For last month’s podcast episode we had planned to include bits of an interview BookNet Canada Research Associate Shimona Hirchberg had with Jamie Dupras and Jeff Guillot from Deyan Audio but the conversation was so rich we decided to share the full interview in this month’s episode. Among other things, they talked about
the nitty-gritty of audiobook production and distribution;
audiobooks in languages other than English;
casting and working with diverse narrators; and
the Canadian audiobook market.
(Scroll down for a transcript of the conversation.)
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Further reading/listening
ACP symposium report Audiobooks: Building Capacity for Canadian Creation and Publishing
Fortune article: Chef Marcus Samuelsson Wants to Redefine Cookbooks Through Audiobooks
The example of an audiobook that provides incredible content that isn’t found in the print version and doesn’t require looking at accompanying PDFs: David Goggins’s audiobook Can’t Hurt Me
"How Do YOU Read?" study conducted by the National Network of Equitable Library Service
Transcript
Shimona Hirchberg: Hey there! Your host of this month’s episode of The BookNet Canada Podcast is Shimona Hirchberg. I use she/her pronouns. I'm the research associate at BookNet. I’m recording this in midtown Toronto, on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded land of the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat and Mississaugas of the New Credit territory. The land I’m quarantining on is part of the parcel of land collectively referred to as the Toronto Purchase, which applies to all land east of Brown’s Line to Woodbine Avenue and north towards Newmarket. This treaty allows non-Indigenous Canadians, like myself, to live on this land and use the resources. So, thank you to the stewards of this land. BookNet Canada endorses the calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and supports an ongoing shift from gatekeeping to space-making in the book industry. We hope that our work helps to create an environment that supports that shift.
For this month’s podcast, I have a fantastic conversation for you with two audiobook production professionals from Deyan Studio: Jamie Dupras, general manager, and Jeff Guillot, director of Global Business Development. Originally recorded in June for clips in last month’s podcast episode, our conversation was so rich we’re sharing it in full. We talk about the phases of audiobook production from pre-production to distribution, the role AI can play, why audio awards and bestseller lists are a great marketing method, the difference between podcasts and audiobooks, narrator diversity in experience, language, and identity, subscription services versus streaming for rights, mentorships, and so much more. Enjoy!
Hello, I'm Shimona from the BookNet Canada podcast. And with me today, I have Jamie and Jeff from Deyan Audio and we're going to dive right in talking about who our guests are and then more about audiobook production. So, starting with Jamie, tell me your name and pronoun, where you're calling in from, what you're grateful for today, and the longest audiobook you've listened to or worked on.
Jamie Dupras: All righty. Hello, everyone. My name is Jamie Dupras. I have been with Deyan Audio for 12 years now. I am calling in from Los Angeles where we are located. I am feeling great today. It's another great Monday. Good start to the week. Thank you for having us on, this is a perfect way to start the brand new week here. And so my role as the general manager is pretty much what it sounds like. It's kind of just overseeing a little bit of everything.
Jeff and myself were lucky enough to have worked in each step of audiobook production before we moved into any sort of management roles. So, you know, it really helps and gives us a really good perspective on all the different angles in production and understanding of all those different processes, to be able to assist all of our engineers in producing the best books that we can do.
Shimona: Awesome. Thank you, Jamie. And, Jeff.
Jeff Guillot: All right. My name is Jeff Guillot. I've been with Deyan Audio just over 11 years. You know, Jamie was here a little bit before me. I am also based in Los Angeles as our studios, our studios are in Tarzana and Northridge. And yeah, just like Jamie said, we both came in as editors and grew through the ranks of audiobook production, working in every phase, whether it be QC or directing, studio management, and then that opened things up to us as we saw more of the industry and more of the role of what we could do with the business, how we can help the business grow and whatnot. And it's been a fun ride for sure.
Shimona: What are you grateful for today?
Jeff: Life. I actually just wrapped up another year around the sun. June 13th was my birthday.
Shimona: Happy birthday.
Jeff: Thank you. I'm currently in the last year of my 30s and that's it. I'm just grateful to be alive and living life.
Shimona: Awesome. Tell me the longest audiobook you've listened to or worked on.
Jeff: Great question. I am in the middle of it, essentially. I started listening to The Extinction Cycle series, written by Nicholas Sansbury Smith and narrated by Bronson Pinchot. It's a seven-book series. And the whole thing, I know it's hitting at least 50 hours of audio, but I'm pretty sure it's touching on 70 hours of audio. It's been quite a journey. And, you know, it's like it says, extinction cycle. It's an end of the world sort of scenario that just goes on and on and on. But I think this is a special example that we find in audiobooks. Nicholas Sansbury Smith is a really, really talented writer. He gets you roped into the words, he gets you immersed in the story, and Bronson Pinchot is a fantastic narrator. And when you pair up like an amazing writer with an amazing narrator, it really creates a whole new dimension for the audiobook. And you find yourself cheering and being excited or crying or feeling that emotion, whatever the scene is calling for, the words and the narration are working together to really drive it home.
Shimona: Sounds amazing. And for people who like me may have very little knowledge of audiobook production, can you walk us through how those dimensions would…basically all the phases of audiobook production from start to finish?
Jeff: Absolutely. So, audiobook production starts with pre-production. You know, you can think of it comparable to any other entertainment industry productions in that sense. We're going to first take a look at the book and take care of casting. You want to get a feel for the kind of voice that the author is hearing in their head when they wrote the book. And you're going to get that feedback from them. Whether you're talking with the author directly, or you're going through a publisher, you want to understand what the client wants to hear. And then we work through, I mean, we have a huge network of narrators that we work with where we're roped in with over 3,500 narrators. And then it's just a matter of us taking a look at the script, you know, getting our own idea of the kind of voice that should be narrating that, pairing that up with the info we get from the production company or from the publisher or the author, and we put it through our database and we find the narrator.
Once casting is taken care of, or what's working for us, which may be a little unique to the industry or to some of our production peers, is that we'll actually do pronunciation research as we're doing casting. So, we have a team that goes through the script cover to cover, and they're flagging any words that might trip a narrator up. This could be names, locations. If we're talking sci-fi, it could be just completely fictional words. We work to find the correct pronunciations for these and that pronunciation guide will guide the production all the way through recording, which is essentially the next phase. And then it continues on through editing and post. But yeah, you know, we've talked a little bit about recording now and that's it. The narrator's coming into the studio, or maybe we're working remotely depending on the situation. But, you know, the narrator before they come in, their job is to prep the book. So, they're going to work out any character voices in advance. They're going to get familiar with the material so that when they come in, they're ready to sort of hit the ground talking, or running, however you want to phrase that.
And, you know, we'll have a director on the sessions where the director's job is to coach the performance, look out for any mistakes. You know, when you're sitting in a booth for, excuse me, six hours, and you're narrating out loud, your brain is going to do funny things to the words that are sitting in front of you. You're going to flip them around. You're going to omit them. You're going to add words. And the director is there to catch all of that there. They're going to make sure you're saying everything you need to say in the right order that you need to say it, they're going to coach the performance, make sure the emotion is getting hit, the emphasis is getting hit where it needs to get hit.
