Audiobook recording-voice preparation, coaching, training, recording

[Londonbabyland]

Would appreciate help/advice from someone who (from scratch) managed to produce a good quality audiobook recording and can walk me through people and costs involved. Books already published, I'm the author.
Specifically,

• voice training/preparation coach to even out diction, prononciation, any lurking accents, confidence (online, person to person, group? costs...)
• diy home setup (lots of resources online, again, a recent tried and tested solution would be great)
• feedback/beta listeners
• time it takes

Thank you!

Do you mean you want to record it yourself?

I did this once. It wasn't my own book, but I found a big, mainstream American website that had a "requests" page for people needing readers. It was dreadful, extremely difficult to get work. Eventually I was selected for a project, and recorded the whole thing, but I never got payment, and being an american site, they had a lot of legalese to make that acceptable.

In answer to your question, it would be an idea to set up your recording equipment in a place such as the cupboard under the stairs, to reduce echo.

How long it takes depends on how much you stumble over words and want to re-record bits, but you can obviously knit multiple recordings together so you don't have to start again from page one.

I'm not sure what you mean about a voice coach etc. If you don't feel you have a good voice for reading aloud, you might want to consider just asking someone else to read it.

@TopBunk
Thank you for your comment.
Yes, recording myself, my own book series (13+ books)
Most voice artists have had training/coaching even with naturally good intonation, so do the newsreaders, TV presenters, actors for specific roles with regional/rp/particular accents. Its purpose in this case is to assess if there are any current bad habits and clear them (if needed from the listener's perspective and audiobook market standards). So any recommendations on such people (coaches) and the costs involved are appreciated.
Cupboard is indeed a good start as a studio!

Hey @Londonbabyland Firstly, what an amazing idea and project to record your own books. I love that you'd be using your own voice to tell stories from the work you've done in the written form. I'm a spoken voice coach and I know what you mean by the voice preparation. I was going to suggest you DM me but can see that the private messaging has been disabled. Let me know you'd like more info once the private messaging is back online.Thank you