S4 E4 | Andi Arndt
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Stephanie talks to audiobook narrator Andi Arndt. Andi has recorded over 750 audio books in many different genres. She talks about her methods both in front of the mic and how she runs her business in this informative episode.
Links:
Andi's Website: andiarndt.com
Andi's Instagram: @offmicandi
VO Atlanta: https://www.voatlanta.me/
Michael Crouch's episode: https://www.stephaniepamroberts.com/podcast-episodes/michael-crouch
Narrator.Life: https://narrator.life/
Audio In Color: https://audioincolor.org/
Making It To The Mic Website: www.makingittothemic.com
Instagram: @stephaniepamrobertsvo
Email: stephanie@stephaniepamroberts.com
Full Transcript:
Stephanie Roberts 0:10
Hello and welcome to Making it to the Mic, a podcast about how different voice actors got to where they are today. I'm your host, Stephanie, Pam Roberts, and my guest today is Andi Arndt. Andi is an accomplished audio book narrator who has recorded over 750 titles in many different genres. She takes us on a deep dive into this side of the voice over business, and her insights are truly wonderful. So let's dive in. Here's my conversation with Andi Arndt.
Stephanie Roberts 0:38
Hi, Andi. How are you today?
Andi Arndt 0:44
I'm good. How are you?
Stephanie Roberts 0:45
I'm so good. Thank you so much for doing this, and it's so nice to meet you.
Andi Arndt 0:49
It's nice to virtually meet you too.
Stephanie Roberts 0:51
So I'd love to start by asking the question that I ask everybody, which is, tell us about your journey. How did you make it to the mic, and what did you do before voice over?
Andi Arndt 1:00
Well, there's this great song called Nine Volt Heart, and one of the lines in that is "the radio was my toy." So my dad was a DJ. I ended up being a college DJ. After college and after grad school, I ended up back in the town where I went to college because I had gotten married, and the thing that I thought I was going to do with my life was not really available in my small college town, so I found myself back on the radio, but this time on a public radio station, and really loved it. And then my husband's cousin was asking if I could record a quick bit of voice over for some website that he was working with. So I did, and when I got paid, it really got my attention. I was like, Okay, that was 30 seconds of audio, and that's what I make at this radio station in like three days.
Stephanie Roberts 1:57
Ithink we've all had that experience in some way with voice over, like, whatever you came from to voice over, there seems to be that like, wow, I'm making a lot of money for not a lot of time.
Andi Arndt 2:08
Yeah. I mean, it definitely gets your attention. So I finished at the radio station because I got an offer to teach part time in the theater department at James Madison University, and that's where my husband was teaching until a couple of years ago, he retired, and we moved here to West Michigan, and I taught in the theater department for 12 years. So radio plus theater equals audio books.
Stephanie Roberts 2:37
That's amazing. So I've said this many times on the podcast, for those who have listened to other episodes, but I don't do audio books at all. I come from a theater background. I love the idea of audio books, but I just can't get my brain wrapped around the time commitment of them. So what really drew you into that genre of voice over?
Andi Arndt 2:59
I think it was the fact that it felt so pure to me every time I went to multi genre voice over thing like VO Atlanta, for example, which I've been to several times, both as an attendee and as a presenter, I would kind of look around the room... And you know, there's, you got your E Learning people, and you got your animation people and your commercial VO people and your telephony people. But whenever I met audio book narrators, I just would think that's the thing. That's the pure thing. We're telling a story, and that's absolutely ancient. I'm not trying to sell something to somebody because they already bought it by the time I'm in their ears, they chose it.
Stephanie Roberts 3:47
Oh, that's such an interesting perspective. You're right, because when we're doing commercials, it's like nobody's choosing to listen to that commercial. They're just forced to listen to a YouTube ad or something while they're watching TV. So I love that perspective. Did you ever do commercials or any other genres of vO or audio books? Kind of grabbed you right away.
Andi Arndt 4:07
I've done a lot of stuff. I did telephony for a Korean bank. I did a ton of E Learning, which is, I think, pretty adjacent to audio books. A lot of times. E learning gets a little bit further into telling a story as a part of teaching. And I definitely did some commercials. But man, those commercial sessions, there's something about my default energy level that just does not play with what they need from you for commercial. VO,
Stephanie Roberts 4:39
Interesting. And do you feel like this kind of genre was something that you very quickly figured out, like these other things are not for me, I'm gonna stick with audio books. Like, when in your career, did you decide this is what your focus was gonna be?