And that'll, you know, they'll work, the director will work with the narrator all the way through the recording, depending on how long the book is. You know, we have a little bit of math to figure out how long the audiobook is going to be. But you can think of it like this, professional narrators will work at a two to one ratio when they're recording, or around a two to one ratio. So, for every two hours in the booth, they're getting an hour of audio out. So, if you have a 10-hour book, that's going to take about 20 hours worth of studio time. If you have a 20-hour book, that's going to take about 40 hours worth of studio time. But yeah, once, you know, once the book is done recording, it's then going to move into post-production. And I'm going to hand this over to Jamie at this point and let him pick up with the post-production segment.
Jamie: Yes. Thank you, Jeff. Yeah, that's perfect. So, picking up with editing. So, well, really all of our post-production is running simultaneously all at the same time and right behind the reporting. So, for example, so the typical workflow, just for an example, to walk through it. So, let's say the first day of recording happens and at the end of that first day of recording, the audio and the annotated PDF that the director is making...so one thing, like during recording, the director is also annotating the script with dash marks for all of the puncheons. So, wherever a narrator made a mistake, we went back to the top of that sentence and started recording from that point. So, all of those are marked as edit points for our editors because we do need to edit those. Puncheons are not always as clean and exact science, so get access pops and things like that to clean up.
So, having the director annotate the scripts, with those dash marks and also just all sorts of different cues that we have for the editor that when they see those notes, they know what it means. So, the editor will receive the audio and the annotated scripts. And basically, we completely revamped our workflow, our post-production workflow at Deyan Audio last year. And this involved a lot of different moving parts but the end result is amazing to the point where it's, instead of being done like previously, the book wouldn't start being edited until the whole book was recorded. But now, we have completely changed that to where the book, you know, the edit starts right away as soon as they finish that first session. So, when they finish, they send it off to the editor and the editor gets going right away. And we're doing it chapter by chapter at this point now.
A faster way to get the editor to be able to edit and then move it into quality control. And by the time those two things are done on about, let's say half of the first day of recording or even all the way through the first day of recording, by the time they come in to record the second day, we'll have feedback for them. So, if there are any mistakes being made, any pronunciations that got missed, things like that, we're having our engineers give that feedback to our narrators and directors. So, let's say the editor gets the audio, they edit chapter one. So, one of the really incredible new technologies that we've implemented 100% into our workflow now for every single title that we touch, it's an AI service that is for quality control.
It has not replaced any humans. Nobody's lost their jobs. It is more of a tool, more of a production tool, is how we view it. It's pretty incredible. What you do is you just simply load up the PDF into the website and the edited audio that we get from that editor. So, we'll load up chapter one into the website and also the script is already there. And the name of it is Pozotron, by the way, shout out to Jake and Kostya. Those guys are amazing. What Pozotron will do is it scans the audio and reads the audio versus the script and will mark any mistakes that are made. So, essentially like any misreads, you know, they said this for that. And, you know, an automatic process. It, for example, if you were to upload around 2 to 3 hours of audio, Pozotron takes about 10, 15 minutes to process that audio, makes all of the notes automatically for you.
And then in this scenario, again with chapter one, so we've loaded it up into chapter one, Pozotron has already gone through and marked any notes that the computer, the AI system has found. And then we have our human, of course, QC or quality control engineer hop on the website Pozotron, and they start from the top. And so, they are doing their quality control job just as they normally would have before. There's no changes in how they're listening, the speed they're listening, what they're marking. Another incredible thing that Pozotron has done to make this possible is the quality of the audio that you upload to their website to listen to is actually the quality you're going to listen to, which is pretty uncommon. So, most sites that work this way, any hosting site that's hosting large files, especially audio or video, typically they compress them into the smallest, you know, file format possible and you lose quality there.
But that was one of the big things about, you know, quality control is we have to be able to hear all those background noises and little things, you know, that the editor needs to take out. So, we were able to work with them and they were able to get it to where if we upload, you know, the high-quality audio that we're actually working with when we're recording and editing and all the posts, that's the quality that we're going to be listening to on the website, which was a big game-changer. So now we were able to, at that point, really 100% do our quality control this way. And so, it's just a rinse and repeat from that point. As the editor finishes every chapter, they upload it to Pozotron, alert the QCer that the new chapter is up. And then the QCer then gets to work on that chapter.
And so, they're going through finding all their notes. Anything that Pozotron has found, they will designate those notes as either, you know, this is a pickup needs to be fixed or this one is okay as-is. And, you know, another great thing about them is they do have a global filter. So, if their system is picking up something as mispronounced but it's not, if it is correct, instead of individually having to click, you know, this doesn't need to be fixed a hundred times for the hundred times it comes up, first time that you click on something to not be fixed, it will automatically mark the rest of them as not-to-be-fixed, which is amazing. Big time saver. So, after quality control is done throughout that process, at the end result is quality control is done.
The whole book is edited, and we have a full list of all the mistakes that are in the book. At that point, the narrator will come back to the studio. And the whole point of that is for what we call a pickup session, where they will just simply record all of the sentences with the mistakes in them to correct them. And we record those in place in the session, you know, where they need to be in the audio over the old audio, essentially. And from there, it moves into the mastering stage. So, the mastering engineers, their first, I mean, their main job, of course, is to make the audio sound the best it possibly can no matter the source. You know, of course, we have our own studios and we're also working with a lot of narrators that have home studios.
That's a big thing here in the United States, and we're also working with a lot of, just recording studios really just around the country and around the world at this point. A lot of author narrations that are done outside of New York or LA, you know, they need somewhere to record. So, we're getting audio from lots of different places so that, you know, the engineers have to take, they're the mastering engineers, really have to take our time when we're getting stuff from anywhere else besides our studios to process it and analyze it and make it sound the best it can while also making sure that the audio is hitting all of the distribution specs. Because, of course, if we don't, if we make it sound amazing, that's awesome. But if we don't hit the specs, then the distributor's just going to kick it back and, you know, slow down that whole process.
So, those are the two most important things on the mastering side. And from there, what we do is, the typical workflow that we do but it's totally customizable as is our whole workflow with any of our clients, we'd like to build custom roadmaps essentially so the client can be...they can pick and choose their involvement. There are certain producers or platforms that require a certain amount of involvement. And most of the time, it's a bit too much for what a publisher can handle. So, we like to work with them on that, which leads into the last part. So once the mastering is done, from that point, the publisher has a choice to make. They can easily just have us send those masters to the distributor, whoever it may be for them. And it'll go up for sale and that's that, end of job.
But most of the standard, 99% of the time what happens is when we have those first versions of the master files ready, we send them to the publisher and they will do a review on their end. It's basically their last chance, you know, their chance to listen to the whole book start to end and make sure everything is good with them, good with the author. If they do find any mistakes or anything they want fixed for any reason, they'll make notes of all those things, send them over to us. At that point, we take all those notes, fix them, whether it's just with editing or if we have to get the narrator back in, whatever it may be. And then at that point, now we have what we call the V2, version two, and those are the final, final masters. Those are what's going to go out for distribution. So, those, you know, we send the copy, of course, to the publisher or the rights holder, whoever it may be, and the distributor. And from there, really just distribution takes over. And your book will, you know, is on its way for getting up for sale.
Shimona: Thank you for that overview. That was really fast. And I'm also impressed with how your workflow sounds. And also for our listeners, I'll add in a link to the Pozotron website to our show notes.
Jamie: Yeah. Awesome. They're great. Please do check them out. Anybody in production, it's a great tool to have.
Shimona: I liked how they could fix all the mistakes. They don't have to do the like find and like search next and then update each one individually. That sounds horrible.
