So for those of you who might not be familiar with the process, after you record an audiobook (at home or in a studio) there will be pickups/corrections. Pretty much what you'd imagine. A list of problems to be fixed that you or you+ the engineer if it was a studio missed.

It could be that your stomach rumbled, or that you said 'it is' in stead of 'it's' or that a word was unclear or swallowed or you said 'from who' instead of 'from whom' OR you mispronounced someone's name every single time you said it. (You sort of hope it isn't that last one)

If you are working for home an email just pops up one day saying 'hey there are x number of corrections for book x'. And if I am honest you hope 'x' isn't too large a number. Both because it means more time working on a book that you had finished days/weeks/a month ago AND

Because lets face it human beings don't like to make mistakes. And audiobook producers don't like it when we make too many. More mistakes just means more time for the proofer, the editor, the narrator, etc.

So then you go back into the booth, which obviously needs to sound THE SAME so same settings on your pre-amp, same distance from the microphone, same 'room-tone' and you re-record. As well as matching technically you need to match the tone of the voice in the original recording.

So if it was a mistake in the middle of a speech by a character with a Guatemalan accent or a character who was a sentient rock (looking at you @catvalente) then you get to better remember how to be a Guatemalan/Sentient rock again for a line or two.

As to how much you have to re-record, it depends on the flow of the sentence. Sometimes you can just do a few words. Other times if comes in a passage with a lot of flow and without a decent non-breath breaks so you re-do the whole thing.

If your voice maybe sounded a little tired/deeper/brighter because you had had no sleep/just woke up/too much coffee well you need to match that or it will be jarring. All the more reason to avoid vocal differences like that as much as possible during the original recording.

Also - try not to make a DIFFERENT mistake when you are re-recording something to fix a mistake. As you will then be going about your business a few days/weeks later and suddenly get a (hopefully) cheery email asking you to fix the fix you already fixed.

And that's pretty much it. If you do it well, then hopefully the listener will be none the wiser, the audio will flow, everyone gets paid and everyone is happy!

It is an odd part of the process, particularly if the corrections come significantly after the finished recording & I have mentally removed that book from my RAM dumped it into the recycle bin so to speak. And then suddenly I am like, 'wait no, shit - undelete I need that!'

Also for me (I can't speak for other narrators, especially more experienced narrators with hundreds of books under their belt) there is a *slight* but constant anxiety regarding the *number* of corrections you are going to get back.

There isn't a magical number (I hope) where its like WELL WE ARE NEVER WORKING WITH HIM AGAIN but obviously its better not to have a bazillion. So I always sort of squint when I read the email like ....'c'mon lucky number not too many!'

I have done short fiction (like an hour) where I have had more come back than in a 7 hour book, which kind of throws you. Like did I do a great job on the 7 hour book? Or did I just do a really really terrible job on the 1 hour thing?

At the end of the day I will say this - having done some audio for podcasts and for ACX (Audible's independent audiobook creation marketplace) it is just wonderful to have another pair of ears listening to your work before it goes out into the big, bad world all alone.

Theeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeend.

(This thread brought to you by GUESS WHAT EMAIL I GOT AT 7pm)