterics.  By the way, Barbara Caruso’s reading of the Minnie and Moo series, and her characterizations of the Lucy and Ethel of the Bovine world, is another non-stop, laugh out loud fun-filled experience.

4. What future trends or changing perceptions or technologies do you think will have the greatest/worst/revolutionary impact on the audiobook production field?

OK, here is the answer I was referring to at the beginning of question one.  In a nutshell, I think downloaded audio sounds horrible.  It’s thin, hollow-sounding, and lifeless.  Call me a throwback to an ancient time, but I still love listening to vinyl, and loved the introduction of the CD because of dynamic range that it lent to sound and the total lack of recording (white) noise that used to be introduced in the recording process and was ever-present on cassettes.  All of the good sonic qualities, like a warm, full and life-like sound that we heard on vinyl and CDs, has been squeezed out of the digital download sound quality.  It’s like taking all of the healthy, nutritious, and vitamin rich contents of whole wheat and making Wonder Bread.  It’s processed sound, if sound is an appropriate word for it.  Maybe technology will correct its own sonic shortcomings in time, but right now, I consider digital download sound a giant step backwards.

5. What’s new and exciting in your part of the audiobook community?

Our plan is to add more video clips to our website, so that avid audio listeners and fans can “peak in” on the recording/production process and get to see what a recording or mixing session looks like.  And, by the way, you have to listen to what the reigning queen of audiobook narration, Barbara Rosenblat,  did on our recent production of Kate DeCamillo’s and Harry Bliss’ picture book, Louise: The Adventures of a Chicken.  She dances gingerly between the voices of French chickens, Pirates, circus performers, Mid-Eastern fortune-sellers, etc., all with a clever tongue-in-cheek flair, to make for a truly enjoyable audiobook experience.

Thanks so much for being here as our guest, Arnie! I am looking forward to the new releases from Live Oak – especially This Jazz Man, Karen Ehrhardt’s clever play on the finger-play chant “This Old Man,”  retooled to introduce nine jazz masters. Sure to be another great title in the Live Oak “Music Makers” collection. And check out Arnie & Debra Cardillo’s great Behind the Scenes interviews on their website!

I hope you’re enjoying meeting members of the audiobook community here every Wednesday. The whole idea for “Inside the Audiobook Studio” was triggered by a great event hosted by Brilliance Audio at their studio in Grand Haven, MI. Tim Ditlow, Brilliance VP & Young Adult and Children’s Acquisition Editor, invited a few audiobook aficionados to tour the studio and chat with production staff, narrators, directors, engineers, and art directors. We even ended up at Cindy Dobrez’s home for a wonderful dinner and more audiobook-themed conversation. I was thrilled to meet Amy Huntley, author of The Everafter, along with Tavia Gilbert, narrator of Amy’s debut novel, and Josh Adams, Amy’s literary agent. It was so fascinating to visit the studio & talk to those who create great audiobooks, I had to find a way to allow you a peek into the process. So I asked Amy & Josh to take a seat here “Inside the Audiobook Studio” to share their roles in producing an audiobook. Plus, Amy will appear as the Audiobooker guest blogger on Friday, sharing her thoughts on audiobooks from her perspective as a veteran high school English teacher. Here’s a picture of Amy hearing her novel as an audiobook for the first time; you can listen along to a sample here:

© Jamie Georges, 2009

Amy & Josh, tell us…

1.    What’s on your MP3 player?

Amy: I confess I listen to audiobooks on CD. My iPod is loaded with music to write by. As for audiobooks….I just started Labyrinth by Kate Mosse.  I love books that tie the past and the present together, and if they involve archeology and the sense that the past is somehow being unburied—all the better. This one does all that.  But since I’ve just gotten started I can’t pass judgment on it yet. I’ve also been listening to Focus on the Family Theatre’s versions of The Chronicles of Narnia. They’re excellent full cast radio show versions of the stories. My daughter and I just stretch out on the floor in the living room and listen to them. It’s sort of like getting to live in the 1930’s and 40’s when families gathered around the radio to share entertainment together!

Josh: We’re just back from our summer vacation, which involved hours of driving, so we listened to The Magic Tree House –a favorite of our 7-year-old daughter–several times. While we primarily listen to audiobooks by Adams Literary authors (we exclusively represent children’s book authors and artists), listening to an audiobook–any audiobook–is always a welcome respite from those times when our 2-and-a-half-year-old has her choice of what we listen to in the car!