Jamie: Yeah. Definitely. We got very lucky to meet them very early on when they were just starting. And, you know, we saw it as an opportunity to really get in early with someone that we believed in the technology. And we really did believe that this was something that was going to work, even though there were a lot of people that didn't. And we stuck it out, you know, we worked with them on a daily basis. So, with a shared Google Doc, exchanging notes back and forth. What's working, what's not, kind of like what we need, as in like Deyan Audio and kind of our process, but we also didn't want to make it specific, you know, to us, of course. This is Pozotron wasn't built for Deyan Audio, it was built for the whole industry. So, it was a nice mixture of kind of getting things done the way that we need them just in our workflow, but then also having the options for all different types of workflows, any different type of scenario. At this point, they pretty much have it covered which is pretty incredible. But yeah, definitely check them out. It's an exciting technology. It's only getting better. They now have a full-on, like Jeff was talking about the pronunciations, research, and the word list. They now have a tool on there to help with that. So, they're constantly expanding and just thinking of new ideas to help, you know, audiobook producers like ourselves.
Shimona: Let's dive more into the industry now. So, you talked a lot, you've talked a lot about production in general to your company, your workflows, and now let's move to audiobook production in Canada. So, tell me more about the general Canadian market.
Jamie: Cool. For sure. Great question. All right. So, it's interesting. There's a lot going on here. So, you know, we've been working with Canadian publishers for a couple of years now. They're, you know, it's a new market in Canada. It's definitely growing. It's really interesting. I went through a document that was sent to me from a symposium that the Association of Canadian Publishers had. And it was outlining, it was so interesting to me to read it because it was almost like a flashback to 10, 12 years ago in the US, kind of a state of the market and where we were. For example, couple of things that were covered in that review but also were very similar to us when we were, you know, trying to make this thing something real, overcoming, or countering the bias of listening to an audiobook is always something that publishers are struggling with to communicate that, you know, that stigma, that audio is somehow cheating or a lesser experience.
You know, I mean, everybody's different, everybody has a different way of taking in information and learning. But it's all the studies are really showing and proving, especially in young children, that audio is an extremely valuable learning tool. And the thing about audio that I think appeals to the adult consumers is that you're able to multitask. You know, it's not something that you necessarily have to just be sitting down and only listening to the audiobook. You know, a lot of people listen to their audiobooks while they're exercising, doing chores around the house, the dishes, laundry, whatnot, things like that. The other thing I thought was interesting, you know, the talent pool. This is something that, of course, we ran into in the US and it's still, you know, it's a constantly evolving thing.
As far as audiobook production is just so unique in all the different areas, the way that the recording is done, the way that post-production is done, the way that the actors are narrating books really is its own art form. So, it's hard to take in, let's just say someone from the music industry, who's been an amazing audio engineer in the music industry for 20 years, and to try to convert that person into an audiobook editor, an audiobook engineer, it's not as simple as, you know, the assumption might be. You know, just trying to basically unlearn everything you know and relearn it all, which is, it's just so interesting because, in theory, audiobooks should be what most people perceive to be a lot simpler. But they're actually extremely complicated to produce, believe it or not.
The talent pool too. So, like talent pool as far as the editors but really as far as the narrators as well. So, as in any developing market, you know, the resources just at the moment are a bit limited. You know, the actors, narrators definitely feel that they need some more training and, you know, clear standards and expectations. So, I think right now there's a lot of really just trying to lock down the process. I kind of think of it as last year for us how we completely reworked our in-house production workflow to be more efficient because we're just seeing all sorts of issues that we could fix. And I think that's kind of what the stage they're at now is, just evaluating things that they can improve upon and things they're having issues with.
And then coming up with the solutions, which is the best part, is that they are coming up with the solutions. And have laid out a great plan. So, you know, some of those that I liked a lot, one of them would be creating an audiobook bestseller list. That's an excellent idea. You know, getting that out to the media, promoting it, you know, just, I mean, of course essentially, any exposure, any media coverage you can get, the better. Creating an audiobook award show. That's a big one. That's really what has helped us in the US a lot. So, in the US we have what's called the Audie Awards. You know, it's the award show essentially in our industry, in the US.
And those events over the years, so I've been to past seven or eight, excuse me. Every year, they're just getting bigger, better. Now we're actually starting to get media coverage. There was a whole story on it run on "CBS News: the morning of when the award show took place, which is a big deal. And also having celebrities show up was a newer thing over the past couple of years. So, we've had some amazing hosts. I actually got to briefly meet Stephen King this past year at the audio awards. He was there getting his lifetime achievement award. He was there with his son, his son has an amazing story. And then afterwards, I was able to just shake his hand really quick and meet him. So, these award shows, I just think the mixture of media coverage and then getting just high profile names. It doesn't necessarily have to be like a TV celebrity, just a high profile author, like Stephen King or anything like that, just to draw interest and attention and get people excited.
The audiobook awards are definitely excellent idea. And the third, just because we're in the middle of it here is audiobook month. So, here in the US, June is audiobook month. It's a great, you know, every day for the whole month, all the publishers and everybody, you know, we're all just promoting what we do, getting the message out there. There's a lot of free promotions going on, a lot of really cool things that we're able to do to get attention, do nice promotions for the consumers and things like that. Yes, I think that would be another incredible thing for Canada. Yeah. So, just overall in Canada, I would say just after reviewing that, those are the things that stick out to me the most, for sure.
Shimona: Awesome. I'm going to also try then to add that the document that Jamie was talking about from ACP. It will be linked on our show notes as well. Can you talk a little bit about the preparation needs and equipment and any standards that publishers may or may not have in terms of the direction or cutting costs or just to have more efficient and effective production?
Jeff: Absolutely. You know, as far as the equipment goes, and when you're making audiobooks, you need professional equipment. This may apply more to narrators but this idea that you can just grab a USB mic and throw it in a laptop on your kitchen table and make an audiobook, and it's not going to work. It's not that easy. You do need somewhat, you know, you do need to get professional audio quality out. You're going to do that with a great mic and a great preamp and interface in a treated room. And the reason for all that is because you need to meet specs that are issued by the publishers and the distribution companies about the quality of audio. You know, we're talking about where the noise floor is at, or are there reflections coming in from narration? You've got to get the pro equipment to sort of meet all those standards that are issued by publishers and distributors. As for, you know, lowering expenses, everybody's after that. You know, we all want to save a dollar, there's no question about that. You know, whether you're an engineer coming up, a narrator getting into it, or, you know, somebody running a bajillion dollar publishing company, we're all trying to save a buck. But there are things that just cost and you got to lay that money out.
I don't know if I'm really answering that question very well, but it's an expense, it's an investment. You're making an investment when you get into audiobook production. Whichever angle you're coming into it from, you're making an investment. If you're an engineer, you're investing in your career and your future. If you're a narrator, you're investing in growing your career. And if you're a publisher, you're investing in the books that are going to go out and sell and make you money. So, I think it's important to understand that it's an investment you're making in whatever it is that you're doing.
And you don't necessarily want to cut corners there. It's worth it to get the quality out because the listener, in the end, is going to hear a lower quality and it's going to turn them away. And we don't want to use that to our listeners. We want our listeners to hear a great quality, get roped into the story, and go on and listen to lots and lots of audiobooks.
Shimona: Exactly.
