How to Prepare Your Manuscript for Audiobook Narration
The smoothest audiobook sessions I run almost never start in the booth. They start a week or two earlier, when the author sends over a clean, final manuscript and a few pages of notes. The roughest ones usually start with "I'm still tweaking chapter nine." If you want your recording days to go well, the most useful thing you can do happens before anyone opens a mic. Here's how I'd prepare a manuscript for audiobook narration.
Lock the text before the first session
This is the big one. The audio should match the book. ACX, Amazon's audiobook marketplace, says on its own blog that audiobooks should match the text editions exactly. That means every edit you make after recording starts turns into a pickup: the narrator comes back, matches their earlier tone and pace, and rerecords the changed lines.
Before the first session:
Finish your final proofread and fold in any editor's changes.
Send one file, clearly named as the final version. Two or three "final_v2" files floating around is how the wrong text ends up in the booth.
If the print or ebook edition is already out, record from that exact text. If it isn't, tell your narrator and producer what might still change, so nobody is surprised later.
Small typos you catch along the way are fine. Just flag them so everyone works from the same corrected copy.
Decide what gets read aloud
A printed book has plenty of things that don't belong in the audio, and a few that need special handling. Go through the manuscript front to back and mark each part as read, skip, or adapt.
Usually read: the title page information (as part of the credits), dedication, epigraph, prologue, every chapter, epilogue, author's note and acknowledgments if you want them included.
Usually skipped: the table of contents, copyright page, index, and "also by this author" lists.
Needs a decision: footnotes and endnotes, tables, charts, image captions, sidebars, and anything that says "see page 42." Each of these needs a plan for how it should sound, or a rewrite that works for the ear.
Chapter titles and section headers matter too. ACX's submission requirements ask for the section header to be read at the top of each file, such as "Chapter 1" or "Prologue," and for the book to have opening and closing credits as separate files. Make sure every chapter heading in the manuscript is the one you want the listener to hear.
Build a pronunciation guide
Nothing slows a session down like stopping to figure out how a name is said. And nothing is more frustrating than discovering on chapter twenty that a character's name was said two different ways.
Give your narrator a simple list:
Character names, place names, and invented words, spelled out the way they should sound ("Aoife: EE-fa").
Real people, brands, and technical terms you want said a specific way.
Foreign words and phrases, with a note on whether you want them said natively or anglicized.
Your own name. Authors forget this one surprisingly often, and it's in the credits.
If you can, record a short voice memo of yourself saying the tricky ones. A ten-second clip beats any phonetic spelling.
Give the narrator character and tone notes
Your narrator will read the book before recording, but you know these people better than anyone. A page of notes helps a lot.
Who each main character is: age, where they're from, any accent, and how they sound in your head.
The overall tone: warm and conversational, tense and clipped, dry and funny.
Anything tricky in the story: a twist the voice shouldn't give away early, a character who's lying, a scene told from an unusual point of view.
Keep it short and practical. Notes like "older, gravelly, from Boston, speaks slowly" are far more useful than a full backstory.
Clean up the formatting
The person reading in the booth is reading off a screen or a page for hours. Make it easy on them.
Use a clear, readable font and comfortable line spacing.
Number the pages, and keep chapter breaks obvious.
Make dialogue attribution clear. If it's ever hard to tell who's speaking on the page, it'll be harder in the booth.
Remove leftover tracked changes and comments, or send a clean copy without them.
Mark anything with a special treatment, like a letter, a song lyric, a text message, or a flashback in italics, so the narrator can plan how to voice it.
Plan for pickups anyway
Even with a perfect manuscript, a few lines will need to be redone. A word gets misread, a noise slips through, or you hear a line and want a different emphasis. That's normal in every audiobook production I've ever done.
What keeps pickups to a minimum is everything above: locked text, a pronunciation guide, and clear notes. When you review the chapters, gather your notes into one list per chapter, with the exact line and what you'd like changed, rather than sending them one at a time. Your narrator can knock them all out in a single session and match the sound of the original recording.
A quick checklist before you send it
Final, proofread manuscript in one clearly named file
Read, skip, or adapt marked for every section
Chapter headings checked
Pronunciation guide, plus a voice memo for the tricky ones
One page of character and tone notes
Clean formatting with no leftover comments
Get those six things together and your recording days will be about performance, not detective work. That's when an audiobook really comes alive.
If you're getting ready to turn your book into audio, take a look at my audiobook production services. I'm happy to talk through your manuscript and what it needs before we record.
— Jim
If you'd like one-on-one help with your own mix, vocals or audiobook, you can book an online session with me.
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