Derek Perkins is one of the most talented and prolific audiobook narrators in today’s industry. He has voiced well over 400 books in fiction and non-fiction, including the bestsellers Sapiens and Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari.
Toby and Derek discuss:
- How a bad reader can ruin a good book
- How he made the leap into fulltime audiobook narration
- His history and how he first got noticed in the industry
- Derek’s method for prepping for a book reading
- How to define the tone of a fiction or non-fiction book
- How to create characters within an audiobook
- The difference between commercial and corporate voice work and audiobooks
- What technology he uses to record in his home studio
- His favourite books, from the ones he’s read, and his favourite other books, and we answer some viewer questions.
You can find Derek’s 2015 book “The Audiobook Narration Manual” on Amazon
Here is a transcript of the interview:
Toby Ricketts
Welcome to vo life and gravy for the brain, Oceania, the interview. And we’ve been covering some great topics and really delving into a few of the genres of voiceover in this interview series and meeting the people, the kind of Legends of the industry, my voiceover heroes who I’ve always wanted to meet and talk to. And so I’m very excited and this time, because today, we’re covering audiobooks, and I’m a big fan of audiobooks. Like I really try and try and get through as many as I can. And there is an audiobook narrator who, Derek Perkins I’m just gonna say his name, being a fan of for a long time, especially for his nonfiction work. And but I’ve recently found out that he does fiction as well. So on the line from his home in France is Derek Perkins. Good morning.
Derek Perkins
Morning, Toby, how are you?
Toby Ricketts
Very well, thank you. So I want to start by, by actually saying a proverb I came up with just before and the time before the interview, which is and this is so true, for me, that’s a good book read poorly is worse than a bad book read well. Wouldn’t you agree that like, sometimes it can really ruin the experience if an audio book isn’t read correctly?
Derek Perkins
Oh, totally. I mean, the thing I’ve found since I’ve been in the business is that it’s incredibly personal. to everybody who’s listening. And while that’s, you know, I think you can’t deny that if a person doesn’t find your voice, good, or appealing, that’s gonna turn them off. But I think there’s a huge difference between that. And whether books read well, or not, technically. So it’s an interesting kind of duality, I think, in the in the business where you can, you can read a book very well, but someone just doesn’t like your voice. But yeah, I completely agree with what you’re saying, I couldn’t agree more.
Toby Ricketts
So you, I did a little search in my audible app just before end of your name, and it had 313 results. And then when I rechecked they’ve gone up to 314. Good Lord in the in the space of time it took me to do so it’s Tuesday, just he’s read another book. So tell us how, what your path has been to, to coming into this industry. And then having narrated all of these books.
Derek Perkins
Well, briefly, I didn’t get to the industry until very late, or relatively late in my career, I was about I was in my 50s, when I first got into it. And I had no background of performance. But at least from a professional point of view, the one thread that’s been consistent all along is that I had a love of performance in school, you know, into by speaking contests, I was in the drama club, and so on, but nothing remotely professional. And I did start doing some volunteer work for reading books for the blind.
And, and, you know, dyslexic and people like that. And so that kind of gave them gave me some initial sense of, well, this is this, this, I think I like reading, so I knew from from doing the recordings I knew I did, I think I might be okay at it. And then I happen to be on the set. It’s too long a story to go into now. But I happened to be on the set of a movie called Shutter Island, which was a Martin Scorsese movie, as as a as a, as a background would say, and, and unfortunately, on all the bits with me fell on clippings for things fell on the floor. But then, on the set, one day, a couple of guys were talking and they were talking about some voiceover work that they did.
So I asked him about it got in touch with the voice of the studio months later, they came back and started doing some work for them. And as a result of that, I began to look around on the internet and looking at audio, audio business in general. And I suddenly came across audio books. And at that time, a cx was really pretty much getting off the ground. And I started working through ACX. And the rest, they say.
Toby Ricketts
Fantastic. And have you found it a struggle in terms of, you know, going from dabbling? You know, having having another career and doing something on the side to that. I mean, I hear from a lot of voices who are at that stage where they’ve done a few sort of voiceover jobs, but they in order to do it properly, they need to make the leap. take that leap of faith. Was there a moment where you knew this is what I want to do, and I think I can do it. What do you do transition gently?
Derek Perkins
That’s a really good question. Because the answer is yes, the short answer is yes. And what happened with me as so I think what happened with me was I started doing the A cx books, and I was beginning fairly quickly to get one or two Companies authors coming to me. So I thought, well, it’s one thing, Rick, you know, recording a group, someone agreeing to you recording their books, because it’s all royalty basis at that point, of course. But that, to me seemed like a validation that what I was doing was of interest and appeal. So that was one piece. But you’re absolutely right. At the time, of course, I had a full-time job. And there was a point in time where I was beginning to do enough of this work, that it made me start thinking do i do i really think I can make the leap.
And I will say that I was incredibly fortunate to get into the industry at exactly the right point, I joke with people and say, I wish it was my pinpoint marketing and, and research for my career progression. But I just fell into it at the time when audiobooks started to shoot through the roof. And what happened was, as a result of that, that sudden takeoff, a number of publishers started looking around for voice talent. And they began looking through, you know, sites like ACX, that had loads of samples and stuff like that. And I so I had a couple approached me. And that’s when I started doing books for fee instead of on a royalty basis.
And that’s the point which I you know, after a few months of that it was coming in fairly regularly. I realized did did the maths and realized I think this could work. But just to finish on that point. To your point to your question, you still have to go through that bit of do I leave my safe haven and take the leap or not? And I think at the end of the day, there’s there’s part gut intuition is part reading the signs that you’re getting from people you’re doing work with. And then at some part, there’s, you just have to let go. I did and I landed instead of crashed.
Toby Ricketts
Fantastic. What sort of timeframe was that? What time What year was that?
