E2A 088: The Art of Audiobook Production with Keenan Wardrope from SquareSound Studios 

In this episode of The Entrepreneur to Author Podcast, your host Scott MacMillan speaks with Keenan Wardrope. Keenan is the Audiobook Director and Head of Production at SquareSound Studios Australia. SquareSound specializes in producing high quality audiobooks and podcasts.

Keenan takes us behind the scenes of audiobook production, explaining his role and offering expert advice on adapting written works into audio, choosing between self-narration or hiring a narrator, and much more.

SHOW LINKS:

squaresound.com.au

GUEST BIO

Keenan is an award-winning Audio Engineer and Director with over a decade working in the Audiobook Industry. Passionate about audio, storytelling, and people he enjoys helping storytellers bring their words to life and keeps the audiobook productions on schedule.

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LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/squaresound

Instagram: instagram.com/squaresoundstudio

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Episode Transcript

Please note: The transcript is produced by a third-party company from an audio recording and may include transcription errors.

Scott MacMillan:

You're listening to the Entrepreneur to Author podcast. 

Announcer

Welcome to the Entrepreneur to Author podcast, the podcast that brings you practical strategies for building authority and growing your business. And now, here's your host, Scott MacMillan.

Scott:

My guest today is Keenan Wardrope. Keenan is Audiobook Director and Head of Production at SquareSound Studios Australia. SquareSound specializes in producing high quality audiobooks and podcasts.

Keenan, it's great to have you on the show. Thanks for joining us.

Keenan Wardrope

Thanks for having us, Scott. Glad to be here.

Scott

Yeah, excellent. So, the first thing I'd like you to talk about a little bit for our audience is, what does the role of an audiobook director entail and how does it shape the final product for listeners?

Keenan

It's a great question. I mean, look, being an audiobook director is a fantastic job, but really, we're working in tandem with the talent and all involved for an audiobook. We can shape the final product for the listener quite easily by changing the sound or the tonality or the way we go about recording the performance.

But equally, a lot of that's got to do with the talent who's in the booth. And I guess maybe something that a lot of people don't think of as a director, how do we coach the talent? How do we get the best performance out of that talent?

Is it from how we set up the studio? Is it the mood in the studio? Is it the greeting?

Is it the prior training? What is it about that? And I think, for me as a director, it entails all those things and then that translates directly to how I go about recording the performance.

So, yeah, I guess in a nutshell, a broad sense, everything kind of factors in. Yeah, but like from a recording standpoint, I mean, yeah, there's definitely some tools that, you know, I like to use to capture a performance. I guess understand a voice and, you know, find out what's going to be most suitable for someone if it's a quite a dynamic recording.

I want to make sure that I'm kind of, you know, compressing at the right levels and really kind of capturing, you know, the essence of the performance. If someone's, you know, very softly spoken and there's a lot of, you know, intricacies and delicacy with the voice. I want to really capture that.

Maybe it's a different mic choice that I'm using. So, yeah, there's a few ways that I guess we go about kind of shaping the final product, but I'm more than happy to go in depth. If there's any areas that you'd like to kind of dive in further.

Scott

Yeah, brilliant. Well, you know, I think what would be helpful context for listeners is if you could walk us through the production process itself. So, what happens in the studio from the moment you could even start?

I think you did talk a little bit about what happens before the narrator comes into the studio. But, you know, from start to finish, what does a audiobook production look like?

Keenan

For sure. So, I mean, starting at pre-production is, I guess, understanding the text. You know, what are we working with?

What kind of text are we dealing with? Is it fiction, non-fiction, self-help? Who's going to be recording the book or the piece of work?

You know, is it someone who is a series narrator who's done maybe the fourth? This is the fourth book in the series that, you know, they're well-versed with the characters or there's someone who is quite new to the job, quite green. Maybe they're an actor or a theater actor or maybe they have some kind of acting background but nothing that really translates to spoken word.

Or is it someone who's completely novice to all of this? Maybe it's an author, someone taking their first step into, you know, bringing their creation to life. So, I guess it's all about understanding those things first and getting an idea of how will this translate into the studio.

