Creating Audio Files for your Writing

Before I tell you how to make MP3 text files from your writing, I should warn you about selling audio.

Overall, I've found in both fiction and textbooks that audio books don't sell as well as print books. But there is a market for some poetry and certain types of novels in audio so here is my technical help.

If you want to check out some well done self-published audio books, check out Greg Crites site. His books are so funny and his audio is top notch.

CLICK here to go to GREG CRITES

But how do you create your own MP3 files for your book or poem without spending a lot of money?

Easy-Peasy.

First you need to download a recorder that can convert to MP3 files.

To download a recorder for your computer free, go to MyPodcast.

Go to this www.mypodcast.com
Click on Create Podcast
Upper Right corner then click on Download Recorder

This recorder will allow you to record your words and create them in MP3 files. These files can be used in your book trailers, as playable files on your blog or do anything you can do with music files.

If you are creating a book trailer on Media Player or Movie Maker, this file will load up there too.

Now to be honest, I don't suggest using MyPodcast to store your podcasts or MP3 files. That site is glitchy and loses files.

www.podbean.com is slightly more reliable and it has an embeddable player you can embed into your blog.

Both sites are free.


What technical materials do you need?

You will need a working computer with working volume. Ninty-eight percent of computers created in the last ten years have a microphone built in and audio. So that shouldn't cost you anything.

However, you'll need a headset with a better microphone. Walmart, Circuit City and a hundred other places sell these for under 20 bucks.

You can buy a used set for under five bucks on Amazon.com.

Amazon link

To be honest, expect to record a poem three or more times to get it right. A hiccup, a stutter, a doorbell---and you start over. The good news is that the recorder will let you back up by the minutes.

Huh? What does that mean?

That means that 45 seconds in, you burp, you can start the recorder just before that point rather than recording the whole piece again.

Drawbacks: The recorder does let you do volume control. It also lets you block out a lot of the background noise in your house. But unlike a true audio program with specialized equipment, you'll not be able to adjust the audio by fine tuning it. It's as is. You also can't add a music overlay.

Tricks: If you are quick, you can play music outloud and hold the recorder up to the music to get an intro. It'll be quiet and not as good as your voice recording. Then you stop the recorder and put your headset back on and start talking.

It's not perfect but it's doable.

For a spoken novel or poetry, this works really well.