Derek Perkins
It was about 2012 when I first did the ACX titles, and then between that, and the time when I turned fully professional was three years 2015. And in that in the meantime, of course, it was all ramping up. It was about a three year kind of build up.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, absolutely. Did geography play any part in it? Because like, you know, there’s there’s been this revolution in voiceover now, with home studios becoming so affordable and accessible. You don’t need to be near a recording studio, for example. And I know you’ve you’ve moved around a little bit, is it something that sort of? Does geography played any part in your career?
Derek Perkins
Yes, and no, in terms of being limited, because you’re not in one of the main areas in the US, as you know, you know, you basically got the big hubs on the west coast, the East Coast, a little bit in the middle. So in terms of needing to physically be located there, again, I hit it just right. Because the demand was such studios were prepared to accept people. In fact, they liked people recording from their home studios, because it’s it lowered their own costs. So it’s absolutely never been an issue for me. And as you mentioned, you know, we moved from the UK to the US, that’s where I started doing the work.
And then recently, we moved to France, and it’s been completely seamless, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, and so on. The one thing I would add to that, though, in terms of geography is that again, I think I feel like I’ve been fortunate that coming from the UK as I have originated in America, and one of the Canadian companies to work with, there’s, there’s it kind of puts you in a little bit of a niche position. Because there’s, there’s obviously there’s a whole ton of American actors and talents. But there are not so many Brits.
So when studios have titles that call for you know, that accent or maybe a little bit of knowledge about that particular area that they tend to, you know, I found they tend to come to me so it’s it gives you a little bit of a leg up in a very competitive marketplace.
Toby Ricketts
Absolutely. And especially since you’re in your normal speaking voice, there’s actually quite an interesting mix of accents. It’s actually not what I was expecting, because I listen to you on the on nonfiction and it’s very kind of Rp. But you’ve got kind of an interesting mix of accents. Where are you originally from England?
Derek Perkins
Well, firstly, I think you’ve been very kind of it’s it’s probably a matter of accent. No, I was. I was born and brought up in southeast London Croydon area and lived there for 18 years went to college. And Wales, West Wales. So you couldn’t get much of a difference and much more of a difference enactments and everything else in.
Toby Ricketts
Wales in there. I knew it was there somewhere.
Derek Perkins
And then, you know, I was I was in my 30s when I, when we moved to the States, and we lived for 2021 22 years in the States. So a long time now we’re back in France, and we’ll see how the accent evolves from here.
Toby Ricketts
And you’re a polyglot is that is that right? You speak many languages?
Derek Perkins
Yeah, I mean, I’m not gonna pretend that I’m, you know, greatly fluent. But yeah, I took French, Russian and Welsh in college. And because my French is improving significantly, since we’ve been here. I can still order a beer in a bar in Russia for a little bit. Talk about rugby and Welsh, and that’s about it.
Toby Ricketts
Just the essentials. I, I wondered if you were thinking about? I mean, you know, it would be so hard to be an audiobook narrator in different accents. You’d have to be so good at the not just the language with the accent, wouldn’t you if you want to do it in other in other languages? Completely imagine?
Derek Perkins
Yeah, I Yeah, that’s a good point. Two, I do think it helps me. Obviously, in the languages that I’ve studied, it really does help you to talk in English with those accents. Yeah, absolutely. It just kind of gives you that inner ear for it.
Toby Ricketts
And also, if words in those in those languages come up, you know how to pronounce them correctly, which is a big bugbear of mine, especially with French words if they come up in sorry, American writers, but some American pronunciations of French words are not great.
Derek Perkins
No, you’re right. Yeah, you’re right.
Toby Ricketts
And going on from that. The first question in the comp craftex. I want to talk about, you know, how you what your approach to audiobook narration is? And the basic question of how do you prep, you know, you’re selected for a book, or you might have auditioned for it, and then you receive your copy? And I imagine you don’t just start hit record and start reading there’s, there’s this element of prep that what do you do?
Derek Perkins
Well, it basically breaks into two sections. It depends on whether it’s a nonfiction book, or a fiction book. With fiction books, in general terms, there’s very little issues with pronunciations of words themselves. Because they’re not, you know, they’re not, they’re not technical, they don’t generally carry lots of foreign words, and so on. But with the fiction books, the most important thing and I’ve learned this over the years, is, you know, you really just have to, you have to understand, obviously, the story, you need to understand the characters, it particularly with mystery and fantasy, you need to make absolutely sure that the characters stay the same.
Because authors have a great habit of switching, you know, PAGE PAGE 10 pages from the back of the book with the character that was suddenly that was Canadian suddenly turns into a closet Frenchman or something. And so you need to know where the characters evolve to and from, and, you know, you also, it’s just critically important, you’ve got to have that sense of, Where’s it? What’s the author’s point of view is a cliche term, but what’s the author trying to do here? What’s their? What’s the tone of their writing? And, and, and what are the, what’s the atmosphere that they’re setting in this in this book.
So I tried to try to reflect that as much as possible from the prep I do in the reading. Personally, I, what I then do is I’ll often go through as I’m preparing the script, I’ll often go through and I’ll write out character names. And I’ll put some notes in based on the descriptions of them in the script. And I’ll, I may add a couple of notes in my own in terms of what I think I’ll do for the voice. And that’s, that’s it, I don’t do much more than that, to a certain extent. And certainly, with lesser characters, I sometimes play around a bit, because I deliberately don’t want to have too firm of an idea of how I’m going to voice them. So I’ll almost literally wait till the last moment to see what comes out. And sometimes most times it works. But if I’m not happy, I’ll stop it and do something else. So that’s the non-fear.