Andi Arndt 4:54
Well, it really was years because the first time I did that little snippet for that website was during the first .com boom. I think I want to say it was around 1999 and, you know, my first setup at home at that point, like that little thing I did at the radio station and my manager showed me how to save something, because you don't save radio, you just turn it on, you talk, you turn it off, you're done. So I had no idea how to record an mp3 or any of that. But when I ended up doing more like local commercials, you know, with what they lovingly call dollar a holler, you know, local business ads and stuff, then I had my own little setup at home, which was very rudimentary, so that was like 1999 and I didn't take it was 10 years before I took a Pat Fraley class in Los Angeles, and that was really when I got started. And that was what, 15 years ago now.
Stephanie Roberts 5:56
Wow. And so when did you reach that six figure mark for the first time in your voiceover career?
Andi Arndt 6:02
Oh, it was relatively recently, I want to say probably 2019, I was probably 10 years into narrating audio books when that happened.
Stephanie Roberts 6:14
And how did that feel like to finally reach that milestone?
Andi Arndt 6:18
I didn't know until we got our taxes back from that year. And I went, Oh! Okay!
Stephanie Roberts 6:24
I love that. Yeah, I was gonna say, like with audio books, is it again speaking, I probably sound so ignorant. But do you know the I guess you don't really know the final total, because it's per finished hour. So it really depends on how much, how long things take. Is that, right?
Andi Arndt 6:44
Well, you can, you can rough it out by knowing the word count of the book and what your usual words per hour rate is, and then you certainly know your rate, okay, and so you can, you know, I have a database where I have a column that's Pfh rate, and then a column that's expected finished length, and then it just automatically adds it. For me, the things that you can do to increase your income are increasing your efficiency in the booth, how many hours in the booth does it take to produce a finished hour, and then nudging your rates over time. But that's very much about relationships with clients and making sure that you you take care of those relationships above all else.
Stephanie Roberts 7:26
And what do you do to to maintain that you know how much of your business is repeat authors,
Andi Arndt 7:32
Almost all of it.
Stephanie Roberts 7:33
Oh, I love that. That's amazing. I feel like, in my head, I think that audio books wouldn't be as friendly for repeat clients, because, you know, like, how often, how long it takes an author to write another book, versus, like, a production company that's just churning out videos for different, you know, end clients on their end. So that's so interesting. Can you talk a little bit more about about that aspect of it?
Andi Arndt 7:56
Well, how, how many books a year would you assume an author could write?
Stephanie Roberts 8:01
I have no idea. One, two?
Andi Arndt 8:04
I mean, I had during the pandemic, at the beginning of the lockdown, we were like, how is this gonna go? And it turned out that narrators were busier than ever, because authors were writing, writing, writing. And even before that, there had been this ethos in the romance world, definitely, of, you know, keep this writing coming. Keep these books coming. And, you know, what is ...what was it known as? Like, just fast publish. You know, fast publishing and I we produced at Lyric Audio Books for an author I'm thinking of who had three series running at the same time, and she knew what was gonna happen in each series for like, years down the road. She had it all on spreadsheets.
Stephanie Roberts 8:53
That's incredible.
Andi Arndt 8:54
There are authors who can put out a book every six weeks.
Stephanie Roberts 8:58
Wow. I feel like the theme of this season of the podcast, it's come up in every single interview, is how the pandemic was the most awful time, but how so much good came out of it for different reasons, for different people. So it's interesting to hear how that, you know, accelerated your business because the authors were writing, writing, writing, and you were able to kind of take the next step with what they were doing.
Andi Arndt 9:23
Yeah, now a lot of them have pulled way back from that, that model, because they got burned out. So we're finding some kind of post pandemic. Well, I hate to say post because my husband had it last week, had covid. Oh, no. So it's still out there. We've just figured out how to live with it, I think, at this point. But yeah, it it transformed a lot of things. For sure, every author is different, and some authors who will put out a book say, every other year have other jobs. It's just how their business works.
Stephanie Roberts 9:58
And I know you mentioned romance novels. So is there kind of within audio books, genre that you work most in, or do you do a lot of different you know, themes and genres of books?
Andi Arndt 10:10
Well, I work a lot in genre fiction, which would be romance and mystery thriller, those are fun. In the last year, I've also gotten to do some wonderful sci fi and even horror. And I'm loving the horror. It's, it's so much fun. Do you like scary movies? I like suspenseful movies, okay, I don't like gory movies. Got it where I don't like the Chucky, you know, type stuff, yeah? But the Get out. I mean, bring it on.
Stephanie Roberts 10:43
When you get a book, when you get an offer to do a book, have you ever turned one down because you're like, This is not my thing, the subject matter, or this genre or this, you know, this writing style, you know, like, how much say do you feel like you have in the projects that you choose?