Jamie: One thing that I'll add in there to just expand a little bit like Jeff is saying, is the quality is such an important thing in audiobooks. This is something very common that happens to us. When we're working with, or it doesn't really matter. Authors, narrators, producers that are doing their own book independently. And, you know, they already may have a podcast with a following and everything. And so, what'll happen is, you know, they'll tell us that they have a studio, you know, that they do their podcasts out of and that it's good to go, etc. And we have a policy where, you know, anything that's recording outside of our studios needs to get...the audio sample needs to get vetted and approved through multiple stages of testing. And what happens pretty frequently is most of the time, the podcast studios or the people that we're working with that, you know, do podcasts, they'll send us their sample.
And it is totally passable for podcast specs, what the podcast distributors and providers will accept as far as quality, and all the technical specs with it. In audiobooks, it's essentially just a lot higher of a standard. So, having just like Jeff said, having a USB microphone in podcasts, totally fine. There's nothing wrong with it at all. Works perfect. However, in audiobooks, it just simply won't meet the technical specs that are needed. So, just to kind of give a little background on that, comparing, you know, the podcast quality to audiobook quality and why there's a big difference there.
Shimona: Can you tell them more about the difference, the difference in specs?
Jamie: Yeah. So, it's all technical kind of stuff. Audio engineer, geeky kind of things, but really the way to put it — so, there's two main measurements, RMS and peak values. Also the noise floor. Those are, well, yeah, I'd say those are the three main specs that really need to be hit as far as, and those will be determined by your equipment. So, that's, you know, like the microphone and your interface and things like that will all determine those specs. So, the better quality equipment that you get, the of course better quality in those specs you're going to be able to meet.
Shimona: How come there's different...yeah. I'm wondering more, why is there a difference in quality and in all the technical specs between podcasts and audiobooks? Like sometimes podcasts are super long. So, what's the difference?
Jamie: So, I think the difference is, the big difference I think is with podcasts, you know, podcasts were started and intended and continued to be very much an independent, if you want to call it self-published, self-produced, type podcasts most of the time. Of course, there are like amazing podcast production companies out there. But, I mean, you know, take Joe Rogan, for example, like the largest podcast in the world. He simply started it in his bedroom. He was, you know, just was Skyping people in and things like that. And I think just where the industry started, the quality wasn't necessarily the selling point or the attractive part of podcasts, it's the content and the fact that you're able to now have these long-form conversations that you're not able to get on the news or on TV, really essentially, you know, with all their limits on the time, you know, their time restrictions and trying to get news out in 15 second, little segments, not really effective. So, I think it was just more the idea of that podcasts, it's not the quality that is the driving factor, it's the content. And that really, you know, and it makes perfect sense because what you want with podcasts is essentially anybody with any sort of following or anybody who just has an interest in it can start podcasting and see where it goes from there.
It's a lot less expensive, of course, you know, to get into that industry as far as the equipment that you need to buy and things like that. But yeah, I think that's really where it came from is podcasts are, you know, were started by just individuals who had this great idea and kind of built the industry on their own, collectively as a group though together throughout the years. Because, I mean, podcasts was starting in the early '90s, believe it or not. And with audiobooks, you know, it's more of a mainstream backed by large corporations and big publishers with money. And there's money, you know, to produce the books and there's money to be made once they're produced and the royalty payments are coming in. You know, so that whole factor as well, with podcasting more of an advertisement-based revenue and things like that.
Shimona: Let's talk a little bit about the narrator casting. I'm not sure how much you could speak to you specifically Canadian narrators, but in terms of, I guess North American English speaking book industry, what can you tell us about the demographics or diversity of Canadian narrators?
Jamie: Let me answer that question by introducing you to our Deyan Audio casting site, you can feel free to do a Google search for Deyan casting and it'll pop up. And what you're going to see is we're networked, I think I said this before, with over 3,500 narrators, excuse me. And you're able to filter that based on age, male or female, language, accent. It's not just like you're looking to list the 3,500 people clicking on samples. You can really dial into what it is that you want to hear. So, when we started working with the Canadian market, you know, we put out casting calls and we were introduced to a lot of Canadian narrators or Canadians that were interested in narrating. And you can find those on our casting site. We have, you know, we have some Canadian sections under women and under men. As far as Canadian narrators that come to mind, there's Susan Hanfield, Devin Servery, Sam Kwon, Glenda Morgan Brown, Joel Froomkin, Ryan Burke, and Stephen Mendel or Mendell.
I might be messing up his last name. I apologize. Those are some Canadian narrators that specifically I'm familiar with, you know, whether I've listened to their books or I've worked with them. It's growing, you know, it's growing in Canada and we're going to see more and more people that are coming from theatre or film or TV that are getting into this. It's a just a great thing that the people that are new to narration really seem to enjoy, enjoy it. As for diversity, that, you know, you'll see when you look at our casting site, we have an incredibly diverse casting site. We're constantly adding to it. We're constantly growing it. And that diversity ultimately is in response to the requests that come from our clients, be it publishers or authors. You know, that's ultimately, what's going to make the call. What point of view, who's voice is this that is telling the story? We got to find a narrator with that voice. So, that call for diversity ultimately is going to come from the authors really. And we're going to answer that call, all the production companies are going to answer that call. We, you know, we're going to find the voices that are needed to narrate these books.
Shimona: Is that similar to how audiobook production studios work? Like the casting is from the book studio, or is that publisher and/or both or different depending on the situation?
Jeff: All of those answers. Yes to all of that. Yes, there are times when we'll get a book from a publisher and it's very direct. The publisher is like, "Hey, here's the book, this is the narrator we want. This is when we want the masters." And there's other times where the publisher will ask us for an auditions but specifically mention the narrators they want auditions from. And then there's other times when the publisher comes to us and say, "Hey, here's a book, put together some auditions for us." And that's where, you know, Deyan Audio really gets to shine a light, you know, with such a diverse casting network. So, casting really, it can happen in all of those ways.
Shimona: How does it work for audiobooks that include other languages besides English?
Jeff: Yes. We have those narrators too. Last year, we did audiobooks in 17 different languages, which is just incredible. It's incredible. So, when we do get, we'll find ourselves in that situation, be it...Spanish is really our biggest thing outside of English, we've been working in Spanish for a long, long time. So, you know, we live in a great spot, LA, there's a lot of Spanish speakers in LA. So, that's pretty straightforward. But when we get more obscure requests, you know, we've done some work in German, some work in French, we've done some French Canadian stuff. We've even done Mandarin, we've done some Vietnamese stuff. We'll put out a casting call if we don't already have these narrators.
All of the 3,500 narrators on our site are going to get an email from us saying, "Hey, we're looking for this kind of voice. Do you know anybody like that?" We'll post on social media. We'll find the narrator that can handle any language and we'll build, you know, we'll bring them onto our casting site and we'll make a whole new spot for them. But having a narrator handling that language requirement is only half the battle, right? Because you need...the director needs to speak the language, the editing engineer needs to speak the language, the QCer needs to speak the language.
So, we're not just when we find ourselves in a situation like we have in the past, we're not just putting out a call for narrators but we're putting out a call for engineers. And there's some fun stories there, but yeah. Oh, sure, sure. Okay. So, we picked up a book that was, it was Mandarin. It was a Mandarin book. And we had a narrator. We found a narrator. I believe we already had the narrator in our network, but we didn't have an engineer. So, our first go-to when we're looking for engineers is to hit the recording schools in LA, or, you know, if we're doing stuff in Canada, we've hit some of the schools up in Canada that have recording programs.