So, I guess once we've worked out that, once we've worked out the text, who's going to be reading it, and I guess the voice, the suitability, we can also take a look into, I guess, when we're looking at the text, maybe any adaptions that need to be made in the text. So, you know, a lot of people don't primarily have the forethought to think ahead and go, oh, I might turn this into an audio book because that's, you know, such a later on down the track thing. You know, very rarely does it happen.

And when it does happen, it's, you know, it's really gold for us directors to kind of sit back and, you know, take the stress off there. But yeah, we like to kind of help and adapt things. Maybe we can adapt things on the fly in studio.

But if authors or, you know, the talent we have in recording the audio book, if they know prior to that some things might need to be changed or adapted, if it's graphs and tables and charts that need to be kind of verbally explained, that can all be done in the pre-production phase to, I guess, get everything sorted out. So, by the time we come into the studio, we're efficient. We can focus more on the things that probably truly matter to the listener, the things that they wouldn't necessarily need to think about.

So, as a listener, you kind of want to be focusing on, you know, you want to be immersed in the experience. So, you want to be, you know, you want to be hearing the full range of someone's voice. You want to be lost in the story.

You don't want to be kind of thinking about like, oh, they could have done this a little bit differently or that was kind of a bit stuttery. That could have been done a little bit differently. So, we want to try and mitigate all those issues prior to coming to the studio.

So, I guess pre-production, that wraps that up. And then moving into the studio, I mean, yeah, I mean, it can go a million different ways. I think each director has their own style on how they like to conduct the session.

Me, primarily, I like to, you know, I like to be quite relaxed. I feel like, you know, recording an audiobook is a fun experience regardless of what kind of, you know, title we're dealing with. Whether it's fiction, nonfiction, self-help or, you know, a business or whatever it may be.

There's something to learn, there's something to gain from it always. And I think walking in with an open mind and kind of, you know, on paper things look great and then you get into the studio and it's a completely different story. So, I like to kind of take things with a pretty open approach and, you know, sit down with my talent and sit down with whoever's in the room, whether it's the client in the room or the authors in the room with the talent or maybe it is the author and just kind of talk, you know, talk for 5, 10, 15 minutes and really just kind of get an understanding of how they're feeling, what they've kind of encountered, you know, reading through the book. Is there anything that I need to be aware of and I can voice my concerns or things that I'd really like to get out of the session to them?

Do we have a goal in mind? Is this something we want to kind of tick off by the end of the day? These are all these things we kind of want to get done prior to the recording there and then.

And you probably find a lot of the time that most likely the author, narrators, the directors, we're all on the same page. We kind of have an understanding of how we want it to work out. And then, you know, if not, these conversations breed great things and allow for, you know, a smooth process.

So, you know, I think it's quite an important step. And I think it's very easy to get lost in the rush of just getting in and getting, you know, the job started and finished. And, you know, by the end, you kind of realize, you know, oh, maybe we could have taken that extra 5 minutes at the start and done something differently.

And of course, early in my career, I think, you know, not having a, you know, a great understanding of people and how this kind of works. I think I was, you know, I used to kind of rush in and like, let's, you know, be excited. Let's get the job done.

Let's do it like this. And not really take a step back and understand this is a long, you know, this is a marathon here. We're 5 days, 10 days of recording sometimes across multiple weeks.

And we really want to make sure we're getting the right foundation and building upon that. We want to make sure that if something does come up, we're being consistent and we're taking notes and all these things. So, once that's all underway, I mean, we can get into the studio.

We can get into the fun stuff. We can get the talent in front of the microphone. I can get set up on my end, the desk, and get levels and really kind of experiment with how the talent's going to sound.

And I think, you know, you may have a question loaded up, Scott, later on in the interview. But I mean, I'll touch on it now briefly. But tips for, I guess, bringing to life a narrator.

I want to make sure that I'm getting the most of them. So, I'll ask my talent. I'll ask my author, my director, whoever's in the booth.