Andi Arndt 10:59
I have complete control over whether I accept a book or not. You know nobody, nobody can make you do a book. So it's usually, we have this book, we have you in mind for this book, and then that is, it's either, could you submit an audition, because it's you're on a short list and the author wants to hear the options, or we definitely know we want you for this book, and are you interested and available for our for our production dates, and I'll look at my schedule. I'll look up things about the author, things about the book, and they usually sent. Can send me at least a prep manuscript so I can look through it. And I have, I have turned down, I probably turned down a book a month.
Stephanie Roberts 11:43
Just because of scheduling, or more of, you know, that kind of going back to, like, subject matter and things like that, or both?
Andi Arndt 11:49
I haven't had too many scheduling problems recently because I've finally wrangled my schedule into submission where I've got some short notice availability, you know, some things booked out for that freelancer, feeling of security, but some short notice availability too,
Stephanie Roberts 12:05
Right? I love that. I feel like that's been also another common theme. You know, when talking to people who are making this the six figure income, it's there's still the element of of being in control and making choices. Almost everybody I've talked to is not at the six figure mark they took any and every job and they had no morals and no values, and, you know, they just said yes to everything.
Stephanie Roberts 12:30
Almost everybody has said that they at some point, have picked or chosen something or rejected something because it didn't fit with their you know, what they wanted, or, you know, what their values were. So that's, I think that's really interesting for listeners who maybe haven't reached that milestone yet of making six figures and knowing that you still have the control to be able to say, like, yes or no based on whatever it is, whether it's, you know, values related, or I take a, you know, three week vacation in the summer, and that's non negotiable. So I still have to say, I have to say no to this. So I think that's really cool to hear that even when you reach that level of making that money, it's not because you said yes to everything.
Andi Arndt 13:10
I mean, I might be in this position because I have stayed anchored in who I want to how I want to use my voice in this world.
Stephanie Roberts 13:22
Yeah, I love that. And where do you get most of your work from? Is there? Are you on ACX or anything like that? Or is it mostly through now, relationships and repeat clients?
Andi Arndt 13:35
I am on ACX, and I actually just accepted a royalty share plus arrangement in the past few days. Because I thought it was a good fit for my pseudonym, and it looked as though the author was in that Goldilocks position of ready to have an audio book, but maybe not ready for, say, my full rate.
Andi Arndt 13:57
Because just talking about royalty share for a second. You know, I know narrators who, when I was getting started in the PFH model of being a narrator, where it's all about my hourly rate and trying to nudge it up and everything, I know colleagues who went in the royalty share only direction, and they built up a portfolio of royalty share titles over and over and over, and the income started to fund the production.
Andi Arndt 14:22
They really knew how to choose the perfect titles for themselves. Now they are at a point where publishers can't afford to hire them, because they they've dialed in their niche. And, you know, I know people who've had six figure months, and so I'm kind of looking at it's, it's interesting. It's like this bell curve of you're in your beginning of your career, that's a great time to do royalty share, or especially royalty share plus, so that you're not on the hook for production expenses. And then at the other end of your career, like, you know, in late stage career, where you've got an established listener base, I have people who say I'll listen to anything that you read, which puts again responsibility on me to make sure that that I live up to that expectation. Now, royalty share makes sense for me as an ingredient in my portfolio, because over time, that's passive income.
Stephanie Roberts 15:22
Right... Can you just detail exactly what a royalty share is versus taking a book that is not royalty share?
Andi Arndt 15:29
Yeah, a royalty share is an arrangement between me and an author where we agree either to share production expenses upfront or, you know, I've sometimes taken on the full risk of paying all the production expenses upfront, because I believed in the author's marketing savvy as well as the book, the marketing is absolutely just as important on the back end through audible exclusive for example, if you use ACX, we would split 40% of the sales, so the author would get 20% and I would get 20% so that's, that's what that looks like, as opposed to an author who's doing so well that they want to buy me out. They don't want to share royalties, because those royalties are going to be really good.
Stephanie Roberts 16:16
Got it.. Okay! That makes sense... for them. That's so interesting. So you're right. So then that does become like a passive income stream, and whatever money comes in from that, you're still able, it's not taking up any more of your time, so you can still move on to the next book while that money is coming in on the back end.
Andi Arndt 16:34
Yeah. So going forward, I'm hoping to do say one a month, and see how it goes.
Stephanie Roberts 16:39
And you talked about a pseudonyms. Can you tell us a little bit more about what that looks like for you?
Andi Arndt 16:44
Yeah, a long time ago, I got an offer of a three book series from Hachette, and when I looked through the material, I thought, Okay, this is just more sexually adventurous content. And so I decided to create a pseudonym, and I chose the name Elena Wolf. And at this point, Elena has done 120 books. And she's also won an audio award.
