Guest Post: What the Heck is an Audiobook Engineer?
By Ashley Bigbie
Hello! My name is Ashley Bigbie, and I am the audiobook engineer for Collective Tales Publishing’s bestselling brainchild: Collective Darkness: A Horror Anthology.
You may be wondering, What the heck is an Audiobook Engineer?
I get asked this question a lot, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you haven’t heard the term before. That’s because an audiobook engineer’s job is to make the listening experience of an audiobook seamless and distraction-free. The goal of an engineer is to have the listener say, That was a really nice story, and not Dear Lord, what was that sound in the background? It sounded like someone tossing a cast iron skillet into a pile of cooking pots!
Yeah. No one wants to hear that kind of racket in their ear, especially in the middle of a tale that’s supposed to take you on a journey to faraway lands of wonder and mystery—or, in Collective Darkness’ case, a journey of suspense and intrigue.
Sometimes audiobook engineers are the narrators themselves. Some voice actors know how to clean, edit, and master their own audio files to produce a finished product that stands out above the rest in terms of quality and diction. But some do not, and that’s entirely alright. Worse, some narrators SAY (or THINK) they know how to do this, but don’t actually do it right. That’s where people like me come in.
I take the raw, unedited audio files straight from voice actors’ recording studios (or, if they don’t have their own and they’re local, I offer for them to use mine) and polish up their work—kind of like how a blacksmith takes raw metals and forges them into a shiny, durable, and artistic sword. (You can tell I’ve been watching Forged in Fire lately. I’m obsessed with that show!)
Basically, my job is to take the hassle out of making an audiobook—and to make a damn good one.
I leave the fun stuff to the voice actors (who don’t have the problem of sounding like a dying cow such as I do) and handle the technical side of their work, including accurately applying noise reduction, amplitude and compression, EQ, dynamics processing, exporting, converting, and much more.
Most crucially, I ensure the files’ finicky specs match ACX requirements, which deal with dB levels and noise floors and RMS meters and other technical skills and jargon that takes a heck-ton of time for a newcomer to learn from scratch. Trust me, I know. I was a newcomer once, and the learning curve is rough.
Finally, I allow the publisher or the author the easy job of simply listening to the finished piece and approving it or requesting changes, which I then make.
If you are thinking about making an audiobook out of your book (which you’ve already put blood, sweat, tears, and chocolate cake crumbs into) then I BEG of you, please make sure that whoever is editing your audiobook KNOWS what they are doing. It will make all the difference in the long run when your baby is on the metaphorical Audible shelf beside other audiobooks whose publishers surely hired multiple Hollywood-level engineers to perfect.
You wouldn’t bring a raw lump of steel to a knife fight, would you? Nor a half-baked one, I hope. Trust me. Hiring an experienced, dedicated, knowledgeable (and friendly!) audiobook engineer is worth it.
Oh! One more thing!
To celebrate our launch on Audible, we are hosting a giveaway for a free audiobook of Collective Darkness: A Horror Anthology. The details for the giveaway can be found at my author site, www.JenEllwyn.com. Be sure to enter the giveaway before it closes on April 28th. Everyone who enters will receive a free short horror story, so you still win something by participating even if you don’t score the grand prize. There are also multiple easy ways to earn additional entries to increase your odds of winning!
If you’d like to check out our audiobook, it is free with an Audible trial, which you can cancel at any time. I promise you will enjoy these short spooky stories without a single cast iron skillet crashing in your ear.
Best wishes!
Ashley Bigbie (AKA Jen Ellwyn)
Ashley is a graduate of Weber State University and the University of Utah, where she earned degrees in Technical Theatre and Digital Media. Ashley enjoys wearing many hats, including stage manager, camera operator, video editor, production coordinator, location manager, and most recently, audio engineer. She has served on crew for multiple Utah theatres and is currently employed full-time at a television broadcasting house. This busy bee also freelances for various projects and productions around the valley, and doesn't plan on slowing down any time soon. On top of all that, she's a budding horror and fantasy author under the pen name Jen Ellwyn.