You know, can you give me a diverse kind of range? Can I have a real dynamic performance? Can I have, you know, is there any subtleties in the book?

Any kind of whispering lines? Any emotional lines? Give me the broad spectrum of it all.

And then I can kind of tailor everything towards that. So, I guess once that's all done and locked away, then we're ready to start recording the audio book. And it's not till then.

And it does take, it can take anywhere from, you know, five minutes to half an hour to truly just get everything ticked off and make sure that like, right, every time we step into the studio now, we are locked in, we are loaded, we are ready to go. And that way it's going to, you know, it's going to breed the best performance from the talent. It's going to take any worry out of their mind and allow them to really focus on their job, their job as an actor to perform or as an author to tell their story.

Because at the end of the day, this is storytelling. A lot of people forget that audio books, it's storytelling. And I guess, you know, you've done a good job when, you know, if a director as myself or maybe someone who's in the room or a listener can walk away and go, wow, I really got something from that.

They're not kind of scratching their head going like, oh, I kind of got that. I mean, I was kind of focused on the kind of the bird chirping in the background and I was distracted and, you know, the narration wasn't flowing and I kind of got lost in it all. You know, that's when we haven't done our job properly.

But if, you know, we can have listeners walk away with a full understanding of what they've just listened to or, you know, taking something away from it. That's how we know we've done our job. So, yeah.

And then I guess moving on into post-production from there, more work, I guess, finer detail, finer tuning is done there. You know, as a director, as an engineer in our studies, we're always told don't wait to post to fix it. You know, you never want to run yourself into the ground that far and really put yourself in trouble, not allowing yourself any room to work with in post-production.

So, yeah, the post-production for us at SquareSound is quite simple. I mean, it's really polishing and we're going in. We're using a whole bunch of different tools to clean up the audio to, you know, to enhance, I guess, the listening experience to make sure that nothing's going to be too problematic or too grating for a listener.

We're making sure that no matter where our listeners are, they can hear, you know, everything in the performance, whether they're, you know, on a train, plane, bus, car, walking, doing the guarding, have their headphones in, headphones out. We're making sure that, you know, it translates across all mediums. And, yeah, I guess, you know, any minor editing that needs to happen.

If there's been a misread that slipped through, we can usually make a pretty quick and seamless edit. Otherwise, yeah, as I said, we don't really like to leave that stuff for too late. We like to kind of catch that in the studio with our talent.

And that's pretty much the whole process from start to finish.

Scott

That's awesome. That's what a great overview. And I think particularly for people who haven't been in a recording studio and seen how things work from start to finish, that's going to be really enlightening.

I think a lot of people, you know, they may have some experience recording things on their own computer. And so they think it's a matter of just kind of clicking a button and the way you go. But there's a lot more to it than that.

You talked a little bit about adapting the manuscript for the listening experience. And at Grammar Factory, we do that. It can be time-consuming, right?

Describing graphics that otherwise would be shown to the reader, you know, giving pronunciation notes for the voice actor, if the author themselves are not narrating, et cetera, et cetera. It sounds like that's worth the effort in your opinion.

Keenan

Absolutely. Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's so much that can potentially be missed.

You know, if things aren't adapted properly, things can get missed. And that's information, you know, listeners aren't always reading along. And I think it's kind of cheating them out of the full kind of experience.

Maybe the author, you know, had all this extra information they wanted to provide. And whether it is, you know, information in charts, statistics, things like that. I mean, it's all part and parcel of the book.

So we want to make sure that we're delivering that. But I guess our job as directors with the team at SquareSounds, we want to make sure, and Scott, I'm sure you've done the same thing, obviously. Adapting, we want to make sure we're adapting it in the right way.

There'll be many ways to adapt things inside of the text and ways to bring it out. But we want to make sure that I guess it's free flowing and it really fits into the narration and it's not jarring. It's not like we're stopping it and reading, you know, a laundry list of items.

Sometimes it's easier, you know, you can drop information in, you know, throughout a paragraph. There might be instances where you can put in certain statistics at the end of it, you know, each sentence that things might work out a little bit better that way. So we have a little bit of flexibility.