Stephanie Roberts 17:10
She's amazing. We'll have her on the next podcast. And how many audio books has Andi done?
Andi Arndt 17:17
Somewhere in the six hundreds.
Stephanie Roberts 17:18
Oh my gosh, that's incredible. I really, really admire people who have the not only the mental, but vocal stamina to record those long form projects like that.
Andi Arndt 17:30
It's way more mental than vocal, I'll tell you that.
Stephanie Roberts 17:34
And I absolutely love reading, and I love reading before bed. But there's like, something so intimidating about reading for work and, like, really needing to understand the book and the characters and all of that. That just even though my little actor brain is like, ooh, this would be so fun. Like, there's something about it that just feels like, like a big task. So how do you even begin your process when you get a book?
Andi Arndt 18:02
Yeah, every book is different. And if I've worked with the author before, and if it's the fourth book in a series, then I'm going to be looking at, okay, how did I voice characters in books one through three? If they're recurring characters, and it's been six months since I did the last one, and that's different than, for example, the book that I'm starting today is a standalone book, and it's a thriller, and it has a lot of Dutch in it, so I need to make sure that I've got the Dutch pronunciations of these names down pat, so that when I start recording, I can just go along through the book and I don't have to stop, look up the pronunciation, then it'll sound stilted, you know, so and then also the genre makes, makes a difference in terms of prepping the book.
Andi Arndt 18:51
If it's a romance, who is the couple? What is the central problem in their relationship that they overcome? How do they overcome it? How does it turn into a happily ever after? Because, as we know, if it doesn't have a happily ever after or happy for now, it's not romance. And then with mystery, we have to know who done it. And then we work back to the big scene where, you know, sort of like reading the book backwards like, Okay, here's who did it, and here's the upshot of the crime. Here's the, you know, the aftermath of the crime. Now we can work backward to the big scene where we find out who did it, and usually right before that, our mystery solving person or duo or whoever is in some kind of danger, and working back from there, we can kind of see who might have done it, you know. So I read mysteries backwards.
Stephanie Roberts 19:46
I interviewed another audio book narrator in Season One, Michael Crouch, and I'll link the episode. And I just love hearing about the process, because it's just so different from the commercial, where you know you're getting your copy moments before the session, sometimes during the session, and it's like, bing, bang, boom, and you're done. So on that note, you know, knowing that audio books obviously take a lot of time to do, how do you budget your time, knowing that you know you want to make sure that you're like, you said, like efficient, so that you can take on more projects throughout the year.
Andi Arndt 20:22
Couple things, I use a tool called Positron for identifying words in the script that I need to look up pronunciations for. And it's got the ability to do some of the research for me, which is nice. And then whatever words are left over that I need to go in and research, I can record the pronunciation right into the reference spreadsheet to be able to hear it again when I'm getting to that part of the book. So that's part of it. I have also paid preppers when I've been super stacked up, and then one of the things that's been keeping me on task lately is I hired a remote engineer, so I go on zoom with Becky, and she runs my session, which it's not that it's difficult to run my session, but it keeps me from multitasking. It keeps me from Hey, after this chapter, I'll check my email, and then the next thing you know, it's an hour later.
Stephanie Roberts 21:21
My husband likes to call that a Facebook sidebar, like, he'll come in and be like, I thought you were doing work. I was like, Oh, I'm just checking Facebook for a minute, which you're right, is not a minute, it's an hour.
Andi Arndt 21:30
Uh huh. The word check is the is our nemesis.
Stephanie Roberts 21:33
That was going to be. My next question is, do you outsource? Do you outsource editing?
Andi Arndt 21:38
Oh, yeah, I've never edited any book, ever.
Stephanie Roberts 21:42
Amazing. How did you find that balance of like the cost of the editor versus your take home pay for? You know, for each book.
Andi Arndt 21:51
I don't bear the cost of the editor when I'm like when I owned my production company, we built the editing and the time for coordinating production into our per finished hour production rate.
Stephanie Roberts 22:03
Ah, and then you pay Becky. But she's not editing. She's just there as, like, almost like, you're just, like, a second set of ears.
Andi Arndt 22:10
Yeah, she's live proofing. She's running the she's just, she's running everything. I had to do this for a while back last year, I had a bout of frozen shoulder, and I realized that what caused the frozen shoulder was the way that I was sitting at my desk, resting my elbow on my desk so that I could scroll my script and stop and start my DAW.