That’s the fiction. nonfiction is very different from nonfiction, there’s clearly you know, an issue with needing to understand, again, the content, the kind of tone the author is using. But with nonfiction books, generally, it’s far more important to get pronunciations right. And particularly in the ones that relate well with weather, yeah, that relate to history or a particular topic that has its own, you know, terminology and nomenclature and so on. So for example, I think it was last year or the year before that I read a huge history of Iran and you can imagine for non-native that’s, that’s, that’s a challenge for pronunciation.
And I ended up with I think there are about 820 plus words that I needed to get pronunciations right for. And it actually turned out to be a wonderful experience because the author is now an Oxford University, and he’s an Iranian scholar. And he readily agreed to help me. So I sent him this list. And we sat on the telephone, and he literally pronounced these words, one by one by one. So there my job then is, I’ll record him, then I’ll transliterate each one of those words, put it in a spreadsheet. And then as I’m going through the script reading, you know, I stop and check the pronunciations and, and go on from there. So it’s a pretty intensive process but if you’re going to do it, right, you know.
Toby Ricketts
Absolutely. And I think there’s a real pleasure in and, and, you know, you’re able to grow yourself, like you say, like, by learning the proper way to pronounce things. And I’ve always had this real, real passion for wanting to pronounce things like the way a native would and especially if it’s in a completely different vowel set, or if it’s in a different part of the mouth, I kept like, in Arabic, for example, you know, there’s, there’s all these he’s hurt and stuff that we don’t, you know, in the West, we don’t even really hear. So it’s really nice to, to practice using these other parts of our mouth to get a really genuine pronunciation.
Derek Perkins
Yeah, it is. And one other quick point on that I couldn’t agree with you more. For me, again, maybe it’s coming from a language background. For me. The language is not something in isolation, it’s a representation of that, that culture, and it’s a representation of the people, you know, from that country. So it’s, I consider it just to be a sign of respect for the author, but also respect for the people hearing it and I have been criticized for one or two books I’ve done that I won’t mention. For the accents that are the pronunciations. And so you know, you learn from those. But to me, it’s, it’s giving, given the author in the language in the country there, dude. Absolutely.
Toby Ricketts
Is it important to for fiction, especially, and especially if it’s serialized fiction, which I know you’ve done a few sort of series to understand the world, that it’s occurring? And as well, is that important?
Derek Perkins
Yeah. Do you mean that the world of the book?
Toby Ricketts
Exactly, yes. You know, so that you understand kind of the context for the characters, not just the characters themselves? Oh, absolutely.
Derek Perkins
Yeah, absolutely. And the best, the best ones, the world really wrote, well, written ones, particularly in fantasy. They just transport you into that world. And you find that you, you just you just feel you know, I go into my booth, and I leave my my home. And I’m suddenly transported into this, this other dimension.
And it Yeah, absolutely. It It is it is important. And it’s interesting, too, because these worlds that they depict, oftentimes you see the strands coming back to our current world that we live in. And you see a little bit like people read into Lord of the Rings, you know, they read sort of subtle messages and so on. And you see it in some of these books. And I like that. I like that when it’s well done. It’s very, very powerful.
Toby Ricketts
Absolutely, yeah. And so your nonfiction work. And this is how I was introduced to your work was through listening to sapiens, homo Deus and 21 lessons for the 21st century. By you’ve all know Harare, who has penned fantastic books, and they’ve been you know, they’ve sold very well around the world. How do you select a kind of a Do you have a default tone for nonfiction? Or do you? Is it kind of like a character you’re playing for that particular nonfiction?
Derek Perkins
Well, I’m glad you asked. That the answer is that I, by and large, I tried to align, to what I think is the most appropriate for the content. Most of the time, I don’t make a particular effort to do that necessarily. It depends on the book. So for example, for sapiens, I didn’t, I mean, I obviously knew the script, but I didn’t have a particular thought of I need to adopt this tone. I gave it a straight read in that sense. But for example, nonfiction, particularly autobiographies that I’ve read, I did one by the old sex pistol, Johnny Rotten, john laden, and I did Anthony live, Weber’s first part of his autobiography, and there I made a definite effort.
Just to try to get some sense into the reading of who those people were. So with john Laden, I made my accent. A little more London than like you said Rp. With with Antony, Lloyd Webber, I did that a little bit. But I also tried to lots of characters in those books across the relating stories all the time. And the people they’re talking about, I tried, I, you know, get this is the wonder of YouTube, because so you jump on YouTube, you get the clips, and then I just tried to put enough in there to give a flavor of, of those people. For the most part for the rest of it, as I say, no, it’s a straight read.
And you are just just a quick additional point, it’s interesting, you talk about my accent, reading, because I’m always struck by it, too. I don’t, I don’t do anything to force that it just is the way it comes out. And I figure, if that’s the natural way I read, I’m not gonna change it. It’s funny. It’s so funny. And it’s, it’s,
Toby Ricketts
I have the same thing when I’m, when I’m reading a formal read, I’ll go straight into our P without even like thinking I’m doing an accent. And it’s more like you have to adopt, you know, I mean, voicing is is a full body experience. It’s not just, you know, talk as much as we all know, do remember the film, the matrix where they go into the matrix, and they’re in that white space, and they say, oh, like, I look different than I do in the real world.
And it’s like, his residual self image, it’s called and I feel like there’s a voice version of that, that when you stop trying, and you stop contriving everything, and you just go, this is not a performance, I’m getting out of the way of the text. I’m just relaying the text and I guess that’s the ultimate goal with nonfiction, isn’t it to kind of get out of the way?
Derek Perkins
Absolutely, absolutely not. Yeah, this is a very good point. And I think by by sort of being natural to yourself, you do you can make yourself invisible, which is how you should be
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, absolutely. So moving on to the fiction world and I’m interested in this because I’ve always been like a real nonfiction lover and like, you know, if you’re listening to something, you want to learn something, but fiction is just this it’s so enjoyable to listen to. And I just finished listening to the audibles adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, which was a very famous graphic novel from back then it’s it’s like an all-star cast kind of a thing. And it’s all incredibly like comic book over the top character stuff, rather than one person, you know, switching in different characters. But like, do you? Do you enjoy fiction more than you do nonfiction? Or? Or do they both have their own kind of places in your heart?