2.    Tells us about your role in the audiobook community.

Amy: It’s a funny thing…I play a very small role here. I write the book, and then other people take it pretty much entirely from there. With Brilliance Audio’s version of The Everafter, I was given the right of refusal about the reader of my text. When the studio contacted me to say they thought Tavia Gilbert would make a great reader of my book and asked what I thought, I did a little research on her, listened to her online doing a variety of situations and fell in love with her as the voice for my main character. I think the only other role I play in this process is being conscious when I’m writing of how the language will sound when it’s read aloud.

Josh: My role involves licensing audio rights to audio publishers here in North America, as well as internationally, on behalf of the authors we represent at Adams Literary. This role primarily involves finding the best match for each author’s work, negotiating the advance and terms of the agreement, and assisting with securing the final text to be recorded, as well as with the marketing and publicity of the audiobook edition in conjunction with the book.

3.    What was your most interesting/embarrassing/hilarious moment in the audiobook studio?

Amy: I usually excel at embarrassing myself in public, so I was amazed that I made it through the entire studio visit without self-inflicted humiliation. The most interesting part of my visit, though, was watching the sound editors. To me, language is such an alive thing, so it was fascinating to see the way the sound editors tracked it in spikes and seconds on the computer then fixed missing or hard to hear words. When I’m listening to audio productions, they seem so natural—and yet a lot of work has gone into making them sound that way!

Josh: My recent tour of the audiobook editorial offices, recording studios and production facilities at Brilliance Audio was really eye-opening. It was great to see the care, dedication and passion that goes into each production. There is a true respect for each author’s work, and that’s vitally important to us as literary agents–and, of course, to our authors and artists. We always look for “voice” in the literary works we represent–and it’s both reassuring and inspiring to see the professionals behind the audio production help give life and texture–and a real voice–to our authors’ work. The highlight for me, of course, was listening to some of the recording session of The Everafter by Amy Huntley, meeting the narrator Tavia Gilbert, and seeing the final sound editing of Leaving the Bellweathers by Kristin Clark Venuti, two amazing debut authors we represent. Probably the funniest moment happened after the studio tour, when I was discussing our efforts to bring Alan Katz’s bestselling Silly Dilly books (Take Me Out of the Bathtub, etc.) to audio, and all of a sudden a noted children’s librarian began a rousing and animated rendition of “Stinky Stinky Diaper Change!” We may have to include this librarian in the recording! [Mary’s note: Was this Cindy Dobrez??}

4.    What future trends or changing technologies do you thing will have the greatest/worst impact on the audiobook production field?

Amy: There are an amazing number of formats right now for audiobooks. I think the electronic downloads will eventually win this battle, but I’ll miss going to the bookstore to pick something out. It’s nice to be surrounded by bookstore smells and to pick up an audiobook at the same time I’m picking up a hardcopy of a text. I love that flexibility.

Josh: Certainly all the talk is about “e-everything” and how it’s changing our industry. It’s definitely had an impact, but we’re still in the early stages in children’s publishing, and I’m hopeful these and new technologies will help expand the market for our authors’ books in different formats, rather than replacing formats–specifically physical formats–altogether. I’m interested, too, in how these technologies are not just changing the landscape in retail, but in the school and library markets as well–for example, some libraries around the country are moving to a subscription-type, pay-per-use model that allows simultaneous downloads. One hotly discussed issue recently has been the text-to-speech capability within e-books, which hasn’t been an issue for us, as we don’t grant those rights in our licenses. In the future, I’d expect and hope to see bundling of different editions of a book–for instance a physical book bundled with an e-edition as well as an audio edition–as publishers look to expand the market for different formats, and as authors look to expand their audience.

5.    What’s new and exciting in your part of the audiobook community?

Amy: My debut novel, The Everafter, is coming out as an audiobook. Brilliance audio is the publisher. Since it’s my first novel and my first audiobook, I’m thrilled. I haven’t gotten to hear the whole text yet, though. The narrator has told me about a couple of her favorite spots in the narration, so now I feel a little like a kid staring at a pile of presents waiting to be opened. People are telling me that the stuff inside is great, but I can’t open the gifts yet. The suspense is killing me.

Josh: In addition to the titles I mentioned before, I’m extremely excited about the audio edition of John Claude Bemis’s The Nine Pound Hammer (the first in The Clockwork Dark trilogy), which debuts this week from Random House and Listening Library simultaneously. This is a truly original and imaginative middle-grade fantasy adventure whose mythology is rooted in the legends of John Henry and the Ramblers, and was inspired by John’s love of folk music and stories. John is a musician, and some of his original music is included on the tracks of the audio recording, which really helps to set the mood for the mysterious Southern Gothic, steampunk style of the book.

