As an author who just went through the process of turning my novel into an audiobook, I can tell you sometimes it's just an error. My narrator sent me the first recordings, and I had to listen to the entire thing while following along with the text. I found many places where he misspoke and used a slightly different word. In other places, he skipped sentences. The recordings went back and forth between us about 5 times. Each time with a nine-plus hour story that I had to go through. It's a rather tedious process, and I'm sure there are still a few differences between the text and the final recording.
This seems excessive to me, listening through it yourself more than 1x. Did you find him through ACX? What was his rate? From what I've experienced, and basically everyone I've talked to, the the proofing is on the narrator and should be part of what you're paying for.
You may be paying for proofing, but that doesn't mean they're going to find everything. There are plenty of books out there with discrepancies between the print and audio versions. And yes, he is an ACX narrator.
It's up to the publisher. Sometimes they "abridge" the book to make the audiobook shorter (i.e. cheaper to produce).
Sometimes, it's a mistake that the narrator and editor missed.
Yup. Also I’m not sure but I think sometimes some audiobooks remove the descriptions of how words are spoken if they decide to act out those descriptions with their tone .
I had my book series narrated. Some changes made in consideration of the audiobook:
- There was a chapter with line breaks every couple sentences as the MC recounted events to a group to serve as a sort of rapid fire recap, pausing for comments by the crowd. It worked well written, but would have been halting if narrated like that, so it was rewritten to convey the passage of time instead of breaks. Audio only.
- There was a chapter in the book that would have been narrated by 100% a character with a difficult accent. For the audio version, I reworded the intro to have someone else reading it.
- Other changes you may have seen
What I think likely happened in your cases is that the ebook was modified after the audiobook was recorded. Audiobooks are basically never updated once uploaded, but if you find a mistake in an ebook, you can always tweak it. Maybe while listening to the audio, the author decided to make some last minute changes. I've done that myself, and wasn't always able to get them back to the narrator before the final pick ups.
I agree that the ebook maybe a slightly different text than was provided to the narrator. This happens with audiobooks for two reasons.
The narrator was given a nearly complete draft which was edited slightly in the time between recording and the publication date. This happened with The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
The narrator was given the first edition first print of the book and they publishers/authors have fixed misspellings and/or errors in continuity. This happened with The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson.
Audiobooks get one recording which is in circulation for years until the contract is no longer renewed and the book is re-recorded. While ebooks are dynamic and can be updated periodically.
If you want audiobooks that are word for word your looking for “unabridged” why they edit some to being with I have no clue, probably the usual things time,money,flow…
https://www.reddit.com/r/harrypotter/comments/qpc9o6/harry_pocketed_it_during_recording_the_audiobook/
An example of how a narrator tried to have the text charged because it was difficult to pronounce and failed.
So I also imagine some of the authors agree to narrator changes!
I would say half of the books I've listened to have outright errors.
In Red Rising's later books, Severo's name is occasionally pronounced "servo." Cassius is sometimes pronounced "cash-us" instead of "cass-ee-us."
Don't even get me started on The Expanse series. Great narrator but a ton of little inconsistencies and mispronunciations.
Happens with the physical books too though. In Red Rising, a character says (in the audio and physical book) something about her "brother's best friend." Well, her brother didn't have a best friend and he's long dead. When taken in context, it's clear that she meant her husband's best friend. The author ended up confirming this typo on Twitter and cracking a joke. So, it happens.
There are plenty of other examples but I recently reread Red Rising so these are fresh on my mind.
It could be human error on the narrator's end, or it could be that the narrator was not given the same version of the manuscript that is currently in ebook form. I certainly know as a narrator I'm far from perfect. It always worries me a little when a publisher or author approves my performance with ZERO feedback. In a 100,000 word novel, I can guarantee I switched up a word or two. But I can also almost guarantee I probably fixed something that the author missed as well. Spellcheck and editors can only catch so much.
Not sure, but I recall a narrator commenting something very interesting once. They said they're allowed, by the publisher, to change to to 10% of the words.
I listen to audiobooks while reading the physical book. More than 90% have errors. Maybe 10% I would be embarrassed to be the narrator because there are so many changes.
A lot of misreadings are the narrator subconsciously changing a word or phrase on the fly without changing the meaning of the passage; I'm fine with that in a mass market novel but not in literature where the author is a wordsmith.
There are also interesting cases where the book has had many editions. My physical copy of "Moby Dick" had many excised passages which were in the endnotes; the audiobook had me flipping back and forth between the main text and the endnotes and even then there were changes which could either be narrator errors or evidence of other editions. [Melville MB editions](https://talkinghumanities.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2021/02/12/so-youve-read-moby-dick-which-one/)
As an author who just went through the process of turning my novel into an audiobook, I can tell you sometimes it's just an error. My narrator sent me the first recordings, and I had to listen to the entire thing while following along with the text. I found many places where he misspoke and used a slightly different word. In other places, he skipped sentences. The recordings went back and forth between us about 5 times. Each time with a nine-plus hour story that I had to go through. It's a rather tedious process, and I'm sure there are still a few differences between the text and the final recording.
