Target a Niche for Voice Work Success

With audio books growing rapidly, there are books for every interest out there. But what does that mean for you and finding work in audio book narrating? To find success in audio books, you'll want to find a niche that your voice is particularly suited for, and target your auditions to that niche.

Typecasting

A lot of actors will regularly bemoan the dangers of typecasting. What they mean when they say something like that is that they find themselves only getting cast in certain types of roles: the hero, the villain, the ingenue, the mother, and so on and so forth. While this can certainly become a drag, what it can mean is that you're working.

Understanding your type is not only helpful for actors, but it is very important for voice artists.

Fiction vs Non-Fiction

The first important distinction is understanding if your voice is better suited for fiction or non-fiction. While I have certainly done a few fiction projects in my time, as a general rule I find myself much more successful in non-fiction. As such, I make sure that the majority of my auditions are focused on non-fiction books. It helps that I also enjoy reading non-fiction more than I enjoy reading fiction, and so that may also factor into the success that I find.

What kinds of books do you enjoy reading? Start there as an important part of discovering where you're going to find success.

Audition Around

When you first get started in audio books, you may have no idea what genre your voice is best suited for. That's okay. I think that it is the rare person who understands what their voice is perfect for from the beginning (and I can also say it is the rare actor who understands their type from the beginning). So look through potential projects do audition for, and find books that sound interesting to you.

Once you find a book that sounds interesting to you. Perform the audition. You may really enjoy reading it, and nothing will come of it. That's okay. Or, you may absolutely love the book and the author will love your voice. That's the best case scenario. The trick is to keep auditioning.

Conclusion

When I first started auditioning for audio books, I committed to auditioning for 5 audio books every day, until I started booking. This was time consuming work, but I learned very quickly how to best advertise my voice and put together a compelling audition. The things I was getting positive feedback on tended to be business books, so I focused my energies there. Things really started to take off, and now I enjoy a steady stream of projects (and royalty checks).

For more information about building a sustainable side-hustle to support your life as an artist, don't hesitate to click around this blog, or check out my book: A Life in Art: Building Side-Hustles to Empower Your Life as an Artist, available on Amazon.