Derek Perkins
That’s it That’s
Toby Ricketts
Making you choose a titled
Derek Perkins
To all my clients listening, ignore my answer. Do I? Well, I will actually, I’ll give you my standard answer, but it’s a it’s a heartfelt answer. When I get asked what’s your favourite book? What type of book to read? And my answer always is one that’s well written. So I will say that, that I enjoy well-written fiction as every bit as much as I do. nonfiction. Think, I think I’d probably have a little bit more to be honest, a natural penchant for nonfiction in my performance. But I hugely enjoy fiction. And you know, I’ve had some success with the gongs and so on we’ve had some success with non with fiction sorry.
And I just one example on cricket another there’s a series by an author called Mary Stewart. It’s a Merlin. It’s based on you know, the historical character, Merlin. And it’s trilogy. And my Lord that that that trilogy was such a joy, it’s gorgeously written. And because Merlin the history of Merlin is not just Britain, but it’s also Wales, which is where I’m half Welsh and spent significant time there. So it was wonderful, but the writing was extraordinary. And it was an absolute joy. And now it goes back to your earlier point, transporting yourself into that world. It was it was effortless.
Toby Ricketts
And I mean, it’s the same for commercial voiceover you come across scripts, which are just so rotten it just it’s just effortless like it just you know when you get a good reader and a good script together it’s a beautiful thing. So again, to go into the fiction world a few characters. How do you go about constructing them? You, you give them accents? Do you give them affectations? Like how do you stand and if there are many characters? Are you aware that you have to differentiate them?
Derek Perkins
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think I started off like, like a lot of people probably do thinking that you need great big, huge gaps between in between character vices, usually they’ve got to be massively different. And I remember listening to a book that Simon Vance narrated one of the I knew I’d bank on this. One of the was a trilogy, written by the Swedish rights archives, it’ll come back to me. But if he I was absolutely struck by the subtlety of the differentiation he made between the voices.
So yeah, I mean, I think it to me, it depends on the character as to how forceful I’m going to be with the voice. So I take an awful lot of cues from the script, to help me decide how I’m going to do the fight. And then of course, there’s some purely physical things. I remember doing one book, a fantasy book that had a character of a dragon in it. So I started off by giving it a you know, the rough graph really, kind of rough voice. And then I realized this character goes throughout the whole book.
And so it was, it was a long road to hoe, they have to get that bit right as well. But, but afterwards, it’s just Yeah, I’ve think I’ve become a little more subtle in the differential differentiation of character biases. And I use probably as much pacing and intonation now to help with that, especially with female voices cos which are very difficult. I find it difficult for men generally, I think. So that’s, that’s, that’s the way I’ve, I’ve tried to try to evolve.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, you don’t want to get old son of Monty Python he’s not the messiah he’s a very naughty boy. Do you? Do you do other sort of voicing in terms of commercial voicing, like, Do you have another career as because I mean, I know that you’ve in your book, which we’ll talk about a bit later. You make your there’s a whole chapter called audiobooks is not voiceover? Do you have a foot in both camps? Have you sort of learned both? Both? craft?
Derek Perkins
I would say I’ve dabbled in voiceover and I honestly don’t think I’m that good at it. And so I don’t really pursue it. Either effectively, since particularly since the move to France, I’ve effectively just taken a an attitude, I’m not going to do anything proactive on it. So but I have Yes, you know, I’ve voiced for, for, for companies that have been reasonable. I mean, Johnson and Johnson and one of the big banks on the on the northeast coast of the US. But I have to say it’s very, as you well know, far better than me, it’s a it’s a very different type of work. And I think I just think I’m more suited and better at audiobook work. And, and again, as you said, you know, scripts vary with voiceover too
Toby Ricketts
Substantially. Because it is really like, um, you know, the audiobook is like the marathon versus the sprint, of voiceover, where, you know, you’re just dealing with certain words and inflections, and it’s all incredibly nuanced.
Derek Perkins
Just to pick up on that very quickly. Again, that’s one of the biggest things in the book and I talked about, you can break it down into marathon sprint, or you can break it down into to me voiceover is all about words and phrases, not maybe not even whole sentences or not it not complete sentences. And it’s, it’s very much that that full is it is like a sprinter it’s like a full bore effort. You got to get every single word right the intonation has to be just right and so on.
Whereas in the audiobook world and I’m actually ironically I ran marathons for a number of years so I have that I think runners say that you have fast twitch muscle fast twitch slow twitch and I would never be a sprinter because my whole if I was an animal I’d be a slob You know, I think I think the audiobook world is just such a natural fit for me from a number of perspectives like that. But it’s nice and paced, and it has its own challenges of course in that because with that pacing comes sustained effort, as you mentioned earlier, over a period of time
Toby Ricketts
Especially if you’re playing a dragon sounds like. So let’s talk about the the tech behind your setup. What gear do you use to record what’s your sort of your your acoustic space and your microphone interface and that kind of thing?
Derek Perkins
Yeah, well as with most with most people starting out the business you know, I was in the closet as it were and literally, cupboard in the basement. And every time my poor wife every time she went into the kitchen and walked around those to have to bang on the ceiling tell her to stop. There was no one You couldn’t put the heating on. And then once I started getting into it professionally, I bought my first studio, which lasted me till we moved here, actually.
So which was a whisper room as a brand in the US fairly well known. And it’s just you know, it’s just a completely encased booth which you set up in inside your, you were in the basement in my case. So that was fine. Since coming here I’ve invested in a studio bricks booth, and it’s the pro version. So it’s triple-walled. And it’s the answer to a voiceover on a writer’s dream because the room I’m in, I literally don’t hear anything. And so which is what you want from the outside. So I, that’s my studio, which is fantastic.