Thanks so much, Josh & Amy!  Here’s a picture of John Mendelson of Candlewick (center) and Michael Winerip (gotta those two in the interview seat!), with Tim Ditlow (right) and Lynn Rutan. Yes… another Booklist Blogger at the bash – we’re everywhere!

© Jamie Georges, 2009

Subtract the illustrations from The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, add the author’s narration and what do you get? This year’s Odyssey Award-winning title recognized as the best in audiobook production. Audiobooks for young listeners have long featured the audio rendition of text plus added music & effects. But what about audiobooks of titles for older readers minus the illustrations, as in the Absolutely True Diary or Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules? Even the Caldecott-winning, 550 page novel in words and pictures, The Invention of Hugo Cabret was re-imagined as an audiobook featuring music & sound effects. The Booklist audiobook  review addresses some of the concerns of this comment about Hugo posted on an eariler Audiobooker post:

Is it just me, or is there something really off about the idea of an audio version of Hugo Cabret? Half of the book’s glory (hell, half of the book period) is the illustrations.

There was a similar reaction when the Hugo audiobook was debated on Roger Sutton’s blog, including the response post by author Selznick below on the topic:

I’m never quite sure if an author is supposed to comment about their own work on a blog, but I’ve enjoyed Roger’s blog in the past and just came across this discussion of the audiobook. I wanted to say that I had the same reservations about the idea of an audio book for Hugo…it seemed that the whole point of the book is that it is told with pictures to reference it’s relationship to early movies. But I’ll tell you the reason I said yes (and worked hard with the producers) on this audio project. In 1931, sound was a new thing to the movies (having been introduced of course in The Jazz Singer in 1927), but directors such as Rene Clair thought that sound might ruin movies. He believed that movies were essentially a visual medium, and that sound would make the storytelling too easy. So (for example) in a movie he made in 1931, Under the Roofs of Paris, he used sound sporadically, experimentally, and left the rest of the movie “silent.” This actually was part of the inspiration for having the bursts of images in Hugo (it would parallel the bursts of sound in Clair’s film). SO, when the idea of the audio version of the book was introduced, I was intrigued by the idea of how to use sound the way Clair did. The structure of the audio book is very much like the actual book, in that there are two distinct ways of storytelling working together (hopefully) to tell the tale. We worked really hard to make listening to Hugo its own distinct experience. Yes, it’s different from the book, but the ultimate goal of it was the same, and for me I know I wouldn’t have undertaken the project if there wasn’t something unique that the audio book could do that was different from the book.
Oh, and the DVD is completely separate from the storytelling. It’s a half hour interview with me about making the book, and there is a section where you can see the picture sequences while I talk about the research and ideas that went into drawing them, kind of like a director’s commentary on a movie DVD. But the DVD is really just a bonus. The story exists entirely on the audio CD.
Hope this clarifies some of the ideas behind the audiobook.

Author Augusten Burroughs discusses his re-imagined adult audiobook “A Wolf at the Table” in this video from Macmillan Audio. I’m glad that audiobooks for grown-ups are experimenting with adding music & sound effects. But what are your feelings about titles that depend solely on sound, music, or the voice of a great narrator to convey the spirit of an illustrated tale? Great or ghastly? Does the listener’s impression depend on whether they listen with fresh ears or have experienced the print title first? I am curious in what your comments will say about titles like The Book Thief or The Wright 3 !

Mo Willems & daughter Trixie are our special guests today, as Weston Woods delivers an extra-special “Inside the Audiobook Studio.” Paul Gagne, Director of Production, recorded a fantastic audio interview with Willems, multiple Geisel Medal & Caldecott Honor recipient, and Trixie, her father’s co-star in Weston Wood’s 2007 Carnegie Medal-winner Knuffle Bunny. If you’ve ever seen Willems in person and wonder how he can calm down enough to be captured on mic, you’ll find out who rules the Pigeon roost after listening to this marvelous interview, captured after the Willems duo completed the audio recording for both the audiobook & animated film of The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog. Hint: she’s a pint-sized pro in the glass booth

Paul Gagne, producer of countless audio & video awards including a 2009 Odyssey Honor for I’m Dirty!, graciously takes the interview seat in my every-Wednesday feature “Inside the Audiobook Studio.”

1.  What’s on your MP3 player?

I use an iPod, and it’s mostly loaded with music.  Close to 12,000 songs - I’ve been an obsessive consumer of music for close to 40 years!  I usually listen to music when I’m driving, but more and more I’ve been alternating between music and audiobooks for the one hour commute to and from work.  The last audiobook I listened to was The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.  I just LOVED listening to Sherman Alexie’s voice and didn’t want it to end - very funny and moving at the same time.  Another title I recently listened to was Scholastic Audio’s recording of Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret.   I became so emotionally caught up in the ending of the story that I wasn’t paying attention to my driving, went through a stop sign and got a $75.00 traffic ticket.  I told Scholastic they could use that in their ad copy if they paid the ticket.  They didn’t take me up on it.

