Patti M. Walsh

Audiobooks Are Not Just Spoken Books, Part 1

Come to think of it…
Writing, reading, and speaking
are totally different proficiencies.

When is an audiobook not a book? When it’s crying out loud!

And that’s where I found myself in the midst of producing the audiobook version of Chick Stories, a Memoir of Adventures Lived, Laughter Shared, and Lessons Learned with my Girlfriends.

Let me take you back to my brink of tears.

Why an Audiobook?

Ever since I published Chick Stories, people have been asking for the audiobook version. That’s not surprising. According to Kinga Jentetics, CEO and Co-Founder of PublishDrive, a self-publishing platform for global book distribution, listenership is exploding, with those aged 18-44 representing 57% of audiobook consumers.

The target audience for Chick Stories, however, is baby boomer women. And while about 13% of adults aged 65 and older listen to audiobooks, that demographic is growing due to vision changes, physical discomforts, and cognitive decline.

So, I scoped out the options: buy a bunch of equipment and do it myself (too daunting); hire a production company with a narrator (too expensive); or find a sound studio to record me narrating the book (an attractive challenge).

I love a challenge, especially one that also engages listeners. Reddit reports that readers love author-narrated memoirs. Hearing a personal story in the writer’s own voice adds raw emotion, authenticity, and a unique intimate connection.

That decision led me to Star Sound Studios, a nearby business that specializes in audio and video production for local talent. Under Drew Howard’s management and Carson Kimmerly’s assistance, the studio had begun expanding into audiobooks, including the award-winning memoir The Mango Tree. Written by Fort Myers author Annabelle Tometich and published by the Hachette Book Group, the book was engaging. I then gave the audiobook a listen. It was clear and vibrant. And if it was good enough for a major publisher, it was good enough for me.

So, I signed on the dotted line with Star Sound Studios and began recording on June 23, 2026.

I was about to find out that producing an audiobook is not simply reading your book into a mic. It’s more like jumping into the deep end of a bottomless swimming pool for a marathon, with a coach on deck, a few cheering supporters in the stands, and a flimsy noodle for flotation.

I knew I wouldn’t drown, but I didn’t know what I had jumped into.

Day 1

With headphones clamped around my ears and a big old microphone in my face, I sat down in a recording studio awash in purple light, surrounded by drums, electronic equipment, and an array of percussion instruments. And yes, I had to shake the tambourine.

By my side was a thermos of slippery elm tea to soothe my mouth and throat, along with chunks of dark chocolate to boost my voice and mood. Beyond being a pick-me-up, chocolate is rich in theobromine, a natural cough suppressant; tryptophan, a component in the feel-good neurotransmitter serotonin; and phenylethylamine, which stimulates endorphins and activates the brain’s reward centers for immediate psychological comfort.

“Go ahead when you’re ready,” said Drew.

“Chick Stories,” I announced, full of vim and vigor, “A Memoir of Adventures Lived, Laughter Shared, and Lessons Learned with my Girlfriends, by Patti M. Walsh.”

My name, coming through the headphones like a voice from another dimension, was thrilling.

The session, however, fluctuated between excitement and frustration.

“Let’s do that sentence again,” Drew would coach through my headphones. “You swallowed your words,” or “you ended on an up note,” or “you sounded tired.”

Tired was an understatement.

After about three hours of “let’s do that again,” the day abruptly ended when a road crew started tearing up the asphalt behind the studio.

I drove home exhilarated—and exhausted. But I came back again. And again. And again.

Plodding Along

When I’m writing, I often visualize my audience. It keeps me grounded so that I don’t wander too far astray. I did the same for recording Chick Stories. I imagined I was telling my stories to the neighbor who’s been hounding me for an audiobook.

I quickly learned that writing, reading, and speaking words are totally different. On the one hand, theatrics, onomatopoeia, and cadence came through precisely. But I didn’t anticipate the quandaries of tongue-twisting alliterations, gleefully intertwined exotic descriptors, or what one colleague has called my “SAT vocabulary.” Thus, a lot of recording time was spent practicing and pronouncing words that had poured so easily from my fingertips.

I knew, for example, that a chimera can be both a mythological monster and a biological hybrid. And that the little pot used to brew Turkish coffee is called a cezve. But I never needed to pronounce either. Then there was a whole section on Hawaiian geology that made sense on paper, but struggled to find a way out of my mouth.

Sometimes flowing, sometimes stagnant, and sometimes stumbling, the narration behind a 10-hour book took about 30 hours, spread over seven sessions.

Yay! I exhaled in delight when the last recording session concluded on August 3. Done!

To my astonishment, however, we were far from done.

Wrapping Up

Before we could package the book for distribution, it had to be proofed, i.e., listened to critically for enunciation, audible gulps, and awkward pauses. Carson and I divvied up that process. I set aside a full day to do that. To my horror, however, I soon found chapters replete with duplicated words, wrong names and dates, and grammatical errors that were not only wrong in the original print version, but were read verbatim into the audio version. I didn’t catch them until I listened to the nearly completed audiobook.

How could that be? I had a good editor, trusted proofreaders, and had even read chapters aloud before publishing the book. Yet, here I was, in that bottomless swimming pool, faced with the existential comeuppance of never having time to do something right, but always having time to do it over.

Although I was tired of conceiving, writing, reading, and listening to the same stories I’ve been telling for years, I gritted my teeth, wiped away a few tears of frustration, and listened to the entire book. I made notes to amend the audio iteration at specific points (e.g., 0:22.24) and the original text in a PDF, so I could eventually issue corrected print and digital versions. That took nearly two weeks.

Then I went back to the studio for another five hours to re-record the problem words and sentences. Once we completed that, on August 21, Drew got to do the things that energize a sound engineer—things like optimizing, equalizing, compressing, and formatting the files to distribution platform standards.

On September 5, when I finally listened to the completed audiobook, I was blown away. I heard the author’s raw emotion, authenticity, and unique intimacy, even though I didn’t recognize my own voice. I fell in love with my stories all over again.

DONE was my elated reaction. But again, I was wrong.

The distribution process rivals the maze designed to confine the Minotaur in ancient Crete. I felt like Daedalus, unable to escape a tangled labyrinth of my own making. Stay tuned for that aspect of the story next month in Part 2.

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Listen to an abbreviated recording session

In this excerpt from Chapter 5, a couple of mistakes are corrected with “punch-and-roll,” which is an audio editing technique that lets you fix mistakes on the fly by playing back a few seconds of audio before automatically switching to record mode to replace the error. It saves massive amounts of post-production time because rough edits happen live.

Now, here’s how the first part of Chapter 5 sounds in the final mastered recording. Notice the more modulated voice and the minimization of distractions like swallowing and lip-smacking.