[Studiotalk] Narrators for Westerns or other titles

[Nancy Gahagan]

Hi Everyone!

We do try to fit the material to the narrator and not just by gender. We
have a volunteer who goes through all of our books and fills out a
pre-production assessment of the book so that we can have an idea of what
is in the book before assigning it. We know we have certain readers who do
better with non-fiction vs fiction because they don't handle dialogue well.
Some do not handle foreign language well. Some don't have facility with
long, complicated sentences. We do a lot of Red Sox books. We like to
choose narrators for those books who are sports fans because it comes
across in the reading.The style, vocal quality and delivery of the narrator
all play into our decision about choosing books for them. We have heard
from our patrons that the voice being suited to the material is important
to them.

We usually give our narrators a choice of a couple of books that we think
suits their voice best. We've run into problems with narrators choosing
their own books because of some of the aforementioned things. We had a
recent example of this, where the previous studio manager let one of our
narrators do a book they really wanted to do, but it was full of long
complicated sentences and foreign language, two things this reader does not
handle well. So we ended up with many more corrections to do in
post-production which took a lot of time and delayed the release of the
book.

Thanks for bringing this topic up. It is interesting to hear how everyone
handles this!


Nancy Gahagan

Recording Studio Manager
Perkins School for the Blind

Perkins Library
175 North Beacon Street
Watertown MA 02472
P: 617-972-7362
Perkins.org

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On Fri, Jun 8, 2018 at 12:59 PM, Coffman, Linden <LCoffman at library.in.gov>
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
>
>
> I have a question concerning selecting books for narrator and in this case
> specifically westerns.  As I have more females narrators available would
> you see a problem with having some of them reading westerns.  I’ve always
> felt that the male voice is what goes best with this genre, but I was
> wondering if it really matters that much.  That also brings up another
> thought.   Does gender matter that much in regards to what you have you
> narrators reading or not if the book is non-fiction or fiction told in
> third person?  Haven’t run across any guidelines on this. I’ve just been
> doing what seems to sound right.  Suggestions?  Advice?
>
>
>
>
>
> Linden Coffman
>
> Director
>
> Indiana Voices
>
> Indiana State Library
>
> Talking Book & Braille Library
>
> 315 West Ohio Street
>
> Indianapolis, IN 46202
>
> 317-232-3683
>
> E-mail: lcoffman at library.in.gov
>
>
>
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