2.  Tell us about your role in the audiobook community

I’m the Director of Production at Weston Woods.  I’ve been with the company for over 31 years now, starting as a sound editor fresh out of college.  I suppose my very first “audiobook” was a radio drama based on Ray Bradbury’s short story, “The Foghorn,” that I produced for an independent study project in college.   It was pretty terrible.  Anyway, I gradually worked my way up to producing and directing at Weston Woods, and I’m now responsible for overseeing projects from start to completion.  I have a permanent staff of two - Melissa Reilly Ellard is our subsidiary rights manager and my co-producer on a majority of our productions, and Steve Syarto is our in-house audio engineer - supplemented by occasional freelancers.  Our job functions overlap in a lot of areas, but I tend to direct most of the voice recordings and work with our composers to develop a musical approach for each title.  All of our productions are pretty fully scored with original music.  We’re a bit different from most audiobook producers in that we are usually simultaneously producing a video and an audiobook recording for each title we adapt, but whether it’s a video or an audio recording, I’ve always felt that the SOUND was the most critical part of the process.  Maybe that comes from having started as a sound editor after a background in college radio, but I’ve always felt that the soundtrack is where we’re adding our own interpretation to an author’s work and bringing it to life.

We’ll frequently consult with the author both before and after the recording, and in many cases they’re directly involved.  We recently had Mo and Trixie Willems back in our studio - we started a tradition in 2005 where we’ve recorded one of Mo’s stories each year shortly after the annual ALA conference, and this year was no exception — to record the voices for an animated film and audiobook adaptation of the second book in Mo’s “Pigeon” series, The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog.  Mo reprised his role as Pigeon and Trixie played the part of The Duckling!  Those sessions are always a lot of fun, and require very little direction - Mo has done a lot of stand-up comedy, and Trixie is just a natural, so it’s just a matter of letting them interact with each other in the studio and having a couple of microphones there to record it.  They improvised this bit where Pigeon and The Duckling are comparing notes on their favorite foods, and it’s just hysterical.  We also recently recorded author Amy Krouse Rosenthal reading her book Spoon, and John Himmelman’s daughter, Elizabeth, read his book Katie Loves the Kittens, which is about a dog she owned.

3)  What was your most interesting/embarrassing/hilarious moment in the audiobook studio?

Interesting:  They’ve ALL been interesting in one way or another, but being a frustrated musician I’d have to say that some of the most interesting projects for me have been the ones where we’ve taken a book with rhyming text and turned it into a song.  Antarctic Antics is probably my favorite example of this - Scotty Huff and Robert Reynolds took the 11 poems that Judy Sierra wrote for her book about penguins and set them to music!  When we told her what we wanted to do, she was just delighted - she said she actually conceived of the idea as a Broadway musical, but can’t write music herself so she turned it into a picture book instead!
Embarrassing:  I don’t embarrass easily.
Hilarious:  Way too many of those moments to count.  I always say that I have the perfect job, because where else could a group of grown adults actually be paid to stand around a microphone and moo “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star?”

4)  What future trends or changing technologies do you think will have the greatest/worst/revolutionary impact on the audiobook production field?

Having just attended my first Odyssey meeting at the annual ALA conference in Chicago, I have to say that I think the creation of the Odyssey Award is having a huge impact in terms of raising awareness and generating enthusiasm for the audiobook as a vital art form.  The enthusiasm and positive energy in that room just knocked my socks off and made me feel excited to be a part of this community.

With regard to changing technologies, I think that there has been a significant impact just in the variety of digital formats that are currently popular - audio CDs, mp3 players, audio downloads, Playaway® players, etc.  Audio content is now available in a wider variety of easily accessible formats than ever before, and I think the number of audiobook listeners out there is increasing exponentially as a result.

5)  What’s new and exciting in your part of the audiobook community?

We’re very excited about the batch of titles we just released this past spring, including Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity, both by Mo Willems, Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith’s Math Curse, read by Nancy Wu, Ellen Levine and Kadir Nelson’s Henry’s Freedom Box, read by Jerry Dixon, and Laura Vaccaro Seeger’s First the Egg, read by Elle Fanning.   We’re currently putting the finishing touches on our fall releases, including David Shannon’s Duck on a Bike, Laurie Keller’s The Scrambled States of American Talent Show, and Los Gatos Black on Halloween by Maris Montes and Yuyi Morales, read by Maria Conchita Alonso.  On many of our new releases we are now including bonus tracks, including songs and author interviews.  We now have 40 Playaway® compilations available.

