A few weeks back I reached out to a contact I had made at the North Carolina Writers Network who had said they knew somebody with a studio. As anybody reading this blog with regularity knows that a primary goal for my long-form writing project is to have an audiobook. Since this project is going to be more product oriented then it is promotions oriented, i.e. I’m creating products that I wish to sell, vs. a simple eBook on Amazon that I can use to promote consulting services, the quality of the product I’m generating must be high quality. In the world of audiobooks that means I need to record in a studio if I can in any, way, shape or form afford it.
Sadly because of the limited readership of this blog and my inability to really generate a strong following on social media I am limited in my potential customer base. Therefore I have to proceed as if this book is more of a vanity project then it is an actual self sustaining product. What I mean by vanity product is that I can not assume that I can put thousands of dollars into production and expect to see any of that investment return. I have to proceed as if I will not sell a single copy.Consequently my goal is was to find a studio that I can record a professional sounding recording yet still be affordable to a state employee supporting a family of five. Tall order, right?
Shockingly enough the lead turned out to be strong and I found exactly what I was looking for. Because I didn’t first get permission I won’t mention their name or the details here. I will say that this person was the quintessential professional. They had a passion for their work and we discussed things such as how to mic the session properly, appropriate volume levels, recording for both audible and CD distribution as well as tweaking the recording with bumper music and reverb. The conversation was refreshing and highly encouraging. This was primarily because the audiobook production went from a huge unknown to a part of this project that now has a plan if associated with it!
After we finished discussing the details of the recording session something very surprising happened. The engineer asked what my book was about and when I told him he became very excited. He was a Professional Individual Contributor who chose to step out of the rat race of the corporate world. He was excited about my subject matter and very much in agreement on some of my theories. He also found some of my research to be very interesting as well. It was a good and engaging conversation. If learning about the audiobook was the cake, this final part of our conversation was definitely the icing!
Over the years as a PIC I’ve had responsibility for several projects. As the I in PIC stands for individual, I could never just direct my staff as there generally wasn’t any staff. For a project to succeed, no matter if it was a big sales trip, a training presentation, or a job fair, I had to get buy-in and excitement from the other PIC’s who I had to work with. I don’t know if this experience is a precursor to others, or if it was a one off, but I have to say, it was a good shot in the arm to help ward away the mid-project doldrums.
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