And there's another great one out in Arizona, but we'll, you know, we'll put the job post up at those schools looking for engineers that can handle Mandarin in this case. And I got no responses, no responses at all. And then I tried some of the colleges around LA, and again, got no responses. And then I started calling churches. There's a really large Asian population throughout Los Angeles. So, churches are known for needing audio engineers to handle, you know, whatever is happening during the sermons. So, I call some churches looking for that specifically do their thing in Mandarin. And I'm asking if they have engineers. And there was one particular pastor that I spoke with that said yes, and sent three people to us that could perhaps work as engineers on this job.
And they show up and none of them had ever hit...they'd never touched ProTools before, we record with ProTools, we edit with ProTools. They were not sound engineers. So, you know, we all had a good laugh about that. Great people there, you know, we enjoyed having them there but it just didn't work. So now, you know, we've been sitting on this book maybe at this point for about a month and a half or two months, we have the narrator but we don't have the engineers. And I'm like, I'm just calling and calling and calling, trying to build this team. And sort of a last-ditch effort, I find a wedding company that can do weddings in Mandarin. So, I call and this lady answers the phone and I say, "Hey, I got a really weird question for you." And she's like, "Okay." And I'm like, "I work in audiobooks. And I need a Mandarin engineer. We have a book in Mandarin. I need an engineer that can help record it and take care of post-production. And I noticed you can do wedding services in Mandarin. And I wonder if you have an engineer that you work with that would be able to help us out?"
And she goes, "You're not going to believe this." And I'm like, "You're probably right." She goes, "I'm your person." And I'm like, "What do you mean? You're my person?" And she's like, "Well, I'm not your person, but I'm your person." And I'm like, "I don't really understand what you're saying to me, but let me hear it." So, it turns out that she used to work at a Mandarin radio station that was based in LA. They had a whole team of people that...it was a Mandarin radio station. That was it. So, she put me in contact with them and boom, we were able to find someone and get this book done.
Shimona: I want to highlight a few things in that story. We hear, especially now with anti-racism efforts, like you had a problem with a language and a gap in like your existing marketing efforts. And it just shows if you want to put out a book or another product, sometimes you have to go to where those people are and be creative in terms of finding those people and not just assuming that they're going to come to you. So I like how, like where you were trying to find an engineer who spoke Mandarin, because it just emphasizes how much sometimes we have to, if we don't already have certain demographics in our existing communities, we do have to make the effort to go and find them where they are. So, thank you for sharing that story.
Jeff: You're welcome. And I absolutely agree with you. That's what it's all about. You know, why I love people. I love meeting new people and having new experiences and that sentiment is really echoed by my teammate at Deyan Audio. So, we're happy to do whatever it is we can do just to meet people. And, you know, we'll go and knock on all the doors, just for a hug and a handshake.
Shimona: And sometimes it does take time, like you said, and you were looking for more than a month.
Jeff: Yeah,
Jamie: Oh yeah. And this is a good segue. I could talk a little bit about what Deyan Audio has done in Canada. It's kind of similar in a way. So, you know, with the industry starting up in Canada, so we've had a long-established relationship with Penguin Random House in the US. And so, we started working with Penguin Random House Canada when they first opened up and, you know, we've been working with them ever since, that was our first client in Canada. And as we started working and really understanding the market and especially, you know, how the funding is being done and things like that, what ended up...essentially what we need to do as a unit, a company that's in the United States. So, with all of the productions that are being done in Canada that are being funded by grant money, the productions need to stay in Canada, as in the people who are working on those jobs need to be Canadian citizens, which makes perfect sense.
So what we did, Jeff briefly talked about this. Part of what Jeff did is reaching out to all the audio engineering schools in Canada. So we had this idea, like that's the situation, essentially, it's the publishers need to keep the work with Canadian citizens but the issue then and still currently now that is just simply that there's nobody, not a lot of people with experience in audiobook production living in Canada currently. Because it's, you know, it's a new market over there. So, we devised the plan with Penguin Random House and a few others, ECW Press, few others to where we would help and essentially build a team of Canadian engineers and through Jeff and others reaching out to these schools, and then we would hold interviews on the phone at first with the audio engineers.
And then we went ahead and made a series of videos to remotely train them. Because that was another obstacle to figure out is, you know, how do we train people remotely when we're used to training them in person? So, our trainer came up with this amazing series of videos and tests that go along with those videos for the engineers, you know, to train with essentially. And so, that's what we've done is we've built up a roster now of more than 20 Canadian engineers that are in Canada. One of them was actually so good that we pulled her onto our management team. We were just like, "Yeah, she's amazing. We need her on management." And so, it's been a big help. So, anything that Penguin Random House Canada, ECW, or any of these guys give us, we are always assigning the...all the work that's being done on our end is being done by a Canadian engineer that lives in Canada.
And we have to submit those names and everything when we're turning in the job, you know, just to make sure that everything's all good and we're meeting the regulations that needs to be met. And so, the long-term goal here, just as an overall, for the overall industry, is what we're trying to do is build up these engineers to what they're best at, within audiobook production. So, some of the engineers might serve better as a director during the recording stage. Some of them are better at simply just editing. Some are better at quality control. So, really just finding where they really fit. And then also the long-term goal would be once we have that kind of sectioned out or differentiated, the directors that we end up training will be then sent, you know, we'll have them sent into the studios, recording with the publishers to, you know, collaborate and show them how they've been trained and essentially how the United States is making audiobooks compared to how they are.
And we can compare and contrast and learn things from each other. You know, it's a better both of our industries and workflows. So, it's really, Debra Deyan, the owner of Deyan Audio has done a great job of building these relationships and coming up with this plan for the future, as far as the engineering because it really was a big issue that they were just stumped on, you know, really having problems trying to find those people. So, that's, you know, a large part of our future plans is to just keep expanding. We're also meeting narrators, requesting to meet with narrators. There's narrators in Canada now that are starting to build home studios, which is super encouraging. Actually in great quality too, yeah. So, we are definitely playing a role, as large a role as we possibly can in helping develop this market to give it, you know, the professionals that it needs to produce these books, you know, in the quality, in the way that they should be done, you know, properly represented.
Shimona: That's wonderful. I'm going to start to wrap up our conversation and I want to know the three things that you want specific groups to know. So, I'm going to start with future audiobook narrators. So, what do you want future audiobook narrators to know?
Jeff: Yes, this is not easy work. The technical aspects of jumping into this career, there's going to be a price there, you know. It's not cheap and you should understand going into this, that you're going to, I mentioned before, you're going to have to make an investment in yourself to make sure you can put good quality out. In addition, narration itself is not, it takes incredible focus and concentration. There's sort of a running joke in the industry where we say to new narrators, if you think you want to be an audiobook narrator, sit in your closet and read out loud for six hours a day for a week or two. And if you enjoy it, sure, keep going, learn how to be a narrator.
But another thing that narrator should do with that is, take a class. You know, we have another segment of our company called Deyan Institute. There are other narrators and companies that offer and are specifically audiobook narration classes. And again, make that investment in yourself as a narrator. Get the equipment, but learn how to do it because it's very different from working in a theatre setting or on film or on TV where you have a supporting cast. You're going to be in that booth for, you know, four hours, five hours, six hours. And you're responsible for all of those characters. You're responsible for all of that emotion. You have to keep your energy up. And of course, the director is going to work with you and coach you but it's very different. You feed off of your own energy as opposed to feeding off the energy of your castmates.