Andi Arndt 22:36
The way that the orthopedist explained it to me, my elbow was higher than it should be, and so it was pushing my shoulder up and that, and this is important for everybody to know if you if you find yourself slouching at all and your shoulders kind of up, you're cutting off your circulation to a number of tendons and muscles and stuff that go through this kind of tunnel shaped structure in your shoulder, your leg, pinching it and cutting off the circulation, and that causes inflammation, and then all those things swell up, and then it hurts to move your shoulder because there's no room. And so I had to do physical therapy for months, and so I was like, you know, hiring an engineer or hiring a remote engineer is cheaper and easier than physical therapy, so that's what I'm going to do.
Stephanie Roberts 23:31
There you go. Let's all roll our shoulders and take a big, deep breath.
Andi Arndt 23:35
Yes, I'm doing it right now. I'm well again, and I'm so grateful every time I can put my hand over my head.
Stephanie Roberts 23:43
Right. You don't think about the things, like, when you're recording these again, like, as I record mostly short form stuff, interestingly, editing these podcast episodes is probably the longest form work that I do. And you're right, it's like, you're in this one position, and you're sort of locked in there, and then all of a sudden, you know, you get up and you're like, ooh, I'm stiff from sitting and having my arms, you know, like in this weird angle that nobody keeps their arms in.
Stephanie Roberts 24:09
And so how many of your books are books that are auditions, and how much of your work is just, Hey Andi, we've got a book for you,
Andi Arndt 24:21
I think it's I probably audition for one in five of my books.
Stephanie Roberts 24:27
And how do you approach those auditions? Like, what do those auditions look like?
Andi Arndt 24:31
I don't overthink them, because my whole point of view on that is, I don't want to shoehorn myself into a job. I want to learn what I can about. What is this book about? Who are these characters? How do they talk? How does this author describe things? What is the author's voice? And I give it my you know, we get what, like, three, four pages. So I do find. out what I can. And if there's an interview with the author, I'll go look that up real quick to see if, you know, are they quirky and irreverent, or are they really earnest and and, you know, deep and and serious. And so I'll give it my best shot. I want to get the books where I'm excited about the book, and they're excited about me.
Stephanie Roberts 25:23
Right? Like a nice mutual excitement of, you know, working together as a collaboration.
Andi Arndt 25:28
Yeah, it's almost a superstition. I feel as though if I overwork my audition process, and I feel like I did so much to prepare that audition, and that's the only reason I got it that if I don't do exactly that, that I could lose this book at any time. I want to relax and have fun when I'm working.
Stephanie Roberts 25:52
Yeah, and I think that's been another interesting theme from all the different people across all the genres that I've interviewed this this season is not getting too in the weeds about the prep, the audition itself, what happens after the audition? That you know, if you're working at this level and you're making a six figure income, you have no time to stress about the tiny minutia of it all, and you have the confidence to know that, all right, if it's not this book, it's going to be another book. And I think that's like a really interesting place for people who are still really trying to get to that next level of income, is to just realize that that self confidence is such a huge part of this business.
Andi Arndt 26:36
Yeah, and that comes with experience.
Stephanie Roberts 26:39
Yes, absolutely. Do you have any agents or representation?
Andi Arndt 26:45
I used to when I lived in Virginia. I had an agent for on camera and commercial vo stuff in Richmond, Virginia. I did get called in for some movie role type stuff, but I took it as a sign when I was in the waiting room for an audition for a movie that was going to be filming in Virginia, and I got my first two book offers from Audible, like two books in the same offer, which has never happened before.
Stephanie Roberts 27:15
Oh my gosh!
Andi Arndt 27:16
While I was sitting there, and I thought, yep, yep, that's a sign right there.
Stephanie Roberts 27:20
Right maybe, maybe that's where, where the the energy should go, and not sitting in this waiting room.
Andi Arndt 27:26
Yeah. And since we don't really have agents for audio books, I mean, you can, you know I've not been actively pursuing an agent at this point
Stephanie Roberts 27:36
I think that's great for people who come from an acting background and have the desire to do audio books to know that it's more in your control. And I think that's what drew me, personally, to voice over in general, was just feeling coming from the musical theater world where nothing was in my control. I had to go physically to auditions. I had to physically be in a show to do my art, because I don't play the piano, I can't put up a full staged musical by myself, and I love that in the audio book world, especially in voiceover, it's really in your control to make your own path in your own career.
Stephanie Roberts 28:15
So do you kind of know now, after having a consistent six figure income, do you kind of know, all right, to reach that income, I have to do 20 books a year, or whatever the number is, or like you were saying, because each book can be, you know, whether it's royalty share or the per finished hour, the rates can be so different, is it just sort of, you just wing it and you hope for the best.