Thanks so much, Paul, for being our guest. And extra special thanks for bringing Mo & Trixie along! Stop in next Wednesday for another “Inside the Audiobook Studio!”

Watch this video on recording World War Z & The Zombie Survival Handbook as audiobooks. Interestingly, Brooks praises the Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic’s audiobooks, featured in this Comic-Con post with Stan Lee, for helping him make it through school as a student with reading difficulties. World War Z is one of my personal all-time favorite audiobooks - one where the production lifts the words from the page and creates an entirely different literary experience, one recognized as the 2007 Audies Award winner for multi-voiced recording. The faux-documentary style is perfectly suited to a fully-cast reading - you are convinced that the survivors of a zombie plague are speaking directly into the microphone of a journalist. Although the voices belong to an ensemble of stars, listeners abandon any awareness of the production and are instead swept into the gory battles with the undead, with a large measure of deadpan humor and scathing political commentary. The ideal 6-hour length for a vacation trip, World War Z is a great listen for a car-full of teens and adults who like humor & horror in equal measure - the perfect palate cleanser after a dose of Twilight

Thanks to Random House’s Science Fiction blog, Suvudu, for the link!

Click here for a link to the audio recording of our ALA session “Evaluating Audiobooks for Children & Teens” - with tips for anyone interested in learning how to talk the talk of audiobooks. Be sure to check out this post for the session notes, PowerPoint, and more. And if you’d like even more research and resources, I’ve gathered lots on this post. I am getting ready to put the tips into use myself while writing a review for The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, from Hyperion Audio - an audiobook so awesome that I wished the vacation car trip lasted longer so that I could listen more!

Today’s panel at ALA Annual was a happy reunion of nearly all the members of the 2008 Odyssey Award committee, while those missing lent their support from afar. The wonderful women who served with me on that first-year committee are an amazing group of children’s and YA literature experts with a deep knowledge of the elements that are the key to excellence in audiobook production. After our hundreds and hundreds of hours under the headphone, we all developed “Odyssey Ears” - and listening habits so arcane that we would blurt out phases like “Stop woofing the mic!” while listening on the treadmill at the gym. I’ll be posting the audio of the complete session “Evaluating Audiobooks: Selecting the Best for Children and Teens” when I get home, but you will find the PowerPoint, links to handouts & session notes from the panel when you “Read the rest…” below.

Talking the Talk: An Audiobook Lexicon

Sounds Good to Me: Listening to Audiobooks with a Critical Ear

ALA’s top audiobooks of 2008 (currently has glitch - no page one - fix in progress)

Why audiobooks? Listening…

• Increases fluency
• Expands listening skills
• Raises reading comprehension
• Enlarges vocabulary
• Boosts pronunciation skills
• Supports struggling readers
• Expands literature experiences for proficient readers
• Improves test scores

Increased fluency & interpretation

• Expert readers model fluent inflection & enunciation within the story’s narrative flow
• Narrator’s voice reveals punctuation, accents, dialects, and cultural vocal patterns
• Listeners hear the story through another reader’s voice, gaining deeper meaning

Audiobooks provide opportunity

• Comprehension level when listening is often two years above reading level, allowing struggling readers, English Language Learners, and those with learning differences to join the community of readers through audiobooks alone or when paired with text.

Building a community of readers

• Audiobooks allow all students access to classroom literature
• More time with text (or spoken text) = better vocabulary

Audiobook review sources

• Book Links
• Booklist
• Horn Book
• VOYA
• AudioFile Magazine
• Library Journal
• Publisher’s Weekly
• School Library Journal

Audiobook awards and honors

• ALA’s Odyssey Award for Excellence in Audiobook Production
• YALSA’s Amazing Audiobook yearly list of suggest tiles
• ALSC’s Notable Children’s Recordings yearly list of suggested titles
• The Audio Publishers Association’s Audies Awards
• The spoken word Grammy Awards
• Publishers Weekly’s Listen Up Award
• AudioFile magazine’s Golden Earphones

Starting & enhancing the audiobook collection

• Investigate formats: CD, MP3, Playaway, downloads
• Decide on interfiled or separate shelving
• Piggyback with Title 1, Stimulus, or other funding sources
• Seek grants from PTO, Friends, or education foundations
• Survey language arts & resource teachers for titles & topics
• Choose “One book,” top circulating titles & local required reading Language Arts titles first

Marketing your audiobooks

• Hook commuters, teachers & parents first - survey to see where a need is perceived
• Include audiobooks in displays, booktalks, summer reading lists
• Investigate circulating players & rechargeable batteries
• Hold CD ripping, MP3 loading & public library downloading workshop, both on-site & off-site
• Create a listening club or provide listening stations in youth & teen areas
• Include listening minutes in summer reading club requirements
• Display in collaboration with craft programs: knitting, beadwork, etc.
• Promote summer time “family listening” at the local pool, with parent + child titles
• Promote at the local Senior Citizen Center with Playaways + large print
• Include diverse audiobook styles in promotions: single-voice, full cast, non-fiction, etc.