Toby Ricketts
The sound is great. The rubber on that point, before we get on to mics and technology, it’s such an important thing to sort of create this space where you can just focus on on what you’re doing. And you’re not having to think about what did I hear just the annoying, you know, the breakthrough flow, isn’t it because I live near a big road. And this isn’t the perfect studio for me. I’m building one next year, which I’m going to I’m titling it as you know, it’s going to be the best studio and boys best voiceover studio in the world.
So here’s that currently, I’ve got logging trucks that go past and I have to kind of make excuses when I’m doing live sessions. But it’s Do you have anything in your booth that makes it kind of like a nice space? Like, do you have like, cents in there or light levels? Or do you have do anything like that? Or is it just….
Derek Perkins
No the one thing I do, actually, I do have a number of little mementoes from various parts of my life, very tiny little ones that are on underneath the monitor. And there’s a carving that my son did when my favourite bird of all time is the blue heron. So he carved me a blue heron once. So I’ve got that on the desk. But otherwise, no, I’m not worried about certainly don’t want sense. You know, I’m not worried about anything else. I just, I just like the fact that there are no distractions, that the quality of the booth is absolutely fantastic. And, you know, I, I can just focus on what I need to focus on.
Toby Ricketts
Okay, so, outline what you use to capture your voice?
Derek Perkins
Yeah, it’s, and I’ll just very quickly say that before I, one of the best decisions I took setting my studio up was to go to a professional studio, professional audio shop, and get them to advise me. So I use a Shure KSM 32 microphone. omnidirectional. It’s a condenser microphone, it’s the only one I’ve ever used. I’m a great, I’m a great proponent of it. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And also don’t spend money when you don’t need to.
So nobody has ever said you might have your voice doesn’t sound great with your microphone. So I’ve, I’ve kept it and hope to keep in. Then I use the preamp is a grace preamp. I use a PreSonus. Now I was using an inbox for the audio interface. But now it’s a PreSonus. And the my, my computer is a Mac Mini. And then I run Pro Tools. Yeah. And there is there’s a little irony here that I switched to Mac because I thought it’d be far more stable because the other one used to crash occasionally. Right? I get lots of crashes on this MAC. I don’t know why. But otherwise, it’s a great No, it’s it’s a great setup. And yeah, Pro Tools 12.0 I’m on at the moment.
Toby Ricketts
I bet you have some horror stories of you know, spending like half a day in a booth and getting out and realizing that it’s crashed early on or corrupted?
Derek Perkins
Well, not quite that, that end-of-world ish. But yeah, I mean, I, you know, I’ve, if I get a good run on a recording, I could be recording for, you know, maybe five minutes before I need to stop, which doesn’t sound like a lot. But if you’re recording the history of Iran, and you’re going through multiple difficult pronunciations, and your computer crashes, and you’ve lost that last five minutes, it’s it does not make your day. So it hasn’t been too bad. But at some point, you know, I’ll upgrade but otherwise it for the time being, it’s fine.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, going back to the mic thing, I think that’s a very sensible choice in terms of like sticking with the same one that you’ve you’ve always had, because it’s sort of, you know, you know, how it records your voice. And as you say, if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it. And I’ve had experiences where I’ve, I inherited a really nice a beautiful mic and gnomon you 67 which is like the valve version of the 87, which like worth, you know, 10 grand us or something. And I was using this to record and doing pretty well ever, but then I thought like I wonder if anyone would actually notice if I just recorded On a different mic.
And so I got myself a 416 the Sennheiser 416. Just the standard like, you know, the one of the most you know, ubiquitous voiceover mics there are and switch to that. And for six months just there’s no one noticed no one made any comments or anything. I got the same number of jobs if not more, so I thought, well, there’s no point in having Kate capital-tied up expensive microphone sold. So yeah, it was, it was a really interesting thing to me. But now I wouldn’t like go I don’t think I’d go off the forensics, but just because it’s like it becomes your sound. And I think you’d find that did you find there was a difference between the whisper room and the studio exit? probably be some kind of difference.
Derek Perkins
Yeah, I do. I mean, I think the West room was good, but it was single wall. Different constructions of the studio bricks completely. And I think you know, fundamentally there was always this little bit of boom Enos in there. The just didn’t have that, that you have quite as you know, you know, you never want the sound to be completely dead. You want the on a little bit of life to it, but it it always had that that feel to it.
Whereas this one feels when I’m listening to my voice and playing it back on me. And I think I’m hearing it’s much it’s a richer sound. It’s just somehow it’s just better sound. I’m not, you know, I’m not very good at describing sound. But yeah, it just, it just seems, seems to be a, a sound. That’s, that’s got lots of colour in it. But it hasn’t, hasn’t got any of that slight tidiness slight gloominess that I used to get in the other one.
Toby Ricketts
Do you EQ and compress your recordings at all? Or do you
Derek Perkins
No, I don’t. No I don’t touch them. It’s another one of my mantras if, if I’m not paid to do something, I won’t do it. But seriously, you know, I mean, I, my, my viewpoint is very simple. I love recording, and I get paid to record I don’t get paid to twiddle around. And more to the point. You know, when studios ask you for raw audio, I take them at their word. So I literally give them whatever wave file, flat file whatever format.
Toby Ricketts
There’s no thank you for as well. Like it’s it’s well known in like audio geek circles that, you know, if you send them a recording that you’ve done noise reduction on it sounds tinny, they can’t do anything with it. So it’s like literally just
Derek Perkins
I was gonna say yeah, yeah, correct me if I’m wrong, right but once you’ve been hit with it yourself, you dramatically limiting what can be done with it after that click
Toby Ricketts
on expert, and then it’s like, leave it alone. Yeah,
Derek Perkins
Yeah. I mean, obviously, I, you know, I punch and roll, and I may make a clean recording. So I’m taking If I hear mouth clicks or any extraneous noise, I’m taking that out as I go along. So the file is clean, but it’s raw. Yeah.