And lastly, I think it's important for narrators to really be comfortable with technology, understand how, you know, this is going to sound silly, but understand how a computer works, understand what an FTP is or how to use other file transfer sites. Be comfortable with those things but also stay ahead of the curve or at least stay at the leading edge of the curve. There is so much change happening now with the software that's coming out, with the way things are being done. You don't want to fall behind. You want to be right there. You want to be paving the way, come in full force and keep working to not just make yourself a better narrator, but to lift this industry up. We all have to work together to keep pushing this industry forward. There's a lot of new and exciting things around the corner.
Shimona: Thank you, Jeff. I'm wondering in terms of the training and preparation, is there a difference between the fiction and nonfiction audiobooks?
Jeff: Absolutely. So, with fiction books, character voices are going to be a key thing. Now, all narrators are going to be able to do a little bit more or a little bit less with the character voice. You know, in other words, not all characters need to sound like a dragon, a talking dragon that's breathing fire. There are narrators that can really hit that voice, and there's other narrators where maybe they're just going to go a little bit down or maybe they're just going to bring in a little bit up and there's not too much variation. But the important thing is that you are comfortable tweaking your voice to create a voice for the characters when you're working in fiction. When you're working in a non-fiction, generally speaking, we won't do voices. Now, there's always an exception to the rule, right? So, if we're working in non-fiction and somebody famous is being quoted, a client may want that voice to be mimicked. But usually, we just won't do it. It's more of a straight when you're doing non-fiction, you still, you know, you still have to keep your energy up and tell that it keeps your listener engaged, but you also don't have to keep track of 30 or 40 different characters while you're doing it.
Shimona: And in terms of the training again, so, is there a difference between audiobook, narration, and voice-over work?
Jeff: Yes. As far as the training, I'm not sure that there would be too much of a difference in training, but the way that the work is done is going to be different. So, in other words, you might go in to record a 30 second VO spot and you're going to record a ridiculous number of takes in order get it right for the producer that you're working with. And they'll just have you go again and go again and go again and go again. As audiobooks are much longer than 30 seconds, we don't have the time to do that with each sentence. So, you have to voice that audiobook as a narrator confidently. And, of course, you know, it doesn't mean you're never going to make a mistake, but we don't have the time to invest 30 takes per sentence or 100 takes per paragraph or something along those lines. So, the audiobook narration, even though it's a longer thing, it's a little bit more streamlined than some of the other VO spots that you might do, whether you're doing commercials or you're doing cartoon work or video game work.
Jamie: Another one would be like, I mean, there are a couple audiobook production, well, audiobook publishers, essentially that put out audiobooks, that do their own productions. And they do what's called a roll record, which is almost like what Jeff is saying. So, where the engine, you know, at the beginning of the session, you hit the record button and you don't stop the recording, you just record everything. So, all of the mistakes, all of the extra takes, you know, it took them three times to get a sentence correct, all three of those will be in the audio. The majority of audiobook production is done or recording is done in what's called a punch record. So, in punch record is when, you know, when the narrator makes a mistake, instead of just letting the recording keep going and then have them just start whenever they're ready, the engineer will stop the recording, go back to the beginning of that sentence and then start the recording again from that point.
So, for the actor, it's a completely different workflow for the recording that they're just, you know, in compared to a VO spot or it's film or television. So, where it's just kind of an open roll record and they're able to just keep going and going and going without any interruptions without stopping. Whereas in audiobooks, we are stopping them and having them go back to beginning of sentences and things like that. And also, you know, within that, the narrator, when they're getting ready to record that sentence that they just made a mistake on, they're getting what's called pre-roll. So, they're hearing in their headphones, the end of that previous sentence so that they can get the timing and cadence and know when you've come in with the next sentence. Whereas with a roll record, you're not going to hear any lead-in whatsoever because it's just recording. So, that's another pretty, like big difference as far as the way that it's recorded that takes some adjustments sometimes for narrators.
Shimona: Okay. Now, I think that's really good for future audiobook narrators to know, I hope. Everyone listening who wants to be an audiobook narrator has listened and taken notes. So, moving on to the next group, what do you want publishers to know?
Jamie: Yeah. Oops, sorry. Good question. I would say three quick things that come to mind. First of all, don't be scared to experiment. There's, just in the 12 years I've been doing this, there's been so many times where when we're given the opportunity, we have a unique book and we have an opportunity to do some experiments with it and try some new things and have some fun with it, there's just a lot of unique things that end up happening. A lot of those unique ideas that we originally have when we start working on them, let's say with, I don't know, sound effects or some sort of sound design. And as the project evolves, those elements of it will also evolve and change too, which I always find interesting that you kind of have this blueprint and this plan of the production, how it's going to go. But then as it starts happening and as you start listening to it and the publishers listening, you start to get different ideas.
So, I mean, experimentation can only spawn other ideas, you know, that come with it. So, I think experimentation's super important. Jeff touched on this a little bit earlier, but I'll just echo that statement of embracing the new technology that's coming. It is coming, just a matter of when, you know. So being ahead of the curve, just like Jeff said, just embrace it. Because I just think it's inevitable it's going to happen. Also be, another thing that I find interesting and I'm following closely is, and following what publishers are doing here is the sales model essentially for audiobooks. Most of it right now it's like a subscription service where you get essentially one audiobook a month. But as we all know, most services, entertainment services that are similar are on a streaming unlimited type of service, like a Netflix, for example.
So, think of like a Netflix for audiobooks. Spotify, I believe is doing it that way. You know, where instead of like on Audible where it's, you know, you pay your monthly fee and you get one book every month and then you can purchase other books at full retail price after that. But it will be interesting to see what ends up happening with the streaming model and who really takes the big first leap there and how the finances will work with that for royalty splits and whatnot. And lastly for publishers, let's say, to just do, you know, when you're first getting in, if you're first learning about audiobooks, it can be a bit overwhelming. There's a lot of different options that you have as far as productions, different ways you can do productions, different financial agreements, all sorts. There's a lot of different things that go into it.
So, really just doing your research and knowing which type of production works best for your company, whether it's essentially, you know, the long-term game of the short term game. Like you could sell the rights, sell the audio rights, and that's the short term game. You sell the audio rights, you get paid for it right then and there, boom, there's your cash, or play the long-term game and instead invest in it. So, instead of selling those rights, you hold onto them and hire a producer, hopefully Deyan Audio, to produce your audiobook for you. You hold onto all the rights, we're just producing it and then we also can help you get it distributed. And we have some amazing distribution partners, some really unique deals for royalty splits. And yeah, just really knowing what your options are and what works best for your company, you know, is it the long-term game, the short term game?
Do you need that money? When you're selling your rights to keep the cash flow going and keep things operating, then great. You probably shouldn't mess with that. If you're able to experiment with one or two books and say, "You know what? Let's hold on to, you know, this is our, what we project to be our bestseller next summer. Let's just hold on to these rights, produce it ourselves and, you know, do one, put it on the market and see how it does and go from, you know, and then just go from there."
