GARY MASON

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Author Perspective

An authors perspective: Guest post from Phil Gabriel

Author Perspective, General

Welcome Back!

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This week, I’ve taken a bit of a break writing to bring you a post from my long time friend Phil, an author I was once stationed with in Southern Italy.  Back in the 90’s (which seem like yesterday to me but happened 25 years ago!) Phil and I hung out while we were on travel throughout the Middle East as we flew around fixing malfunctioning radar and weapon systems for the US Navy.

It was quite a time, but as all military assignments do, that one came to an end and we went our separate ways, we recently reconnected through Facebook.  Say what you will about Facebook, but the one thing it is awesome for is reconnecting with old friends and staying in touch.

One of the best parts of being on active duty in the Navy, well, any service really, are the people you meet and with whom you share some, well, “unique” experiences.  One of the things I’ve found, as I am sure anyone who served found, is that those shared experiences bring you together in a way other professions don’t, and even after not seeing one another for a couple decades, when you reconnect it’s like the years just slough off and you are right back where you were when you went your separate ways.   This was definitely true with Phil, and after a few exchanges “catching up”, we’ve managed to stay in touch through email.  For the record, we now live on opposite sides of the planet.

When we were in Italy Phil worked on radar systems, and I worked on weapon systems.  Sort of two sides of the same time.  He found targets, I shot them down. Ironically we work on two sides of the same coin again; Phil is now an author and I am a narrator.  Over time Phil has helped me understand the authors perspective on things, and hopefully I’ve given him insight into the narrators perspective.  I’ve asked Phil if he’d like to pen a short guest post for the blog, and the result is below!

Have a read, and take a look at his work, which he has linked to below.  I hope you enjoy this guest blog from my friend Phil Gabriel!

Hi Gary fans! This is Phil Gabriel, Gary’s author friend. It’s guest post day on Gary’s blog.

Gary has told me he had positive feedback on my last guest post. I was humbled, then puzzled. Aren’t all of Gary’s fans either Voice Actors or audiobook enthusiasts?

After chatting with Gary, it became obvious where the mental disconnect was. If you guessed between my ears, you’re right. There is a huge amount of overlap between readers, listeners and Voice Over enthusiasts.

Here’s a story about that overlap and how it helped me sell more audiobooks.

I have several pen names. I use them to keep the genres I write separate. Phil Gabriel writes slightly raunchy Urban Fantasy, B E Elmsworth writes thrillers, other names write different types of stories.

My most successful pen name writes Urban Fantasy in a series.

How successful? Well, I still have an everyday job, so it’s not that successful. But I have fans and a small subscriber list of about one thousand. My emails usually go out once a week. I try to make them entertaining and useful by chatting about writing, including snippets of current work, and alerting my subscribers about promos for other books. Even though I had produced audiobook versions of the first three books in the series, in my newsletters I always concentrated on books.

I never thought to push the audiobooks to my subscribers (aren’t they all readers?). But I was running out of ideas and needed a topic. Since the audiobook for volume three had recently been released, I emailed my list about all three books being available and provided purchase links. I didn’t expect much response from my small list, but I received more than twenty sales of my audiobooks. Those are the most audiobook sales I have ever had in one month.

I had made the mistake of ignoring the overlap between my readers and listeners. Just like I can contain multiple writing personalities, consumers can enjoy my stories in both written and spoken format.

Speaking of overlap, if you’re interested in slightly raunchy Urban Fantasy, my first-in-series book Mages in Manhattan, available on Amazon, is a great intro to my style.

Even better, if you subscribe to my newsletter, you can download a copy for free! Here’s the link:

Mages in Manhattan Subscription Offer

Thanks for taking the time to write this Phil, and thank YOU readers for giving it a read.  I think Phil is exactly right that there is significant overlap between readers, listeners and narrators.  Certainly between readers and listeners, but honestly we narrators are always looking for great books to produce in audio, and hey, WE LOVE TO READ TOO!  Believe it or not we also spend a good deal of time listening to other narrators and enjoying their style.  It really IS all tied together.

Thanks for reading!  Till next week!

If you enjoyed this, please leave a comment below to let me know.  If you DIDN’T enjoy it, well, I’d like to hear from you too!

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Guest Blog – Phil Gabriel: Six Things I Wish I Had Known Before Producing My First Audiobook

Author Perspective, General, Voice Over

Introducing; Phil Gabriel

As Phil mentions below, we have been friends since the mid-90’s when we were both living and working in Naples, Italy (I know, pretty lucky, right!?).  And, as often happens when working in or for the military, once our time in Naples was over we went our separate ways to our next assignments and even though we did correspond periodically at first, we lost touch; to be expected when people live on different sides of the world. Then, as fate would have it, and unbeknownst to one another, we BOTH gravitated toward a second career in publishing, Phil as an author and myself as a narrator for audio books (among other things).   Imagine my surprise when Phil reached out to me to see if I was interested in narrating his latest work after seeing one of my earlier blog posts!

Although I was not the right narrator (and knowing it is not a project you can do well is one of the skills a narrator needs to develop), I really loved the book; once Phil gets noticed he is going to be that “big name author” he mentions.   After exchanging several emails, and catching up on 25 years of not talking, I asked Phil if he’d mind writing a guest blog post from the author side of the narration fence.  He did, and the result is below.  Enjoy!

