Accessible Audiobook Production: Narration Guidelines

Prerequisites

Before reading this, you might want to read:

• Introduction to Accessible Audiobook Production
• Accessible Audiobook Production: What to Record
• Accessible Audiobook Production: General Recording Notes

Narration Guidelines

Good narration can enhance the experience of listening to an audiobook, and so the narrator should be a vessel to all of the print book’s information in audio form. With that in mind, make sure that your narrator meets the following guidelines:

• Understanding of the text: It is very difficult for a narrator to successfully translate a book into audio that they do not comprehend. Narrators should work with content that is comprehensible to them.
• Tone: Tone should be consistent. Reading loudly exhausts the voice and will result in a changing in tone as the voice gets more and more strained and tired. Reading very quietly can be more challenging when the goal is a high-quality recording. Narrators should find a medium, conversational volume and tone that is comfortable for them to maintain throughout the length of each recording.
• Objectivity: Personal views should not impose on the tone of the text.
• Pronunciation: All text should be pronounced correctly (this is not inclusive of accents that narrators may have). Unfamiliar words and names should be researched by the narrator to support that pronunciation.
• Pace: Comprehension is the priority. Narrators should speak at a speed that is both natural to the narrator and considerate of the complexity of the text, i.e. if the text is a dense academic text it should be read at a slower pace.