Parents as audiobook partners

• Create pre-holiday break or open house displays of family-friendly audiobooks for travel time listening
• Highlight your audiobook collection in toddler time & in parent newsletters along with research data on audiobooks
• Provide audiobook + large print material lists
• Purchase audiobook titles to supplement parent/child book clubs

Making audiobooks part of the curriculum

• Hook teachers with a long commute on audiobooks
• Lobby for audiobooks fulfilling teacher’s reading assignment quotas
• Have audiobook research reports at-hand
• Include audiobooks in pathfinders, summer reading lists, & classroom collections.

Achieving Content Standards with Audiobooks

Music

• Students identify significant contributions of composers and performers to our music heritage.

Music Connection

• Jazz / Live Oak Media ~ Odyssey Award-winning history of the American musical art form, with original compositions and jazz vocals transforming Walter Dean Myers’ poetry and Christopher Myers’ illustrations into an entirely new work.

Dramatic Arts

• Students analyze the creative techniques used in creating and performing dramatic/theatrical works and evaluate dramatic/theatrical works using appropriate criteria

Dramatic Arts Connection

• Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village / Recorded Books ~ This Newbery title was written to be performed as Reader’s Theater, as modeled by the full cast of narrators.

Visual Arts

• Students understand the impact of visual art on the history, culture, and society from which it emanates.

Visual Arts Connection

• The Pot That Juan Built / Weston Woods ~ Mexican potter Juan Quezada’s artistic process is revealed in a multilayered readalong for all ages.

Social Studies

• Students use knowledge of the purposes, structures and processes of political systems at the local, state, national & international levels to understand that people create systems of government as structures of power & authority to provide order, maintain stability and promote the general welfare.

Social Studies Connection

• Chasing Lincoln’s Killer / Scholastic Audio ~Mesmerizing factual narrative with the excitement of a murder mystery.

Science

• Students demonstrate an understanding of different historical perspectives, scientific approaches and emerging scientific issues associated with the life sciences.

Science Connection

• The Adoration of Jenna Fox / Macmillan Audio ~ Listeners will explore the issues of medical ethics, organ transplants, and the very concept of human existence.

Foreign Language

• Students demonstrate an understanding of insights gained into another culture through the examination of its practices (behaviors), products (tangibles such as monuments, food and literature, and intangibles such as laws and music) and perspectives (attitudes, values, ideas, world views).

Foreign Language Connection

• Martina the Beautiful Cockroach: A Cuban Folktale / Peachtree Publishers ~ Author/narrator Carmen Agra Deedy’s bilingual reading and authentic background music provide the perfect Latino cultural flavor to this Odyssey Award Honor title.

Mathematics

• Students demonstrate number sense, including an understanding of number systems and operations and how they relate to one another.

Mathematics Connection

• How Much is a Million? / Weston Woods ~ Audio and illustrations combine to illuminate the concept of large numbers.

Technology

• Students use computer and multimedia resources to support their learning
• Identify what information is, and recognize that it can be represented in a variety of ways

Technology Connection

• Frankenstein / Tantor Media ~ Tantor’s Unabridged Classics series includes both the audiobook read by a top narration plus the entire book as a PDF file that may be read on computer or hand-held reader, allowing full-text search & print capabilities.

Language Arts

• Students define and investigate self-selected or assigned issues, topics and problems. They locate, select & make use of relevant information from a variety of media, reference and technological sources.

Language Arts Connection

• Duck for President / Weston Woods ~ A title that can be enjoyed by all ages and at many levels, made even more enjoyable by Randy Travis’ witty narration & musical accompaniment.

Language Arts

• Students acquire vocabulary through exposure to language-rich situations, such as reading books and other texts and conversing with adults and peers.

Language Arts Connection

• Blues Journey / Like Oak Media ~ A stunning readalong that recreates the title, adding original blues music to the poems that trace the history of the Blues.