Andi Arndt 28:38
I shoot for 30 finished hours a month, because sometimes I'm only doing part of a book. Sometimes I'm the only narrator. I also have coaching income. I also have income from the sale of Lyric Audio Books. I also have income from some royalty shares. So it's just, you know, and there's miscellaneous. I have a studio that we we refurbished an outbuilding when we moved to this part of Michigan. It's kind of a rural area where a lot of people have pole barns to store their RVs and their boats and their whatever. So this is kind of what they call a barn dominium at this point.
Stephanie Roberts 29:22
Oh, I love it. That sounds so fancy.
Andi Arndt 29:25
It is so fancy. It's like when I think back to the first quote, unquote, booth that I had that was literally a step ladder with two quilts on it, and I would hold one quilt over my head while the other one was behind me. And now I have a building that has a booth in it that has a classroom space like hospitality area. And I'm actually meeting with a music producer from the area this Friday. He's going to come out and look at using this barn as a bee space when they record music videos of local bands. And so that's another income stream that may be happening.
Stephanie Roberts 30:03
Nice. So what does that end up being with your reading rate? How many books do you think that is per month?
Andi Arndt 30:13
It's been about six to eight books a month because, you know, I've done a lot of multicast recently, which are super fun. I love them.
Stephanie Roberts 30:22
I feel like that's becoming more popular, or maybe that's just my perception, but I feel like that's that would be so cool to do, to really be in, like an audio play.
Andi Arndt 30:32
Yeah. I mean, what I love about it is I get to talk about the book, which is in pre release. So you can't read much about it because it's not out yet. Can't go and find out who else liked it and what they you know, they think about it. You fall in love with the book. And, you know, if it's a solo narration, you can talk with the author, sort of, but not really, because they're in their own pre release mode. I did Amy Neffs upcoming release The Days I Loved You Most, which is just a heart rending like family it's like family fiction, I will say, like it's, it's one of those ultimate beach reads that you just fly through. I actually was able to talk about the sad parts of it and the really insightful parts of it with Robert Fast, who narrated the part of my character's husband.
Stephanie Roberts 31:29
I love that. And do you guys record together? Or you're recording your own bits and everybody and somewhere along the line, somebody's editing it together.
Andi Arndt 31:38
We had our own chapters.
Stephanie Roberts 31:40
Have you ever done one that's more like where there's dialog back and forth?
Andi Arndt 31:44
Yes, that's actually one of those was what Elena wolf won an audio award for for erotica in 2017 and that was recorded in a studio in New York with Sebastian York, my co narrator, and that was wonderful. That was two days in the studio, and some great conversations over lunch, over, you know, over drinks after recording. Because while it was explicit, it was very thought provoking in terms of what is intimacy within a marriage.
Stephanie Roberts 32:25
Ooh, I like that. That's interesting. How many hours a day are you in the booth recording?
Andi Arndt 32:31
Five or six, Monday through Thursday. I try, I try to have summer Fridays. You know, during the parts of the year where it's you don't necessarily want to be outside so much like February is a great month to just come out here and just get going and just, you know, pack the schedule and read books.
Stephanie Roberts 32:52
Yeah. Do you do any other stuff, like, you know, marketing, or, you know, outreach to authors, or anything like that, that would be kind of more admin or like officey work. Or are you really mostly just in the booth, kind of knocking it out?
Andi Arndt 33:09
Oh, I have all the other admin stuff.
Stephanie Roberts 33:11
Do you handle that? Or do you have a personal assistant who helps with that?
Andi Arndt 33:14
I used to have a business manager when I owned Lyric Audio Books, but even she didn't handle my social media for me, the narrator, it was more we had a we outsourced social media for a lyric to a social media manager, and then the business stuff, contracts and bookkeeping and all that kind of stuff. We had staff for that. So when I sold the company, it was like, Oh man, I gotta do all this stuff again.
Stephanie Roberts 33:43
Right, right. It's interesting to hear how people handle that kind of extra stuff that isn't recording hours in the booth. It's interesting to see how people run their businesses and how you know how they maintain Do you feel like you ever have slow times? Or are you kind of past that because you are booking out so far in advance?
Andi Arndt 34:05
Uh, no, I had a really weird hole in my schedule in I think it was April, but I had a list of things that, you know, we all have the list, man, if, if I get a whole, you know, if I get, if I get a minute, I need to do the following things, and so I tried not to stress about the hole in my schedule, and I just got a whole bunch of other stuff done. And I was able to launch The Mighty Network for Narrator.life, which is my coaching consortium with some other people who who teach audiobook narration and the business side of it, the performance side of it, I had wanted to launch the community site for a while, and I was like, well, here we are. We've got the time. Let's do it.
