Success Story: Emma Newman of Post-Apocalyptic Publishing

As I was in the process of setting up Online Sound Advice, I reached out to a couple of people I either knew or knew of (and admired/respected) to see if I could help them sound better.

In all cases, these folks have brilliant content. At least I think they do. What they didn’t have is brilliant sound. And whether or not we’re conscious of it, we – as listeners – don’t “hear” even the most amazing content if it is packaged in an audio format that annoys, hurts, or otherwise creates a hurdle to us accessing the content.

In other words, if your quality of your audio gets in the way of your content, your “right people”either won’t find you, or worse, won’t listen to you and will be deprived of your message.

So every now and again (always with permission) I will highlight someone with whom I’ve worked to help them improve and succeed in getting their message out in a way that can truly be heard.

Emma Newman – The Queen of Post-Apocalyptic Publishing

If you don’t know Emma, you are really missing someone special. So English that I’m convinced that PG Tips runs through her veins, Emma has written a “young adult novel” set in London 20 years after a massive apocalyptic event.

And for anyone hung up on the “young adult” part, just set that aside. It’s a marketing thing. If you like adventure, characters that stick, and the future-casting that can only happen in sci fi, you’ll like Emma’s book.

As is the case with many, many, many, many writers, Emma has been struggling to get a publishing deal for her lovely novel. She is querying widely, while simultaneously considering self-publishing. In the midst of this, Emma got the idea to podcast her novel in a serialized one-chapter-at-a-time fashion.

Her challenge?

She had no idea about anything to do with podcasting, recording, incorporation into her blog … much of anything beyond her personal ability to read the text of her book.

A second level challenge is that Emma is newly out on her own, building an ittybiz that has left her a tad cash-strapped. In other words, she didn’t have the cash to acquire a decent microphone.

Emma’s situation is not at all unique, and interestingly the solution we sorted out had only one piece of suggested gear for her to work to borrow … a music stand.

The Solution

First of all Emma and I got together on Skype, using the voice connection to enable me to hear her in her soon-to-be-recording-studio.

She was using a run-of-the-mill USB headset, and really hoped to not buy anything new in terms of microphones.

So I listened to her. I listened to her talk, what her voice sounded like. I also listened to the sounds in the room behind her voice.

Her Space

We talked about the room itself, and were able to establish that she did not have an overly “live”* room.

*A “live” room means that the sound is bouncing all over the place, usually enhancing the high end of the sound spectrum, and is possibly creating echos. It’s not helpful as a recording envionment.

Microphone Position

Next, we talked about her headset, particularly where the microphone boom was placed in relation to her mouth. She is thankfully one of the rare folks who somehow instinctually realize that the mic does not belong directly in front of your mouth.

When the microphone is directly in front of your mouth, on the same axis as your breath, you are physically assulting the device within the microphone that translates your sound waves into a signal. It is from this physical assault that we get sibilant s-es and popping p-s.

Her Body

At one point as we were talking, I heard her whole voice change. It became compressed and slightly higher-pitched. I asked her what had changed. She said, “Nothing.” So I asked her, “Did you just lean over onto your elbows or something?”

It turns out that she had, and the physical compression of her diaphram changed the tonality of her voice enough that even with a cheapo microphone, I could hear it really clearly.

So we talked about the idea of her standing up to record her podcasts.

Why stand up instead of just remembering to not lean on her elbows?

It’s simple. When you’re recording you want to remove as many variables as possible, so that you get clean sound. For Emma, I suggested that not having to think about not slouching (which is solved by standing up) removes one such variable and allows her to concentrate further on delivering her manuscript clearly and cleanly.

So I suggested borrowing a music stand from the local parish to see how it works for her.

In the End

As it all wound up, Emma was able to record nice, clean audio of her reading her manuscript, no slouching sounds included, and learned how to post it all to her website using a handy WordPress plugin called PowerPress.

Now Emma is posting one chapter each week to her website. As of this writing, the Prologue and Chapter 1 are available for your listening pleasure.

Go. Listen. Enjoy.

One Final Note

Not all authors should read their own work. Seriously.

Sometimes it’s about the timbre of your voice. Sometimes it’s that you write far better than you can read.

Don’t let this caution stop you from trying, but get honest feedback (no, you mother is not capable of giving you honest feedback!) and if needs be, hire someone to voice it for you.

Not everyone can be Neil Gaiman.