Evaluating Audiobooks

Use the titles below to model the bulleted evaluative benchmarks

The Narrator as Author’s Voice

• The reading should be authentic and appropriate to content, with voices that match the time and place of the text as well as characters’ gender, ages, and moods.
• The reader should use well-placed inflections and tones and convey the meaning of the text through engaging expression, emotion, and energy.
• The reader should maintain and differentiate character voices, accents, or dialects consistently. Narrative descriptions (”He murmured,” for example) should be read appropriately.
• A single performer may read in a straightforward manner using his or her natural voice with suitable inflection and tone. Or the reader may vary his or her voice to change tone, inflection, accent, and emphasis to represent multiple characters. The reading might also be a combination of the two styles, with major or pivotal characters receiving particular emphasis. Some audios feature multiple narrators taking on specific roles and characters or full cast dramatizations.
• Recommended titles: (* notes Odyssey Award title)

* Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows / JK Rowling / Listening Library

Al Capone Does My Shirts / Gennifer Choldenko / Recorded Books

Born to Rock / Gordon Korman / Brilliance Audio

Boy Meets Boy / David Levithan / Full Cast Audio

Clementine / Sara Pennypacker / Recorded Books

Deliver Us from Normal / Kate Klise / Recorded Books

Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie / Jordan Sonnenblick / Scholastic Audio

The Girls / Amy Koss/ Full Cast Audio

The Graveyard Book / Neil Gaiman / Harper Children’s Audio

Ish / Peter Reynolds / Weston Woods

Marcello in the Real World / Francisco X. Stork / Listening Library

Rotten Ralph Helps Out / Jack Gantos / Live Oak Media

So Much to Tell You / James Marsden / Bolinda Audio

Wolf Brother / Michelle Paver / HarperChildren’s Audio

Window to Culture / Reflection of Region

• Cultures & ethnicities are presented authentically and without stereotype.
• Geographic terms, foreign terminology, and other challenging phrases and words should be pronounced correctly and with ease.
• Musical features match the culture and region portrayed.
• Recommended titles: (* notes Odyssey Award title)

* The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian / Sherman Alexie / Recorded Books

* Bloody Jack series / L.A. Meyer / Listen & Live Audio

Bindi Babes / Narinder Dhami / Listening Library

Bucking the Sarge / Christopher Paul Curtis / Listening Library

The Cay / Theodore Taylor / Listening Library

Dairy Queen / Catherine Gilbert Murdock / Listening Library

Does My Head Look Big in This? / Randa Abdel-Fattah / Bolinda Audio

Homeless Bird / Gloria Whelan / Listening Library

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency / Alexander McCall Smith / Recorded Books

A Pack of Lies / Geraldine McCaughrean / BBC Audiobooks America

Parrot in the Oven / Victor Martinez / Harper Audio

The Power of One / Bryce Courtenay / Bolinda Audio

Revenge of the Whale / Audio Bookshelf

Secret Life of Bees / Sue Monk Kidd / HighBridge Company

Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood / Benjamin Alire Saenz / Recorded Books

To Kill a Mockingbird / Harper Lee / Caedmon

When My Name Was Keoko / Linda Sue Park / Recorded Books

Whale Rider / Witi Ihimaera / Bolinda Audio

Behind the Booth: Production Quality

• Quality productions maintain a clean, crisp sound that allows for periods of silence and a range of dynamics, without affecting volume levels.
• The recording should be free of sibilant or plosive microphone pick-ups. Distractions result if reader moves off microphone, has an overly dry or juicy mouth, or can be heard swallowing.
• Sloppy production may result in titles that are too loud or intense, have missing or repeated text segments, show obvious dubbing or noticeable time differences in recording sessions, or contain abrupt or lengthy chapter or line breaks.
• The packaging should correctly note title, author, and readers’ names as well as accurate running times or notice of abridgement.
• Readalongs (picture book and audio sets) require additional evaluative criteria. Because the intent is for youngsters to follow along with the picture book while listening, there should be no mismatches between the words, pictures, and sound effects. Page turn signals are usually an option and these cues should allow time for young listeners to follow the text and explore the illustrations.
• Recommended titles: (* notes Odyssey Award title)

*Jazz / Walter Dean Myers / Live Oak Media

*I’m Dirty! / Kate & Jim McMullan / Weston Woods

Journey of the One & Only Declaration of Independence / Judith St. George / Weston Woods