We have room to move when we're doing these kinds of things. But ultimately, I think, again, it's like that start of the recording session. Taking that five minutes there and then to work out, okay, how is this going to work?

If it's a set of footnotes that occurs, you know, every third page of a book for 300 pages. Five minutes every single time to work those out, it's going to be quite time consuming. So maybe we spend 10 minutes, 15 minutes on that first footnote.

Okay, when these come up, we're going to put them at, you know, at a page break in between. We're going to slide them in or we're going to quickly take a look and if they're not worth anything, we're going to omit them. We're going to pick and choose and work our way through so that by the end of, you know, the book, we haven't wasted that much time in recording.

But we've also made sure that any bit of information that the authors wanted to put in there does translate and translates well. So it's seamless. The listener shouldn't notice that these adaptions have happened.

You know, I guess that's a tricky part of the job that I guess maybe not a lot of people know about. But yeah, it's super important.

Scott

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, all of our, I would say all of our listeners, or certainly our authors, were focused on, you know, expertise-based nonfiction books. For that genre especially, what are the pros and cons of having the author narrate their own book versus hiring a professional narrator?

You know, with my book, you know, that you can see behind me, our listeners won't be able to. I hired a professional narrator. You know, at the time, I wasn't comfortable with my own voice in audio.

So that was why I made that decision. But what are some of the things that you think about when you're advising people on whether or not to self-narrate?

Keenan

I guess it comes down to the person. Me particularly, I feel quite strongly about authors reading their own work. It's not for everyone.

That has to be said. It isn't for everyone. And yes, there can be a little bit of a problem if, you know, the confidence doesn't shine through with authors.

And it can be a lot of work on the editing end. It can be quite problematic. And it can be quite jarring for the listener, you know, if it isn't done well.

And if the director really isn't on side with the author coaching them through, and even in the pre-production phase, to really help them step in with confidence and really put their best foot forward. And, you know, because that confidence shows. You know, you can hear in a narration.

You can hear in anyone talking how they feel immediately there and then on the day. You can tell on certain days. Some people, you know, they might have had a bad run in the morning in traffic, and you can tell it shows.

They're flustered as soon as they start recording. They're very, very speedy. They've lost all the cadence and flow they had from the day before.

These are the kind of things that we deal with, with authors reading their own work. However, why I feel so strongly about authors reading their own work is the authenticity. You are not going to get that level of authenticity, especially around, you know, something that's so close to their heart.

Something they've potentially built, or they've taken the time to work out. Whether it is, you know, a business book or, you know, something relating to a topic that, you know, it's quite niche. You know, we have a pool of actors and actresses that are just fantastic.

And, you know, they can do anything. You know, they're so great. They can bring anything to life.

But at the end of the day, you know, there's going to be nuances and intricacies with the text and, you know, how they want things to be read. You know, you and I, Scott, we might look at one piece of text. We might read it completely differently because we've got a different idea of how it's kind of meant to be put out in the world.

And, you know, you'd hate to be an author and listen back to this recorded book from a narrator of yours and realize like, oh, I really wish they'd done it like this. I really wish, you know, oh, maybe think that could have been done like this. Equally, there may be that narrator actually brings a section to life that they thought maybe was a little bit boring or, you know, they couldn't do.

But I feel like every time I've worked with an author, I mean, taking that five minutes, half an hour at the start and really talking through and even the pre-production phase, building the confidence up, you know, allowing them to practice, allowing them to sit down with their book in hand and read and read confidently and not try and worry about mistakes, but focus on their performance and continually and being quite consistent with it, allowing them the time to do that when they step in. I mean, magic can happen.

I mean, I saw it recently with a client, with an author of ours, you know, walked in the first day, terrified, nervous, you know, constantly second guessing yourself. And then all it took for me was to, I guess, after our brief conversation was to play it back to her. Listen, this is it.

Continue this, you know, you just have to plant the seed in their mind that this is, you know, it's a great thing what they're doing. And one thing I was, I got told from an author early on in my career when we worked together, he'd written a series of kids books. And he said to me, I don't know why I'm here.