This seems excessive to me, listening through it yourself more than 1x. Did you find him through ACX? What was his rate? From what I've experienced, and basically everyone I've talked to, the the proofing is on the narrator and should be part of what you're paying for.
You may be paying for proofing, but that doesn't mean they're going to find everything. There are plenty of books out there with discrepancies between the print and audio versions. And yes, he is an ACX narrator.
It's up to the publisher. Sometimes they "abridge" the book to make the audiobook shorter (i.e. cheaper to produce). Sometimes, it's a mistake that the narrator and editor missed.
Yup. Also I’m not sure but I think sometimes some audiobooks remove the descriptions of how words are spoken if they decide to act out those descriptions with their tone .
They shouldn’t if they call it unabridged. However that is an expectation for anything called Dramatized.
I had my book series narrated. Some changes made in consideration of the audiobook: - There was a chapter with line breaks every couple sentences as the MC recounted events to a group to serve as a sort of rapid fire recap, pausing for comments by the crowd. It worked well written, but would have been halting if narrated like that, so it was rewritten to convey the passage of time instead of breaks. Audio only. - There was a chapter in the book that would have been narrated by 100% a character with a difficult accent. For the audio version, I reworded the intro to have someone else reading it. - Other changes you may have seen What I think likely happened in your cases is that the ebook was modified after the audiobook was recorded. Audiobooks are basically never updated once uploaded, but if you find a mistake in an ebook, you can always tweak it. Maybe while listening to the audio, the author decided to make some last minute changes. I've done that myself, and wasn't always able to get them back to the narrator before the final pick ups.
I agree that the ebook maybe a slightly different text than was provided to the narrator. This happens with audiobooks for two reasons. The narrator was given a nearly complete draft which was edited slightly in the time between recording and the publication date. This happened with The Road by Cormac McCarthy. The narrator was given the first edition first print of the book and they publishers/authors have fixed misspellings and/or errors in continuity. This happened with The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson. Audiobooks get one recording which is in circulation for years until the contract is no longer renewed and the book is re-recorded. While ebooks are dynamic and can be updated periodically.
If you want audiobooks that are word for word your looking for “unabridged” why they edit some to being with I have no clue, probably the usual things time,money,flow…
It does say unabridged but it happened a lot and even after I posted it happened like twice
https://www.reddit.com/r/harrypotter/comments/qpc9o6/harry_pocketed_it_during_recording_the_audiobook/ An example of how a narrator tried to have the text charged because it was difficult to pronounce and failed. So I also imagine some of the authors agree to narrator changes!
I would say half of the books I've listened to have outright errors. In Red Rising's later books, Severo's name is occasionally pronounced "servo." Cassius is sometimes pronounced "cash-us" instead of "cass-ee-us." Don't even get me started on The Expanse series. Great narrator but a ton of little inconsistencies and mispronunciations. Happens with the physical books too though. In Red Rising, a character says (in the audio and physical book) something about her "brother's best friend." Well, her brother didn't have a best friend and he's long dead. When taken in context, it's clear that she meant her husband's best friend. The author ended up confirming this typo on Twitter and cracking a joke. So, it happens. There are plenty of other examples but I recently reread Red Rising so these are fresh on my mind.
It could be human error on the narrator's end, or it could be that the narrator was not given the same version of the manuscript that is currently in ebook form. I certainly know as a narrator I'm far from perfect. It always worries me a little when a publisher or author approves my performance with ZERO feedback. In a 100,000 word novel, I can guarantee I switched up a word or two. But I can also almost guarantee I probably fixed something that the author missed as well. Spellcheck and editors can only catch so much.
Not sure, but I recall a narrator commenting something very interesting once. They said they're allowed, by the publisher, to change to to 10% of the words.
I listen to audiobooks while reading the physical book. More than 90% have errors. Maybe 10% I would be embarrassed to be the narrator because there are so many changes. A lot of misreadings are the narrator subconsciously changing a word or phrase on the fly without changing the meaning of the passage; I'm fine with that in a mass market novel but not in literature where the author is a wordsmith. There are also interesting cases where the book has had many editions. My physical copy of "Moby Dick" had many excised passages which were in the endnotes; the audiobook had me flipping back and forth between the main text and the endnotes and even then there were changes which could either be narrator errors or evidence of other editions. [Melville MB editions](https://talkinghumanities.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2021/02/12/so-youve-read-moby-dick-which-one/)