Shimona: I think it's also interesting to note that I think, so BookNet Canada, we put out every other year our State of Publishing in Canada. And we're working on the current 2019 edition. But I'm pretty sure two years ago, most Canadian publishers had audio production outsourced to a third party. So, I'm wondering now, this conversation about whether you want it to be a long-term investment and hold onto the rights, I think that's important for publishers to know. I'm thinking about especially what you said earlier about how you've worked with Canadian publishers before. And you've, you know, searched out for Canadian engineers because you have to have a specific number of Canadian citizens working on audiobooks. So, I think that's important for publishers to know if they hadn't already that their studios that will put out that effort and that there's Canadians who are trained or want to be trained as audiobook narrators and as engineers and all the levels of audiobook production. So, it's not just only people in US have this, or, oh, it's so expensive. Like there's people and studios available in Canada also in the US who could work on that. And make sure it's still Canadian content or Canadian people working on the production side or Canadian authors and all that.
Jamie: Yeah, absolutely. You know, that's really, the goal is you want, you know, authenticity is number one as far it, and really, of course, casting, you know, comes to mind first when you think of that. But really just everything across the board. Kind of like how Jeff was explaining what we do with our language teams. You know, we take that same concept when we are working in a new country. Even if that country's main language is English, we're still approaching it the same way whether or not we are required to have engineers that are located in that country, like we are with Canada. But there are other countries where that's not the case that we're working in. But that doesn't mean that like, for example, Germany, doesn't mean that we don't have and are not seeking out German engineers that live in Germany.
Shimona: So, let's move on to readers. What do you want readers to know?
Jeff: Yeah, I'll take this one. The readers, right? Readers moving towards audiobooks, I have sort of a personal story there for myself that I think people might find interesting. I worked in audiobook production for eight years before I listened to an audiobook that I wasn't paid to listen to. That might sound a little crazy but it is what it is. And once I started listening, even though I had been working in it for eight years, it really opened a whole new world for me. What I personally like with listening to an audiobook, when I'm not being paid to listen to an audiobook, is that I'm able to do other things while I'm listening to it. So, if I sit down and read a book, that's it, like I am sitting down and reading a book and, you know, maybe sipping a drink or something, but that's it.
I can listen to an audiobook while I vacuum, while I do the dishes, while I go out for a run, while I drive or commute. So, I think that that's really one of the exciting things about audiobooks versus print books that you're really able to get a lot done while you're still listening to an audiobook and you're still taking in an audiobook. It's not cheating. You're still reading. You're still getting that story into you and you're still going to enjoy it, or maybe not. You know, maybe it's not a good audiobook and you're not going to enjoy it. Let's hope that's not the case. And it creates something different, you know. I think people, when we're babies, our parents are reading books to us and when we're in school in the early years, our teachers read books to us. We as people like having someone tell us a story, even though we might not necessarily realize it until it happens a couple of times as adults. But I think if we can get some print people to take that jump and give it a chance, they're going to find that they really do enjoy hearing a narrator tell them a story.
Jamie: Yeah, I agree. A hundred percent. And one of the things also that's super interesting and really cool to follow and watch it unfold over the past few years, you know, with what's come with the technology of, for example, like smart speakers like the Amazon, let's call it the Alexa, those types of things, there are a lot of books that traditionally made no sense whatsoever for audio that are now able to be created in audio. And not only that can be created as sort of an additional or completely different product from the print version. So, you're essentially creating two different products from the same book. And especially in the cases where if it's a celebrity type author or someone who's well known with a large following, most likely if they're...the studies have shown they're going to buy both formats more so when that audio version varies from the print, usually some sort of extra content or something that's just not in the print version.
For example, just a couple of quick examples. So, business and self-help books are big ones, with all the charts and graphs and images and things like that, just traditionally, people stayed away from those. There's multiple different ways to make those work now, whether it's including a PDF that comes with the audio when you purchase it that has the visuals of the charts and graphs. We have a service that we work with where they do image rewrites. So, just script image descriptions. So, what they do is they'll take that chart or graph or whatever it may be and rewrite it into text paragraph form. So, then it is the narrated in the audiobook in a way that makes sense as if you were looking at it. And then in those scenarios, you don't need to have a PDF with the visuals because the last thing we want is someone on their commute get into a point of book where they're supposed to be looking at a chart and then trying to pull that up, you know, while they're driving or something like that. You know, so yeah, like those types of things are really, really interesting and they're becoming more interactive. There's cookbooks, that's another one.
There's this amazing production. Chef Marcus Samuelsson, he has this audiobook that's phenomenal. He essentially walks you through Brooklyn and the whole time, it really feels like you're walking with him. They got, you know, the whole sound effects and ambience to the city. Even his footsteps as he's walking on the concrete, telling you the story about the ingredients in the recipe, which you're about to then cook with him. So, he'll like tell you the story as he's walking through the city. Then he gets into the kitchen and they start cooking it and you're doing it with them. And now with the home speaker things, when they get to like the ingredients part, if you missed one of the ingredients, however many eggs it was, you're able to now just simply say, "Hey, Alexa, how many eggs was that in this?" You know, and then she'll tell you right away instead of having to like rewind and try to figure out where that spot is. So, interactive stuff is super cool. There's, in all those formats, graphic novels, comic books are all being done now as audio productions, lots of sound effects, sound design. So, there's a lot of really cool things happening just that people might just not know exist in audio, you know, because just before they traditionally did not.
Shimona: I also want to emphasize how this is different than ebooks being read, especially for accessibility purposes, because there's all these different additions, like the sound effects and expanding all texts in terms of like the graphs and like cookbooks and all these different areas and graphic novels where it expands opportunities and options for people. And I also want to just note that BookNet Canada audiobook use in Canada from early 2020 is on our website. And we talk a lot about subscription services and how people...how audiobook listeners like or don't like sound effects and different types of narrators in all subjects. And our last question in terms of what we want these groups to know, what do you want audiobook listeners to know?
Jamie: I mean, I would just kind of expand on what I just previously said. Like just explore, maybe explore and listen to some genres of books that you might not have purchased the print version. There's a thing about audio, it's so interesting. It brings a different life and a different experience to the same book. And, you know, and you might end up falling in love with the way that the audiobook is done or the narrator. And that's something that's common is like, once you find the voices that you like in the narrators that you like, these narratives, actually, they like in the US, they have a large, large following. And it's super important when it, for the publisher, of course, or the author when it comes to the casting decision, you know, looking into that, like which narrators have followings because there are listeners that simply purchase books based on the narrator, not even what the book is about or who the author is. They're just looking for that narrator's voice, which I think is really cool and just shows you how talented these people are. So yeah, just those, yeah. I would say just experiment, look into things you might not have been interested in before and see if the audio version brings you a different experience that might change your mind.
Jeff: Yeah. Also, you know, something that can be cool for listeners is that a lot of the narrators that are working in audiobooks are still accessible. So, if you're listening to them, you can connect with them on social media. Most of them will be open to that. They, you know, I would imagine most of them would be open to that. They'd love to hear, you know, what you thought of the narration, if you enjoyed it, anything like that. So, you can take it a step further sometimes and actually have a bit of an exchange with one of the narrators that narrated a book you liked. Another example of books that sort of bring in another dimension that I...there's a book that I just absolutely love. And I think it was incredible. The David Goggins book Can't Hurt Me. It was really unique in the sense that he came into our studios and there was a narrator. But at the end of each chapter, Goggins would expand on the information in the chapter. So that's information you only get in the audiobook versus, you know, if you just bought the print book.
Shimona: Tell me about your vision for the future in audiobook production. What does that look like?
Jeff: I think I'll catch a little flack for this, but I think we're going to see AI carving out more of the space. And I think it's important for the industry not to shut the door on the AI but to figure out how we can work it, how we can work with AI to create more atmosphere for the listener, to rope them into the story, to get better quality. I think that's the biggest thing that's coming up. AI is making some really incredible steps, specifically in the audiobook industry.