I said, well, yeah, why are you? Why did you choose to do it? And then he thought about it after a day or two and he came back to me.

So I know why I'm here. So why is that? He said, for my kids.

He's like, this is something I can also leave my family when I'm long gone. They have something to listen back to. So not only is it for, you know, further listeners and the broader community, but it's also it's something for them to have as well, which I think is quite important, too.

So, yeah, there's a there's a million reasons why, you know, authors should and why they shouldn't. But I think at the end of the day, I think authenticity is a big thing. Like I said before, Scott's storytelling.

At the end of the day, this is storytelling. Fans and, you know, readers and listeners of these people, they want to hear from these people. You know, it's I'm sure like, you know, my favorite, you know, musician or something was to put out a song and someone else was singing it.

I wouldn't be half as interested. I want to hear it from from that person. So, yeah, look, each to their own, I guess.

There's ways to go about and there's ways to find out whether an author is ready to record their book or not. But I feel for the most part, I feel like, yeah, authors should authors should really, you know, take the time, invest in and try and attempt to.

Scott

For those that do choose to to self-narrate, what are you know, we've we've talked about kind of the advance work around the manuscript and preparing, you know, making modifications, making adjustments to it. What are some preparation that the author should do? You know, whether it comes down to, you know, clothing they should be wearing, you know, should they be printing out a manuscript using an iPad, things like that?

And I guess also, you know, you talked about the amount of time that it can take. Let's assume a book or an audio book that might be, you know, maybe eight to 10 hours of finished audio. That sounds like a lot to do in one day.

How many sessions would would that typically break down into?

Keenan

Some people just have the talent to, I guess, push through and really get things done quickly. And others, you know, it takes them a little bit longer. But OK, we'll start with an eight to 10 hour book can be anywhere from, you know, double the time.

So let's say 20, 20 odd hours, two to one kind of ratio in the studio. And, you know, and that's for the most part. Not not everyone can kind of stick to that.

We have, you know, some, you know, seasoned narrators who can do it almost like for a one for one is fantastic. And there's also others who, you know, where that kind of blows out. And I mean, there's there's reasons for that.

There's it's I guess the text, you know, the text is the big dictator in all of this. How how easy is the text to digest? You know, if the text is well written, makes for a very, very seamless job in studio.

If the text is quite dense, intricate, has a lot of these kind of moments needed to to really focus on the performance and how it's going to come out and how the listener is going to absorb that information. It's going to take a little bit longer for an author. I guess the best thing they could do to to make their experience seamless.

And it's not not just for the director for the people in the studios for themselves to to allow them to focus on their performance and get the most out of themselves is to do all that pre-production work. It's it's not fun. You know, it's not glamorous, but that's what makes the glamorous product at the end of the day.

So understanding, you know, you've you've written the book. It's it's it's been out potentially or you know, you're fresh off the back of it. Pick the text back up go back through it.

I guess read through read through it aloud. It's very very easy to sight read and skim read and you know kind of mumble your way through it. To read it aloud say the words aloud enunciate, you know, use your diction really just on a pauses full stops exclamation marks read with that zest to really, you know, as if someone was in front of me, you know, Scott me reading to you.

I want to make sure that you're engaged in the performance. That's that's one big thing authors need to kind of understand. I guess prior to it could be very very confronting being in front of a microphone.

I don't know what what it is. Someone puts a microphone in front of your face and all of a sudden it's stage fright everything you had before just kind of goes out the window. If you're not if you've never been in front of a microphone before it just goes out the window.

So maybe it is a mock setup. Maybe it is, you know, even if it's just your laptop or your iPhone holding it close to your face and recording into it listening to yourself back understand, you know, how is the listener going to like are they going to let this do I sound too flat to should I try it? You know, it's kind of should I put you know, drink a ton of red cordial and then start recordings, you know, oh, that's that's way too much.

That's way too over the top. Maybe dial it back. So before they even got into the studio, they have an understanding of how they want to sound how they want to be heard there.

