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Voice Overs For Audiobooks

Our voice actors + your content =
captivated audience!

Why should we voice your book?

Pre-screened, professional narration

Voice Crafters only work with pre-screened, professional narrators with proven experience in long-form narration. No need to sift through hundreds of amateur demos. You’ll easily find the perfect voice talent to mesmerize your listeners – right here.

Quick turnaround time

You have deadlines and we want to meet them, so you can publish on time. Let our talent know your target date and they will do everything to deliver by then.

Voice overs in over 80 languages

Looking to localize your audiobook and reach a broader audience?
We offer professional narration in any language! Voice Crafters is your one-stop-shop for multilingual voice overs.

Broadcast-quality voice recordings

Our voice artists can self-produce pristine-sounding audio. Get custom-tailored auditions for your script to get an idea of the audio quality and delivery of each narrator before taking your pick.

Excellent customer support

Your success is our success, so we want to make your experience with us is as smooth and stress-free as possible, one project at a time. Contact us for support and we’ll do all that we can to make you a happy camper.

Voice Crafters is trusted by leading brands everywhere!

 

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Centrum Logo Proton Mail Logo Zespri Kiwifruit Logo
Teva Logo The Home Depot Logo Charter Logo
United Airlines Logo Goodwill Logo Staples Logo

Perhaps it’s a symptom of modern life, that we feel busier than ever and we like it when we can do two things at once to make the most of every moment, or perhaps it’s just a really neat idea that’s come of age.

Either way, voice overs for audiobooks have gone from a standing start (the blind-community market not withstanding) to a huge phenomenon in just a few years.
A good audiobook narrator can definitely serve as an antidote to the daily grind of commuting.

It doesn’t take every spare neuron in your brain to drive and it takes fewer to sit on a train or a plane.

These activities might be best characterized as ‘active waiting’, as they demand some but not all of your attention and they take a while.

With your brain in neutral, it’s natural to want to do something a bit more productive than just daydream.

Whatever the reasons, 2015 saw audiobook sales increase by 24%, and an additional 18.2% in 2016.

Edison Research produced a study that showed 24% of Americans listened to at least one audiobook during 2016, a rise of 22% over 2015, which is a lot of people.

Smartphone storage capacity has increased each year too, which must have helped to drive adoption because smartphones are the device of choice for audiobook listening among 29% of the audience.

Ever-increasing subscriptions and downloads from Audible have driven major publishers to meet demand, turning their top titles into audiobooks for a hungry readership. This explains why the APA (Association of American Publishers) said that the first 3 months of 2017 saw audio sales rise by 28.8%.

How it works?

Learn more

Step 1
Get Free Proposals
Post your project or choose voice actors to audition and send you proposals.
Step 2
Hire Talent
Hire the voice talent of your choice and fund the project.
Step 3
Review and Release Payment
Approve the recording and release your payment to the talent when happy.
Find Voice Actors or Post a Project

In case you think this is a passing trend, the industry does not see it that way, and is keen to look to the future.

Michele Cobb of APA said, “48% of frequent listeners are under the age of 35. If we capture them now, when they’re young and have a little bit more time and a few more dollars, we keep them listening for the rest of their lives.”

Although content is the driving force, publishers are drawing the listeners in with celebrity voices too.

Random House released George Saunders’s first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, with Susan Sarandon, Lena Dunham, David Sedaris, and Don Cheadle, amongst a cast of 166 others.
That must have been a pretty full studio!

It’s the professional narrators that still dominate audiobook voicing though, with talents like Scott Brick, Jim Dale and George Guidall still holding firm against television or film stars.

Many of us enjoyed the experience of being read to by our parents or teachers, and it’s still nice to be read to as an adult.

However it’s not just bedtime stories that draw people to audiobooks.

Writer Grant Cardone says that top CEOs read something like 60 books a year, mostly for self-improvement, and they consume the majority of those as audiobooks.

Although consumption of audiobooks has skyrocketed, production of them is just as much a labour of love as it ever was.

Just one hour of a finished audiobook can take 6 hours to create, with one hour spent pre-reading it to understand pronunciations and roughly 2 hours of that time used to record the text. Then you’d need to add another 3 hours of sound editing in the studio. And that’s how long it takes an experienced professional who knows how to get through the whole process as efficiently as possible.

A beginner is more likely to take forever!

Scott Brick has said that understanding pronunciations can take even longer when he has to narrate a science fiction novel.

Simply because many of the words are made up, they may never have been set out loud before, and no one but the author knows the correct way to say them. While working on Frank Herbert’s Dune series, he talked to Herbert’s son on the phone and recorded the conversations so that he could hear the words and write them down phonetically.

This produced a reference list of more than 1,800 words!

It should be clear by now that audiobook narration calls for a different set of skills to other commercial VoiceOver projects and even to other acting jobs too.

It is usually performed by actors who also specialize in dubbing and character voice overs, so it’s not something that even seasoned artists from other voice over areas can easily step into without training.

The voice alone has to bring a novel to life. The professional narrator knows how to sustain a reader’s interest for the whole of a typical 10-hour journey through the story.
They do this by altering their tone to fit various characters, and the highs and lows of different plot points. To that effect, we published a comprehensive article on what makes a great story-teller narrator.

Of course, there is non-fiction too, and it also demands the variety, breath control and stamina needed to keep a listener engaged from the first paragraph to the final period. Scott Brick unwittingly prepared for his trade by performing in a theater company touring Shakespeare.

He looks after his voice by drinking liters of water every day and not singing in the car anymore.

But he thinks that success as an audiobook narrator comes down to something else. He has friends who are great actors with great sounding voices who still can’t get a story quite right. “It’s an intangible thing; you know it when you hear it.”

Testimonials

Anat Kutner, Sunday Sky

Sunday Sky have been working with Voice Crafters since 2010. During all these years we have been getting the best service you can expect from a vendor. Our voice over requirements are more challenging than the average client, and voice crafters always rises to the occasion, in a professional, pleasant, organized manner. And you get all of this for a very fair price!

Andreas Seidler, MT.Recordings

We’ve been working with Voice Crafters since 2012 on various IVR, commercial and corporate projects. They have a huge database with excellent voice artists, are very professional and at fair rates. We are happy to know them and look forward to the next 5 years!

Audelia Boker, NICE

My team works with Voice Crafters on an on-going basis and it’s always a no-brainer experience! Professional. Fast. Flexible. Creative. Customer Centric. Good Value for money. What more can one ask for?!

Listen to audiobook voice over samples

Here’s a short excerpt from the book “Sharing the Wealth: My Story” by Alex Spanos. 

Read by David B.

David is an award-winning play by play announcer with over 15 years of professional voice over experience.

Excerpt from “Carrier War” by Stephen W. Sears.

Recorded by Scott F.

Scott is a veteran of the voice over industry and has recorded for Marvel Comics, eBay, Domino’s Pizza and many more!

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