Welcome Phil!

Hi, I’m Phil Gabriel, a friend of Gary’s from way back. We both ended up in the publishing business (after several detours through war zones and government service); Gary on the audio production side and me on the writing side.

Finding the right narrator takes TIME

I recently reconnected with Gary while searching for a voice actor for my next audiobook project (insert shameless plug here—Mages in Manhattan). We exchanged multiple emails about the audiobook business, both finding out that the other had unique insights into the business. Gary asked me to write a guest post for his blog, and here we are.

Producing an Audio Book is like a second (or in my case, third) full time job!

What experience do I bring? I have written over a dozen novels under various pen names as I try to make a second career out of this writing gig. I have completed two audiobook projects, with a third in progress. This new project would be my fourth audiobook.

I have made almost every mistake you could imagine while producing those audiobooks. I have used both Findaway Voices and ACX as production platforms. I have used different voice actors for consecutive books; I have lost audio files; I have missed multiple deadlines. Despite these missteps, I got two audiobook projects completed, with a third coming out soon.

Here are some things I wish I had known before my first production.

  1. Writing the book was the easy part. Audiobooks take a long time to produce. I spent more time on production than it took to write my latest book. I had to listen to every minute of completed audio, with a notebook in hand, to catch any mistakes. This took hours and hours of time.Let me tell you a secret. Most writers hate hearing their work. I love my books and re-read them for pleasure. But hearing them is another matter. The multiple “he said” and “she said” tags that the eye skips in reading become insanely obvious and distracting when read. Reviewing my first audiobook was torture. I desperately wanted to re-write entire sections to eliminate extra voice tags and clumsy phrases. But that wouldn’t be fair to the narrator. She was reading the book as I wrote it. I gritted my teeth at the clumsy writing and approved her work.On the positive side, I revamped my writing style after hearing my first book. Now I seek to cut down on extra tags.
  2. Unless you’re a big-name author, no one will want to work on a Royalty Share.  Currently, I am a very low-level author, with monthly sales averaging less than $500.00. Why is that important? Because almost no voice actor would consider me for a royalty share deal. It would take years to make any money at my current sales. I wasted time posting my first project as a Royalty Share deal. Once I shifted to a straight PFH (Per Finished Hour) project, I received some great auditions.
  3. Short projects will not receive any auditions. I tried to post some of my short stories as audiobook projects. Surely, that would be a win-win; I would get a short story narrated I could use as a freebie for my newsletter subscribers, and a narrator would get a payday. Gary let me know that the economics of that scheme won’t work for a narrator. A narrator would have to take the risk of applying for the project, work up the audio sample, which in the case of a short story would be a large percentage of the project, and then wait for approval or rejection. Almost anybody would avoid that type of project in favor of ten- or twelve-hour books where the payoff is much higher.
  4. The perfect voice may not be the right narrator. Writers are strange. We spend an inordinate amount of time listening to the voices in our heads tell us stories. Each of these voices is unique, and when we find a narrator that sounds like our imaginary friend, we jump on that voice. In my case, I found the perfect voice for my protagonist. The narrator sounded just like I imagined my character. I hired this narrator for the first book. She brought my protagonist to life.However, when she read my male character’s dialog (the love interest of my protagonist), he sounded like an insufferable twit.
  5. The best audition sample for a book is not the first chapter. With Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature, an author only has a few moments to capture the reader’s attention. So, I spend a lot of time ensuring my books start with a bang to hook the readers. I cram a lot of action into the first few pages.A lot of action, but not much dialog. If I had submitted a different sample, one that included multiple characters, I would have had a much better idea of how the final product would sound.
  6. The sample should include any foreign characters and accents needed. This was a big error on my part. Sure, it’s easy to describe someone as having a heavy Glasgow accent, or to fire up Google Translate to throw in some Japanese phrases but finding someone who can handle that range of accents is a tough task.My latest project would be a nightmare; an American magician, his apprentice (the ghost of a Japanese schoolgirl), his Japanese girlfriend, a German werewolf, and the ghost of Elvis. That’s a lot to ask of any narrator.

Still, I hold hope that the narrator I need, the man with a four-octave range, pure Japanese and German accents, and a killer Elvis impression, is out there.

Thank you Phil!

I really enjoyed Phil’s insight into an author having his book produced into an audio book; it’s a perspective I wasn’t aware of and frankly never gave much thought to.  I’ve always known (or believed) that the author (or rights holder if it is not the author) for a book went through a process of “selection” versus “rejection” when listening to auditions, but it never really occurred to me that they were listening for the person they ALREADY HEARD in their head when writing/reading their books.  Knowing it for certain now certainly helps with the feelings of rejection when you get the “Concerning your audition for…” rejection emails from ACX.  Thanks Phil, I apprevciae your insight an taking the time out of your busy schedule to write this post for my blog!

If you’d like to read or listen to any of Phil’s work, you can find him on Amazon here:  Phil Gabriel on Amazon.

Thanks for reading, see you next week when I geek out on selecting and putting together a travel rig!

If you enjoyed this, please leave a comment below to let me know.  If you DIDN’T enjoy it, well, I’d like to hear from you too!

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