Jamie: Yeah, I agree. I agree 100%. It opens a lot of doors for just things that aren't necessarily possible right now. I mean, just for example, like there's those custom-like personalized books, right? For children, for example, really are only done in print. So, you know, if there was an AI voice that was doing some sort of children's book where you could insert, you know, the child's name as the main character and they become the main character in this book and have that in the audio version, I mean, you know, if we were to do that with an actor, yeah. It means, imagine the actor would have to record every name, known to man, you know, so we're able to make that product for everybody. But with an AI voice, something like that, it's done in a second, you know, so, I mean, that's just one random example, but there's, I agree with Jeff that it is coming, it's inevitable. It's going to happen, just a matter of when. And I have the same stance as Jeff that I prefer to embrace it and be ahead or on top of it so that when it arrives, we're already in that space. We already know what we're doing. You know, being the leader in all of these new fronts of technology is really one of our goals so that when it hits mainstream, you know, we're already well versed and know what we're doing.
Shimona: Tell me more about the role that mentorships and internships play both in how you got to where you are and also how you are giving back. And in general, for the studio and industry, all segments.
Jeff: Ooh, I love this. Mentorships are so, so important. So, for me personally, I moved from Long Island, New York to Los Angeles back in 2007 to become an audio engineer. I was absolutely determined that this was what I wanted to do. I just wanted to be an audio engineer and Deyan Audio opened their door to me. And I went in and I absolutely loved the team but I also came in with a strong work ethic. And anytime that the owners of the company, Bob and Deb put something out there like, "Hey, who wants to do this?" My hand went up and I just grabbed it. And that took me a lot of places with the company as far as, you know, work that I did. But really how the mentorship changed me with them is, you know, I went through editing and quality control and directing, and then the company changed, we underwent a lot of growth.
And for the first time ever, we needed a studio manager that wasn't going to be Bob or Deb. And it was just another thing that I said yes to. And it was sitting in that role as a studio manager where I'm answering the phone and I'm talking with narrators and clients, and I'm greeting every person that walks through the door and I'm managing the schedule and I'm training the directors, I realized that at the end of the day, I felt way more fulfilled with the work that I was doing than when I was just working as an engineer. So, it was through the mentoring I got from Bob and Deb and the opportunities that were given to me that I realized I didn't really want to be an engineer. I wanted to be in a position in which I could talk with as many people as I could possibly talk with and make as many connections as I possibly could.
And I'm grateful for the opportunities that they gave me and that Deb still gives me. I love being part of this team and helping this company grow. As far as mentorships in the industry, I think everybody should have a mentor. I don't, you know, everybody, it doesn't matter what you're doing or where you are. There's, you know, we all could benefit from somebody that has a little bit more experience or maybe a lot more experience and a bit of a different vision to help us grow as people. We don't work too much with internships. We don't really work at all with internships at Deyan Audio. But we do, you know, we do bring people on and pay them and train them. So I, you know, personally, I'm not a fan of unpaid internships. I don't really like that.
So, I'm fortunate to be with a company that's sort of shares that view, you know, people should be paid for the work that they're doing. But as far as the industry goes, find a mentor. If you're a narrator coming into it, there are so many narrator groups on Facebook. And I get, you know, I'm part of some of them. And the thing that I enjoy most about them is seeing how supportive the narrators are of each other. There's narrators in there that have been doing this for 20 years and there's narrators in there that have been doing this for 6 hours. And you get such a variety of questions and the narrator community is so supportive of each other. And there's a couple of, you know, more than a couple of engineers that are part of those groups that will help field any technical questions that narrators are having. And then if you carry that over to publishing, you're going to find a mentor. If you get in with a publishing company and that's the path you're choosing, it's generally a little more corporate at that point. There's going to be somebody coaching you and helping you grow. But I think it's, you know, it just comes down to simply reaching out, you know, figuring out what it is you want to do, or you think you want to do, finding out somebody that's done that or is doing that and they've been doing it for a while and just reaching out and asking for help. And I think more often than not, that help is going to be available.
Jamie: Yeah. I agree with Jeff, for sure. A quick story. So, like for example, the way that Deyan Audio actually was started, so Bob Deyan was working in the radio industry as an engineer. So, he was engineering for a radio station and he came across an audiobook. You know, this was back books on tape, you know, it was on cassettes and he immediately fell in love with it the first time that he listened to it. And, of course, you know, his first thought is, you know, this is what I want to do. How do I do it?
Like how do I find the people that make these? What do I do? And simply what he did is just listen to the credits at the very end and listen to who the producer was. And he listened to that, then he looked him up, gave him a call and said to them, "You know, this is my experience, this what I do now. I would really like to learn how to produce this product, audiobooks. This is what I can see as being my passion." And the guy that Bob had called was so just inspired by that, he just said, "Absolutely, you know, can you start Monday?" You know, that type of thing.
So, that's how Bob, you know, got into it and really just started. And it's really just having that or just not having that fear to take that leap and just reach out, you know, I mean? What's the worst that can happen is someone says no, and then you just move on to the next. But yeah, I think it's just super important to take that chance when you see it. Don't be scared or hesitate to reach out. You know, people, what I've found is just people tend to be more than happy and willing to be a mentor or provide advice or whatever you are in need of then you would think, you know, so...
Shimona: So, people looking for a mentor who was listening, take the initiative. Personally, I like to read the acknowledgement section in books to see like who the author is referencing, like who their editor was, their agent. Like you could get the information is there and you just have to look for it and pay your interns.
Jeff: I like that point you bring up. Somebody said to me a while ago that a mentor didn't necessarily have to be a person, like in the flesh, that you can find your mentors in the book that you read. And I think you brought up that point wonderfully. Like literally, you can find them in the acknowledgement section. It's not just the author of the book.
Shimona: Okay. Thank you so much for this very informative conversation. So Jamie and Jeff from Deyan Audio, thank you for joining us on the BookNet Canada podcast. Any information we've mentioned will be linked in our show notes. And lastly, happy Audiobook Month.
Jeff: Yay. Happy Audiobook Month. Thank you for having us.
Jamie: Happy Audiobook Month.
Shimona: What a great conversation, eh? When we recorded in June, it was Audiobook Month in the US, July is not, officially anyway. Every month is Audiobook Month. And I have a fact check for you. When I was talking about results from the State of Publishing survey, I was unsure about the exact mix of production in-house versus third-party studios. The 2019 study will be released in the fall. In the meantime, I wanted to share that 63% of survey respondents produce audiobooks either directly or through a partner, a mix and match of physical and digital audiobooks. Almost half are producing digital audiobooks only, 48%. Eight in 10 publishers are producing digital audiobooks through a third-party producer. And about one third produce them in-house. I also want to add that the "How Do YOU Read?" study conducted by NNELS, the National Network of Equitable Library Service, in February, 2020, found that audiobooks are the most popular and preferred accessible format. When considering recommendations to develop accessible audiobooks, the Accessible Publishing research project from ACP and eBOUND is another great resource.
Thank you again to Jamie Dupras and Jeff Guillot from Deyan Studio for speaking with me for this month's episode. You can find all the links in the episode notes. We'd like to acknowledge the Government of Canada for their financial support to the Canada Book Fund. And to you listeners, thank you and take care. Bye.
Insights from the 2023 Canadian Book Consumer survey.