Toby Ricketts
So that’s an interesting point. With, with editing, because, you know, a lot of myself when I’m doing long form work for eLearning, or whatever, I’ll you know, read it. And I’ll put a click in so I can see it. And I’ll go back and edit that later. Do you do it on the fly? So you, you you’re making a perfect audio file as you go?
Derek Perkins
Yes. And there’s different schools of thought on that, too. I mean, you’ve just mentioned one technique. And I know there are there are many audiobook narrators who use that technique. Personally, I just, I just hate the thought of going back to something after you’ve, you know, finished. So yeah, I do it on the fly. And with with Pro Tools, you know, punch and punch and roll, it’s so easy to do. And obviously, with time you get quicker. It’s almost no effort. So I, I do that.
Toby Ricketts
That’s really interesting, that’s the first time ever that makes so much sense in terms of, and you’re always at the cutting edge of what you’re reading. So you’re not sort of Yeah, like, I feel like you’d stay fresh for that stuff as well. And here’s another thing. Do you voice the characters separately after the fact? Or you do it as you’re going? you’re switching constantly?
Derek Perkins
Oh, yeah, absolutely. As you go as you go. Now, I won’t I mean, in one of the fantasies will not one many of the fantasy series you probably get into 100 or the biggest number of characters I’ve ever had, I think was about 260 in a series. Yeah. But of course, you can’t remember all of those. So I just keep a little clip, a little tiny little mp3 clip, three seconds, four seconds, whatever, put a put them in a file. And then as I’m reading if I if I’ve got to a character now who I need to refresh my memory about that I’m going to stop the recording. I’m going to quickly flip to the file listen to it, and then I’ll carry on but otherwise know it it gets dropped in at a time.
Toby Ricketts
That’s pretty interesting and interesting. Okay, well let’s go down to the the kind of the business side of it because this is we had a few quite a few questions in terms of like how how to break into the market because there are a lot of people who you know, love listening to audiobooks, they love reading, so, you know, they want to explore this as a career. What would your advice be? In terms of the business of, you know, eventually getting the work these days, because it’s probably, there’s a lot more people wanting to do it these days, but then there’s a lot more opportunity as well.
Derek Perkins
So yeah, that’s true. I was gonna be flippant and say buy my book, but I wouldn’t do that.
Toby Ricketts
We’ll talk about your book don’t worry.
Derek Perkins
I mean, in the US, in the context of the US market, I can only talk about that, because that’s the only experience I really have us and one of the Canadian companies. There is this. I mean, if somebody said, Give me one piece of advice, I would say, what you need to do is two things. Number one, you need to get some experience. And if it needs, if you need to get that by either volunteering, or by recording through, you know, platforms like a CX, where the bar is relatively low, and you can you can get some real good experience, do that.
But then once you’ve done that, and you know that you You’re okay at it, and you know that you you like doing it, then the best way is to go to the annual conference, there’s an audio publishers, Publishers Association in the US, it consists of all the major players, literally every one of the major players, and all of the smaller all of the, you know, mid sized ones below that. And they all go to this conference once a year. And it’s usually in New York, or occasionally somewhere else. And I couldn’t believe it. The first time I went there, I, I looked at the list of people attending, and there’s all these superstar narrators.
And there’s all these, you know, publishers, and not just, you know, they’re not sending their mid level people, you’re getting the senior producers and directors of studios. So my advice to people is go there, you get opportunities in that, in that conference, they set up little events, which are so good. For example, they do a speed dating event, where you have to, you know, you have to volunteer yourself and then be chosen but so you you get a chance to isolate is funny, but two minutes with each publisher. And you get a chance to, you know, struck when you’re not reading, but you’re going to strap your stuff, and you’re going to tell them who you are, what you’ve done, why you think you might be interesting to them.
So you get opportunities like that, or the other big opportunities where you do get to read to a real live publisher is a lunchtime session they do. And I am absolutely convinced that I’ve got one, if not two publishers out of those sessions. And above all, what it does is you will know from voiceover work, companies that do this stuff, they have the slush pile of solicited demos that are a mile high. And they’re you know, they’re forever trying to get through. And what I’ve always said to people is, if you get in front of a person, you don’t need to spend more than 20 seconds with them, you’re going to drop your card, you’re going to then when you follow up with your demo, you’ve then got a point of reference, and they’re going to find a reference to you.
And that that’s my if there’s one thing I would encourage people to do is do that. The other the other point about it is if publishers See you there, they know you’re being serious, because it costs money. You know, you most people have to travel there, you got to pay for the fee. So if you’re there, you’re serious, and that’s another qualifier. So I couldn’t recommend more that more highly long answered your question.
Toby Ricketts
Fantastic. And especially possibly with your with with people with unusual accents, as well like from this part of the world, from Oceania and New Zealand, it’s harder to get there but you you I’ve definitely found with my kind of hodgepodge of a New Zealand the British II kind of an accent, that, especially the American market sits up and takes note a bit more than they would from an American voice potentially because they hear American voices all the time.
So just by the very nature of the way you talk, you’re kind of different, which is so I guess my advice is to not shy away if you have an accent that is not the mainstream because you know, people know it’s very good to know and you ever required to to go somewhere else to record Do they ever want to record you in their studios?
