Narrator
Why Human Audiobook Narration Still Beats AI
Jessie Elwyn shares her journey into audiobook narration, her favorite genres and tropes, what she has learned about the industry, and her thoughts on AI's impact on narrating, along with tips for aspiring narrators.
Episode notes
Jessie Elwyn is the romance name of a narrator with about 80 titles across her pen names. A former English teacher who once considered herself a literary snob, she found romance through fan fiction and began recording that for fun. She now narrates contemporary, fantasy, and sapphic romance, along with dark romance and omegaverse, and she keeps her names separate so that each kind of book has its own home.
She gives a clear picture of how narration works. Some projects mean working directly with an indie author, who helps shape the characters. Others come through a publisher, with far less back and forth. She explains the difference between solo and duet narration, why she enjoys voicing men, how she practices accents by interviewing herself in the car, and why a Canadian narrator has to train her vowels for American listeners.
For anyone starting out, she is practical. She recorded her first dozen or so books on a USB microphone in a fort made of old mattresses. The expensive part is learning the craft, so she recommends coaching and a community of fellow narrators. An early open audition for Penguin, chosen from more than 100, showed her she was doing something right. Throughout, she treats narration as acting: a love of books is necessary, but it isn't enough.
You don't want to do this job if you don't love books, but a love of books is not going to get you to where you need to be.
Jessie Elwyn
In this episode
- Becoming a narrator after teaching
- Working with indie authors and publishers
- Solo versus duet narration
- Equipment, coaching, and community for new narrators
- Accents and the American audiobook market
Books mentioned
- Them Bones by Alex Atkins
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