I have worked with a couple different narrators and have gone through the process myself, narrating my own work.
When I commissioned my first audiobook, the narrator sent me chapters as she finished them to review. I appreciated that, mostly because I was able to catch something that didn't work right away and save rerecording later on down the line. I did discover working with her that there were more pickups - corrections - as we went. She did a second book for me and I think the one big thing I had to have her fix was the way she read one of the characters. She read his part with a sharp twang instead of a drawl that gave him a completely different sound from the previous book where his dialect had been very understated (as it was meant to be).
I used someone else for a different series, and she, too, did an "all at once" approach. She was a "professional," a member of the Screen Actors Guild. With the "all at once" files, there weren't as many pickups because she'd already reviewed the files, mastered them, and worked with someone else to error check her. She did, however, have one major hiccup for me - "that's not what this says." Inflection is everything. But that's what pickups are for. The opportunity to make a correction before the book is finalized.
I've discovered I like doing the interim "listens," if only to spot check voices or pronunciations, but I suspect narrators aren't as happy doing that because it interrupts their flow. Knowing they have to stop to make a correction slows down the process. However, if I'd had the benefit of interim checks for Horned Owl Hollow, I might have corrected how she pronounced some of the last names, and also asked for a different take on two of the voices. At the end of the day, it wasn't critical to the performance. With the files coming to me as a finished product, I let those things slide. Maybe that's another reason the narrators prefer to send it all at once.
With "Demon," there was a significant mispronunciation when I got the files back. I had to request "re-dos" for 34 instances of that word throughout the performance. There were other minor corrections to be made, and I have to admit that when I got the "sample" from her, I passed on pointing out the pronunciation of one of the character's names, which I should have done. Not worth correcting. Overall, she did an excellent performance of the story, and after going through the pickups, the audiobook is now slogging its way through the final production process. A newsletter will be going out once it is live.
Do you listen to audiobooks? What are some of the things that jump out at your during the narrator's performance?