And that's the thing is a level of authenticity to I don't like to let authors get too far away from the usual self because I think you know off the cuff people speak naturally and that's how people know other people's voices. That's how they that's why I guess they gravitate towards and that's why you know, they know them for who they are. So we want to keep a little bit of that too.

But after I guess, you know testing out the mic on yourself or you know, or putting yourself in that that fake situation. It's going yet going through the text reading it over highlighting anything pronunciations. Is there anything in the text, you know adaption wise is there anything that's culturally irrelevant now are there certain things that have changed is there stats and statistics that you know have since been updated, you know, maybe highlight them write them out.

Make adaptions make notes notes are a huge thing a lot of our you know, narrators season narrators, you know, they walk in with with a few sheets of paper or on an iPad digitally written out to have notes on characters. They have bless her the I had a narrator who's also an author, but I guess she understands that she was a narrator for a different title, but she came in and she had a picture of all these Hollywood actors and actresses and she said this character is like Emma Watson. And this character is like Colin Firth and they were her point.

So as soon as the character came up in text, she'd glance she'd look at the picture to her left and she'd she'd kind of embody that character and the help with that will help with the performance. So it sounds crazy. It's small things like that that authors can do to really elevate their performance and help them, you know, run a lot smoother and a lot more efficient in the studio.

So I've had to you know, iPads are great because they make no noise that they're very quiet. You can digitally annotate you can you have a lot more screen space handwriting, you know, it can be quite sloppy sometimes when you're in the rush of things that's mitigated because it's all right there in front of you. So I would suggest that authors if you can it's not for everyone but iPads are a fantastic tool to use in the studio and and it's got me clothing.

Oh, you know, this is this is one of the most underrated things in the studio clothing, you know canvas shirts. Nah, they're a big they're a big no-no, especially for someone who likes to gesticulate and throw their arms about the brushing of canvas on canvas is so noisy and that can be really really distracting for the listener can be very very hard to remove in post-production the same goes for watches ticking watches. Very very early on in my career when I was still quite green and new to this.

I had a narrator come in with a watch on their wrist a ticking watch and they had their hands propped right next to the microphone and it wasn't till that first day of post-production was over that I realized tick tick tick in the background and our full rerecord picked up the first day again and we got a better performance, which is great. But also there's a there's a lesson, you know jewelry watches get rid of it comfy clothes comfy cotton clothes tracksuit pants, you know, it's you know recording the book sometimes isn't all that glamorous and you need to be comfortable to sit in a chair for four hours, you know or more. Wear your comfy clothes state, you know something that's breathable something that's light cool.

It's it's all about feeling good in the studio to you know, look good feel good. But also, you know feel comfortable perform. Well, so yeah, there's a lot of thing for things for us to take into account.

But yeah, that's it. That's a great point Scott is clothing that's that's outstanding advice.

Scott

Thank you for that. What what's the best way for people to get in touch with you and the SquareSound team if you know, they're interested in chatting about audiobooks interested in, you know, exploring one for their own book for sure.

Keenan

Yes studio at SquareSound.com.au that I you is the best place to get us equally our website checks out just jump on Google is SquareSound Studios. Yeah, and drop us a line. We're always kind of, you know, answering emails and responding to people even if it's just information about like, you know, there's a there's an inkling.

There's a thought about wanting to step, you know, step into that audio world and you know, translate I guess that text to you know, an auditory experience. I mean, that's what we're here to do. We're here to help.

So I'm yeah, feel free to drop us a line would be glad to help brilliant.

Scott

We'll put those links in the show notes Keenan. Thank you so much for being here personally. I'm a huge audiobook fan.

It's my preferred format for books. And so it's been incredibly interesting going behind the scenes with you. So thank you again for sharing your time and expertise with us Scott.

Keenan

Thank you so much man. Appreciate it and all the best for this year.

Scott

Thanks so much.

Keenan

Cheers Scott.

Scott

As we wrap up this episode of entrepreneur to author remember this now is the time, time to write time to publish and time to grow. I'm Scott MacMillan until next time.