Stephanie Roberts 34:50
I know slow times are so weird because it feels like you don't know they're coming. So it's not like you can say, oh in February, like, oh man, April is going to be slow. So I'm gonna make sure I schedule these things. I feel like, all of a sudden, I'm like, in the midst of a slow time, and I'm like, well, crap, I should have planned better for this, but I didn't know it was coming. And so then I'm kind of scrambling to put things here and there, and then all of a sudden, you know, I'll start a big project, and then someone will be like, we've got five videos for you to record today. And I'm like, well, there goes that project. So it's interesting to hear how people mentally deal with the slow times and also literally deal with them, and what they fill the time with.
Andi Arndt 35:29
Yea see that what you're describing is what I also what I didn't like about voiceover was, you know, a lot of the work when you're a VO is getting work, and then work comes up really suddenly, and you have to do it right away. You're on a, you know, if you were at the grocery store, you got to run home. If you're on vacation, you got to send your family down to the pool, and you have to, like, you know, MacGyver your hotel room into something. And I did that, but I love knowing that you know my I'm full now through the beginning of August, I've got what I call a floating week built into my schedule, and so I always have a buffer week in case I get sick or something happens with my parents, or I want to take an admin week, or whatever. I've really dialed in how I like my schedule, and I don't like sudden, last minute stuff.
Stephanie Roberts 36:28
It really is the worst part of the business, I have to say. I and again, like having a young child, my husband works in the theater, so I have nights and weekends with her. That's my time with her solo. And so I really, I struggle with, you know, the last minute audition coming in at 5pm when I'm like, I cannot get to this until after bedtime. And that is not my best mental, physical time of work. I just, I'm tapped out by then. So, yeah, the last minute aspect of it is really challenging now that you've been here in this income for a few years. Do you feel like there are any tips for people who are kind of working towards this that you could kind of pinpoint and say that really helped me push myself over to the six figure mark?
Andi Arndt 37:17
Well, I'm gonna put in a pitch for the Mighty Network for Narrator.life because what I'm doing right now in there is, like, putting all my ninja moves into into that group, and it's a smaller group, and so I feel more like I can just say, listen when you go to thus and such event. Here's what to do, like, here's how to zig when everybody else zags.
Stephanie Roberts 37:43
Right, right, standing out, I feel like is a theme across many different areas of voice over.
Andi Arndt 37:49
Showing up to stuff in person, and not being shy about saying, I want to, I want to have a role at this event. For example, Virginia Festival of The Book was about an hour from where I used to live, in Virginia. I wondered, one day I heard about the event, because when I was at the radio station, we sponsored some NPR authors who came and read from their own books, and so I already had a relationship with the festival from being promotion director, getting out in the community at the radio station. And then when I was a narrator, I reached back out and said, do you ever do anything with audio books? And we started talking, and it evolved into an audio book panel that I moderated, and that's how I got together with Anne Flosnik, who's a Virginia based narrator, wonderful narrator, Elizabeth Wiley, also a Virginia based narrator. And Janine Frost is an author of like fantasy type stuff, whose narrator, Tavia Gilbert was not at the festival, but we definitely shouted her out, and we had a wonderful panel. And I saw the value getting somewhere in person and offering some programming at an event that was, you know, that you've got a captive audience. We filled this wonderful room at the Jefferson Library in Charlottesville, and I remember Anne Flosnik saying, oh, look who just walked in, that's Jennifer Connor. That's the Literate Housewife, you know. And I was like, what are you talking about? And I found out that here's this really influential blogger who was an audio book lover. It's like, you're building this web of connection with a whole community that all loves books and audio books, and each connection leads to more connections. And it's really beautiful.
Stephanie Roberts 39:44
Yeah, I love that. I feel like the audio book community is its own little bubble within the voiceover world, and also not at all like it's, it seems like it's, it's just run differently. It's just the relationship seems very, very important there, not only with each other, but narrators within narrators, and also with authors. And like you were saying, just like outreach and getting in touch with people. And I love that, I love that that humanity is part of it. Because I feel like sometimes in the commercial world, it's not really. You send so many auditions to the internet, and you know, we don't feel like, unless you're in a session, you don't really get that same human connection. So I love that. I think that's, that's a really cool part of audio books.
Andi Arndt 40:29
Yeah. And the other thing that happens in your world, that doesn't happen in mine, that what I could, I could deal with it, but it was certainly not fun, is the old, yeah, okay, hang on a second, and then nothing. Like one time I had this commercial session with this amusement park in Idaho. They spent like an hour, like, whipping up my energy and trying to get me to, oh, no, try it this way. Try it that way. Try it this way, try it that way, until I finally said so. Like, like, hyper John Denver and and they were like, okay, hang on a second. And they muted themselves, and then they came back, and after an hour of this for a 30s local spot, they said we hired you because we really liked the way that you did it in your audition. So just do it the way that you would do it. And so after an hour, I circled back around to exactly what I did at the beginning.
