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Well, I say ‘recording studio’, but actually that’s my office-cum-bedroom. So that’s how I found myself in a recording studio with my book The Chomolungma Diaries. Working with cheaper narrators would have been far more time consuming before we got it right, and this got me thinking – if I’m going to go down that route, then why not give it a go myself?
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By contrast, many of the other auditions I received were full of gaffes. There wasn’t much of Philip’s narration that we needed to re-record.
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Experienced, professional actors are where they are not just for their sophisticated vocal talents and dashing good looks. There are cheaper narrators than Philip, but you get what you pay for. But I’m not going to be catching up Mr B’s sales in this lifetime, so different measures are called for. Philip is the Rolls Royce of narrators, and if I were Bill Bryson, I would happily hire him again. I’d like to release my six published travel diaries as audiobooks too. Although I’m on track to recoup the costs of Seven Steps before very long, Feet and Wheels is less popular and it’s going to take much longer to break even. Philip’s melodious baritone and talent for voices really brought the books to life, but hiring a professional actor to record and produce several hours of audio doesn’t come cheap. Last year I had the pleasure of working with experienced stage and screen actor Philip Battley on the audiobook versions of my two travelogues Seven Steps from Snowdon to Everest and Feet and Wheels to Chimborazo.
The growing market for audiobooks means that all books now have the potential to reach a much wider audience. Until recently, books passed these people by like jokes in a Christmas cracker, but not any longer. I might not like listening, but plenty of other people don’t like reading. So if not podcasting, what on earth am I doing in the photo? You can relax then: I won’t be joining the podcast stampede. In fact, this is what most postcasts and radio shows sound like to me:
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IMO, not only is reading more peaceful, but the written word tends to be more succinct and free from waffle. I like a good conversation down a pub or restaurant, but I prefer not to eavesdrop on someone else’s. I don’t watch much telly I don’t listen to the radio and I don’t really do phone calls. Now, in case you’re thinking I’ve abandoned the written word and have joined every other man, woman and their dogs by starting up a podcast – a trend that seems to be spreading across the planet more rapidly than a new variant of COVID-19 – then don’t panic. You will see from the photo above, of me sticking my face into a giant microphone, that I’ve been temporarily heading off in a new direction. In case you’d forgotten I exist or were wondering if I’d boarded the Mars probe for an attempt on Olympus Mons, I’m thinking that it’s time I updated you on the progress of at least one of those projects. At the end of last year, I mentioned that I would be slowing down the blog to concentrate on other writing projects.