Derek Perkins
No, I’ve had a request but I turned it down politely would have meant me going to Chicago area and you know, being in a hotel for a week or so they paid you know they often pay but uh you know, I just said look, I’ve got a I got a fully fledged term studio here. Can we do it that way? And they said yeah, so No, not now. That’s the wonder of again, as we said earlier, the wonder of The internet and so on that home studios mean that, that you you don’t have to travel and I’m glad for it because it’s a very inefficient way of recording frankly,
Toby Ricketts
For something so simple.
Derek Perkins
Exactly if you’re not right on the doorstep,
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, absolutely fantastic. So as you mentioned, you you have a book which came out in 2015, which is called the audiobook narration manual. And it’s a really good I had it lined up here and we just find out there was a really good like part of it that really summed up what we’ve been talking about. It was a good narrator is able to read ahead and quickly assimilate information in the text to ensure a seamless delivery of the spoken word. Before starting to narrate, she will ensure she understands the author’s point of view. This, in turn allows her to deliver the fullest meaning of the word spoken.
This avoids this helps to avoid giving a rote delivery, good narrators vary their speaking cadence and change their pace, tone and volume to emphasize meaning and minimize distraction. I felt like that really, like in a very sort of cold way summed up like what I really liked about your your voice was that and you say in previous paragraphs about, you’re telling a story, like everything has a story, like the way it’s just humans communicating ideas is a story. So what’s your like? Because often I am training people who it sounds like it’s being read. And even relatively good narrators will make it sound like it’s, it’s it’s not that interesting. What’s your kind of secret to breathing life into scripts?
Derek Perkins
Oh, god, that’s a hard question. How many hours we got left? I mean, fundamentally, I think the secret is, this is gonna sound a little bit Fufu. But I think the secret is respecting the work that you’re doing, respecting the effort the writer has had to put in to create that work fiction nonfiction. It’s It’s knowing that you know, it’s understanding well enough what your what you’re going to be reading. And when it’s, it’s then the hardest thing for me is when you’re doing it is being completely present for every minute that you’re reading.
And just a quick kind of example, as to as to how I learned the importance of this, I took some coaching from Paul Rubin is one of the top guys in the audiobook industry in the US as a producer and coach, and he was ruthless. So he’d have me read a section. And I literally couldn’t get past more than about a sentence when he stopped me. And then he challenged me and he said, Did you really feel that? And I honestly had to answer No, I didn’t, as to your point it I realized that I was reading it. And I wasn’t invested in it.
It’s very hard to explain, without, as I say, sounding a bit esoteric, but I think that’s it, I think, I think it’s the the effort that has to be made. While on the one hand, you don’t want you to be the performer you you don’t want you to be front and center that the the content and the narrated the author’s work has to be front and center. But you’ve got to be in it, you’ve got to be completely committed to it.
Otherwise, it’s going to sound like a read. And, and that’s comes back to our earlier point about you know, marathons and sprints. And that’s one of the challenges of audiobook work, because that’s a long, that’s a long road to hoe, you’ve you’ve to, to, you know, consistently have that attention and focus and effort over a period of time is is is tough, and it’s easy to just lose concentration and the minute you lose concentration, you’re out of it. You’re not in that world you talked about and then and then it sounds sounds flat. Does that make sense?
Toby Ricketts
Absolutely. Absolutely. Nailed it. And I think it explains why you’ve had such success in your industry and you know, that you’ve like risen to the top and have so many of these these great titles and people rave about your voice sounds fantastic. And I imagine there’s lots of more, lots more, you know, really great advice, such as that in your book. So it’s on Amazon if anyone’s interested in getting a copy. And I completely forgot to mention your amazing amount of glittering prizes in my in my intro. And you have had a lot of success in terms of winning Audis and, and being nominated at the voice sciences awards, etc. So how did those come about? You’ve obviously into yourself and hope for the best.
Derek Perkins
No, actually, I don’t, you can but I never had like maybe it’s the Britishness in me. I always felt like I’m not worthy, you know, who am I to enter myself? And so No, I never have what what tends to happen is when proofers are listening to your work With the publishers use use proof as obviously, listen to your work. And I think what happens is a proofer when they think this books a bit special, the narrations really good, they’re good, they flag it to the publisher.
And then they review it. They have a, they have their own kind of committee that looks at all of these suggestions. And then they decide which ones they’re going to put forward for awards, you don’t know until until the nominations are announced. So every one of those has been a very pleasant surprise. And, and I will sound a cautionary note. But that one of the early sobers, they call them the Voice Arts Awards. I was nominated in one category and there were there were five titles being considered. And I had three titles of those five, and I still lost. So it was a great leveler.
Toby Ricketts
Um, just a few more quick questions before we get into our brief audience questions. Do you ever have a relationship with the author’s like, do you like Yuval Noah Harare? You know, does he has he made in touch because you’re his mouthpiece effectively or not?
Derek Perkins
Yeah, no, he never responds to my begging letters. Can I have some of the commission? Well, actually, Yes, I do. But not in the sense in which you’re asking it Really? I think I mean, I’ve had, as I mentioned, for pronunciation purposes, I’ve had contact. What the romance one of the romance writers whose work I’ve done, who got the audio for Actually, I’ve been in contact with her a fair bit, but it’s, it’s actually kind of not really very specific to the books, it’s more general. So not really no, which is a little bit of a regret. But equally, I can see how it, those those sorts of contacts could go pear shaped if you’re not careful. And publishers generally want actors to stay away from authors. Yeah.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah. Do your own jobs. Um, do you? What’s your favorite, your favorite book that you’ve narrated?
Derek Perkins
Well, I think you’ve mentioned that actually, it’s very hard to do. I have to check with audible By the way, because I’ve done it on my list. I’ve done over 460 now. But But of course, that that may include other stuff, but what it wasn’t picked up. But um, you mentioned sapiens, I have to say, it’s, it’s right up there with with the ones that I’ve enjoyed most. And I think from a number of points of view, number one, I think it’s extremely well written. Number two, it’s incredibly thought provoking. And, and, and challenging. And I, it’s one of the books that has left more of a mark on me than than most.