The Golden Compass / Philip Pullman / Listening Library

The Goose Girl / Shannon Hale / Full Cast Audio

The One and Only Shrek / William Steig / Macmillan Young Listeners

Mack Made Movies / Don Brown / Live Oak Media

Peter and the Starcatchers / Dave Barry & Ridley Pearson / Brilliance Audio

Seven Blind Mice / Ed Young / Weston Woods

Gifts & Goodies: Audio Extras

• Music may be used as an introduction or to delineate mood, setting, or time changes. The background music must be unobtrusive and not interrupt the narrative flow.
• If sound effects are used, they serve to subtly enhance the production, rather than distract.
• Bonus features include author interviews, critical essays, or other supplemental audio materials.
• Added content may be informational booklets, links to web-based material, games or computer files on disk, or graphic materials such as illustrations or photographs.
• Recommended titles: (* notes Odyssey Award title)

*Dooby Dooby Moo / Doreen Cronin / Weston Woods

*Treasure Island / Robert Louis Stevenson / Listening Library

We are the Ship / Kadir Nelson / Brilliance Audio

Eagle of the Ninth / Rosemary Sutcliff / Naxos Audio

Fairest / Gail Carson Levine / Full Cast Audio

Hitler Youth / Susan Campbell Bartoletti / Listening Library

I Am Not Joey Pigza / Jack Gantos / Listening Library

The Invention of Hugo Cabret / Brian Selznick / Scholastic Audiobooks

King for Kids / Clayborne Carson, ed. / Hachette Audio

Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel / Virginia Lee Burton / Magic Maestro Music

Poets’ Corner: The One-and-only Poetry Book for the Whole Family / John Lithgow, ed. / Grand Central Publishing

Series of Unfortunate Events series / Lemony Snicket / HarperChildren’s Audio

The Wall and the Wing / Laura Ruby/ Brilliance Audio

When Marian Sang / Pam Munoz Ryan / Live Oak Media

Breaking the Wall: The Art of the Audiobook

• The audiobook must stand alone as a fully-realized expression of the author’s intent and meaning.
• The mark of an excellent audiobook is one in which the wall of performance is removed so that listeners fall completely into the audiobook experience.
• Recommended titles: (* notes Odyssey Award title)

*Elijah of Buxton / Christopher Paul Curtis / Listening Library

*Nation / Terry Pratchett / Harper Children’s Audio

*Skulduggery Pleasant / Derek Landy / Harper Children’s Audio

Before I Die / Jenny Downham /Listening Library

Day of Tears / Julius Lester / Recorded Books

The Book Thief / Markus Zusak / Listening Library

Buddha Boy / Kathe Koja / Full Cast Audio

Dead Fathers Club / Matt Haig / HighBridge Audio

I, Coriander / Sally Gardner / Listening Library

Keturah and Lord Death / Martine Leavitt / Recorded Books

Lon Po Po / Ed Young / Weston Woods

By Mary Burkey, 2009

Industry leaders react to APA sales survey results in Spoken-Word Audio Market Holds On, a Publishers Weekly article by Jim Milliot. Thoughtful comments on changes due to the economy, the library & bookstore markets, shifts from CD to downloads, DRM, and the increase in sales of pre-loaded Playway audiobooks.

This terrific look inside Full Cast Audio’s production of Eyes like Stars by Lisa Mantchev includes comments from actors, Full Cast founder Bruce Coville, artistic director Daniel Bostick, and more. I love seeing how the cast rehearses, how the script pages are marked, and to see & hear readers morph from actor to character. Lots of interesting nuggets explaining how a title is chosen for audiobook production, how narrators read punctuation and build their character, and how there are no bad hair days for audiobook actors. Be sure to watch Part Two of the Full Cast Audio: A Family of Voices mini-documentary as well!

Listen here to wonderful comments from Kathie Lee Gifford, author of Just When I Thought I’d Dropped My Last Egg; Lisa Scottoline, author of Look Again; and Katherine Kellgren, Audies award-winning narrator of Curse of the Blue Tattoo, a 2008 Odyssey Honor-winner. Great reflections on the value of the spoken word and the art of narration - thanks, BEA, for providing the podcast!

I thought I would participate in my first ever illustration friday post with the topic of multiples. This painting of Daisey and Violet Hilton is one of my favorites from my book. Throughout their lives, Daisey and Violet attracted drama times two. Together they went through marriages, divorces, business failures and even had brief stints as Hollywood stars.

Daisey and Violet were born in England in 1908. Born as conjoined twins, they were attached to the hip and buttocks. They toured as sideshow acts from the age of 3 but our best known for their roles in the movies Freaks and Chained for Life. (Freaks was panned by critics and Chained for Life was banned in many places due to its content. )

Here is a far more cheery vaudeville poster advertising their act as young girls. As mentioned in my book, they sang, dance and played instruments as part of their show.

Source:
Taylor, James & Hotcher, Kathleen. Shocked and Amazed! On and Off the Midway. The Lyons Press, 2002