Self-Publishing: Editing an Audiobook
A.D. SterlingShare
Equipment
I highly encourage you to shop local whenever possible, but I’ve linked to all of the equipment through Amazon so you know exactly what products I used.
* Please Note: as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases (I’d be a fool not to). All opinions and reviews are my own.
Sure-Max 4 Moving & Packing Blankets - Ultra Thick Pro
Koolertron Universal 50MM Microphone Shock Mount
Software
Recording
Self-Publishing: Recording an Audiobook
Editing
This microphone is so sensitive that it sounded like I was inhaling deeply each breath I took between sentences. It sounded like I was about to pass out, it was that bad. I purchased the DeBreath plugin from Waves which can be used with Audacity and the first thing I did was run my recordings through it. This plugin is pretty amazing. You can change the settings based on your own breathing in order to have them completely eliminated. It wasn’t 100% foolproof, but it got rid of 90-95% of my breaths and was a huge time saver.
After running DeBreath listen to the chapter from the beginning. ACX requires a minimum of 30 seconds of “room noise” (see below) at the beginning and a minimum of 1 minute at the end. With that in mind, I cut any extraneous time from before I said “Chapter 1” by highlighting what I wanted to delete and clicking Edit > Delete.
Remember those “clicks” I mentioned earlier? Those are easy to remove by highlighting the area that should be “silent” and clicking Generate > Silence. I also did this when I found any areas where I took a breath that the DeBreath plugin didn’t capture or when I smacked my lips, swallowed or my belly grumbled (basically anything that shouldn’t have been there).
As you come across sections were you made a mistake simply select the problem area and Edit > Delete it.
Try to make sure your pauses between sentences are consistent and not too close together or too far apart. Specifically when I swallowed there would be a longer pause after removing all the noise, so I would delete out a little bit of the extra time left in there.
Reviewing
Once you are done editing I would suggest listening through again while reading along with your book. You will undoubtedly find sections that need to be re-recorded due to mistakes. I fixed mistakes where I inadvertently changed the story, but if I added or changed an innocuous word here or there that didn’t have any significant impact I left them. Another bonus to doing this - I found more typos that slipped through during the book’s editing phase and I was able to clean those up and re-upload to my providers.
As you find mistakes make a note of the chapter & time so that you can go back in later to fix them.
Re-Recording
When you are ready to re-record, the best way I found was to use Tracks > Add New > Mono Track. This will add a track below your original recording. Go to the timestamp you noted during the Reviewing phase. Click Mute on the original track, otherwise as you are recording your re-take your original track will play. Click Record and you’ll see the re-take appear below the original. When you are done click stop. Then select your re-take from the new track and Edit > Copy it. Select your mistake in the original track and Edit > Paste. You can then delete your new track and unmute the original.