And I found for a long, long time afterwards, I’ve gone back to it and thought, Oh, yeah, God, what that idea he came up with so you know, it’s, and that’s not just me. I mean, obviously, there’s many people who feel the same. So that’s right up there. I mean, I mentioned the the Crystal Cave trilogy, in fiction, that I thought was absolutely top notch. But there’s so many Toby, I mean, it’s it’s so hard to kind of pick ones out. I mean, and they’re, they’re great for different reasons. There. There was a long book called The sleepwalkers about how the world got into the First World War.
And it, it sounds dry, but it was incredible experts, they have the the the avoid ability of it. And that sort of horrible sense of inevitability for all the wrong reasons that countries are going to end up fighting each other. So stuff like that, you know, stays with you, too.
Toby Ricketts
And you are big, you do ingest audiobooks, as well as your favorite narrators.
Derek Perkins
I do, but not to the extent I’d like to be quite honest, because, you know, I spend so much time doing it. I don’t tend to find that much time to listen. So I I tend to be very kind of scrappy, in terms of who I listened to. It’s very, it’s very, sort of seat of the pants. Oh, that sounds good. I mean, I, for example, one of the most recent ones I listened to was a guy called James Haskell is a rugby player. And he lifted the lid on what a professional rugby players life is like, which was fabulous.
And he he was an authentic voice. I listened to Jerry Seinfeld recently, which was mainly lots of his bits of comedy, but that that was good. One of the books that I did, was struck by most was the tattooist of Auschwitz. And that that was an incredible book and incredibly well read. So yeah, when I do get to them, I do still enjoy them, but not as much as I’d like.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah. Okay, we’ll just do a quick a couple of quick answers for these same questions that people have written in with. Chin wants to know about gain levels? Do you have to regularly readjust you riding your gain? Or do you set it fairly low so that you’ve got sort of headroom?
Derek Perkins
Yeah, set it. fairly low says enough, plenty of headroom. No, I don’t adjust. As we said earlier on. I didn’t touch that. Touch the controls as such at all.
Toby Ricketts
And the follow up question to that is what what’s your mic technique recommendations for doing audiobooks? So you’ve got the stamina to get through the workload? Which is a really good, good one. Because it is, you do need stamina for it. Right?
Derek Perkins
You do. You do. I mean, I think, I don’t know whether that’s mic techniques as much as that whole business of pacing yourself and, you know, being invested, and so on. But yeah, I mean, I the mic technique that, to me is more important, is not getting too close at the wrong time. You know, again, lots of fiction books require characters, characters to shout and scream, and so on. So I’ve learned over the years to avoid that. Otherwise, that’s when your game does shoot through the roof.
Toby Ricketts
Fair enough and there’s a question here from Martin house, which I might be able to answer more than you but he thinking to try and break into the market. The most prominent side is a CX, which which you’ve mentioned before, which is kind like a marketplace for for audiobook narrators and and authors to come together.
But they don’t accept voices from New Zealand, which is a bit of a bit of a middle finger device over here. Do you have any suggestions for other platforms that do accept I’ve heard that find a way voices does, Martin, from what other listeners, but there there any other platforms that you suggest for newbies to sort of start dipping their toes in the water?
Derek Perkins
Find a way is one of the ones I would have said I’m trying to think of others. I’m blanking on it at the minute there are others. There or I’ll, I’ll shoot you some some names after we finish them.
Toby Ricketts
Fantastic. couple of questions. Some. We’ve talked about editing, you’re required to edit the files, obviously, it’s you when you send them through. It’s got it’s basically it’s finished audio, isn’t it? You You’re You’re recruited to send through perfectly finished audio?
Derek Perkins
Yeah absolutely.
Toby Ricketts
What what are some of the word counts that you do on an average, an average book, and they’ve asked about what, what what you’d expect as payment for that as well. But that might be a sensitive topic. And there’s probably a massive range from from amateur right up to your level.
Derek Perkins
I’m not going to be very good on this one. Because I always go by page numbers that I know, I know, people use word counts. But for me, the key metric really is the page. So I can’t be of much help on that. I mean, I can I can say that. You know, I narrate books that vary in length from 200 pages up to 800 pages. 1100, I think was the biggest one I did.
But yeah, I never used that metric. Because I was I was workout my time on the basis of pages because that once I’ve done a few pages, I know how long it’s gonna take me. And then I can kind of plan from there. So sorry, I can’t be much help on that.
Toby Ricketts
That’s alright there’s no worries at all. So that’s pretty much it for today. I just want to thank you so much for from personally from me, you’ve really, you really informed my delivery style after listening to Sapiens and homo Deus, it really affected the way that I read things in that sort of nonverbal vein. So it’s, it was a real help to me personally. So thank you for that. And thank you for appearing on this set this podcast and for Greg for the brain here.
Just one final question, looking for the future as we go. Do you think that AI and text to speech software is now on your radar in terms of you know that people are saying that it’ll replace audiobook narrators? But I can’t. I can’t see that myself. But what’s your thoughts?
Derek Perkins
I think I’m old enough not to have to worry about it. One of the benefits of age, I do think it’s on the radar. I do think it’s a potential threat to the live voice. I have heard some of that. And I have to say it’s incredibly good. But still not quite as good as the human voice. So it remains to be seen, but I would not write it up. Absolutely.
Yeah. And I think you’re gonna find it maybe it might impact your work. Toby more than long form audiobooks, because you can get synthetic voices for you know, elevator announcements and shops and airports and maybe commercials as well. But yeah, it’s it’s very good.
Toby Ricketts
It’s an interesting time, isn’t it talking to is very Pickens, thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks for your time.
Derek Perkins
Thank you, Toby. I’ve enjoyed it immensely.
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