Stephanie Roberts 41:21
Oh, man.
Andi Arndt 41:21
And they're like, Yeah, that's great. And it's just like everybody has to pee on the fire hydrant, you know?
Stephanie Roberts 41:27
Yes. How often do you do retakes and audio books like, well, I don't know what that process is like.
Andi Arndt 41:33
Oh, that's a standard part of it. You know, when they're done with the editing, they send you corrections, which is every narrator's least favorite part of the process, right? It's like, well, you did this wrong and you did this wrong and you said this wrong and you said this instead of this, and you're you made a nasty noise with your nose on this word. And what the heck is going up with your mouth, you know, on this word? And please do all these things over again.
Stephanie Roberts 42:00
Is it ever for, you know, we you said this really peppy, but we'd actually like it to be a little bit more somber. Or is it really just the technicalities?
Andi Arndt 42:11
Sometimes it's an acting note, yeah, if you know something didn't go far enough, or you switched voices to the wrong voice...
Stephanie Roberts 42:22
Right keeping track of all the characters.
Andi Arndt 42:26
Yeah, you said this in his voice, but it really is her talking, and there was no attribution so and you guessed wrong. And I actually had a book last week where I got and this has never happened to me before. It was humbling. I got asked to redo several entire chapters, and at first I took umbrage, you know, but then when I listened back to what I had done and I looked at the author's note, I was like, no, no, she is 100% right. And what the heck was I doing?
Stephanie Roberts 42:58
Right? Yeah, I imagine, you know, when you're in there for five hours, the concentration, or just even the consistency, sometimes, like, that's probably such a huge mental game of just keeping, making sure that you're keeping everything exactly right. So, yeah, that's, that's really interesting.
Andi Arndt 43:18
It was more like they're running through the woods, chasing each other, and you sound kind of chill.
Stephanie Roberts 43:26
Which I guess is kind of also in a little bit like animation and video games, where you have to really take on the the environment and all of the other pieces of the puzzle, whereas in commercials, you're just, you know, obviously there's a little bit of that, but not, not as much as when it's more of like an acting piece.
Andi Arndt 43:44
And also, you get so much more real estate in audio books to let the story take up space and really unfold and have peaks and valleys and all this stuff. And when I studied commercial video with Nancy Wolfson back in the day, the hardest thing I worked on with her was "EA Games." That was the whole script, just that. "EA games, EA games, EA games," you know, you're just like you, and after a while you're like, what does that even mean?
Stephanie Roberts 44:16
Absolutely, yes, yes, those tags. Sometimes that's the hardest part, because you're like, I'm not supposed to be selling anything. However, I would never be like Andi, EA Games. That is definitely a challenge.
Stephanie Roberts 44:30
Well, this has been so amazing and insightful for myself and hopefully for the listeners as well. Do you have any, like, last minute thoughts that you want to give give the listeners about either audio books in general, or just, you know, like reaching this, this milestone of your six figure income?
Andi Arndt 44:47
I do want to give a shout out to the nonprofit that I started with author Nana Malone. It's called audio in color, and our website is audioin color.org, and it is a nonprofit. That she and I started to fund the first indie audio book release by authors of color writing and romance.
Stephanie Roberts 45:07
That is awesome. Love that, and we'll definitely link that in the show notes as well. Andi, thank you so much. This was awesome. Thank you so much for your time.
Andi Arndt 45:17
Yeah, thanks for the conversation. I really enjoyed it.
Stephanie Roberts 45:25
I always love talking to people who specialize in one specific genre of voice over, like audio books. It really shows that you are in control of your career and you can make it whatever you want it to be. Andi gave us so many things to think about from both the business side, with things like scheduling and rates and about how she prepares for and approaches narration from an acting perspective.
Stephanie Roberts 45:46
If you'd like to learn more about Andi, I'm linking her website and socials in the show notes, which you can find at my website. Making it to the mic.com. Please make sure you follow or subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening, so you don't miss an episode, and if you're enjoying the podcast, please leave a review or rating at Apple podcasts so I can reach more people. Thanks so much for listening, and here's a little preview of next week's episode.
Zeke Alton 46:14
I think, as an actor, there's always something for you to learn. There's always something new that you haven't tried. And so training has to be a lifelong thing. I think maybe that's something I learned from the military. Like as a test pilot, you don't all of a sudden go, Yeah, I'm good now and stop training. And so I take the same approach to my trade as an actor
Stephanie Roberts 46:33
That's next time on Making it to the Mic.