converting books to audio | Peggy Jaeger, Author

In addition to this blog, I do a monthly post on the ROMANCE GEMS blog site and for the past two months I’ve written about the explosion of audiobooks in publishing. You can read those posts here if you’d like: March and April. Especially popular with Millenials, who are never far away from their ear buds and devices, offering a book in audio is oftentimes a tedious process. If an author is lucky enough to find the perfect narrator to bring his/her book to life, that’s the equivalent – in my mind – of finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, or a unicorn!

Today, I’d like to introduce you to my pot of gold, er… favorite narrator, Anna Marie Peloso. Anna Marie is, simply put, the perfect narrator for my San Valentino books.

If you’ve read any of the books you know the family hails from NYC, is of strong Italian heritage, and doesn’t mince words – either in English or Italian! You can listen to a sample of her reading from A Kiss Under the Christmas Lights here. Just click on the Audible Sample on the left side of the page.

Because I adore the way Anna Marie narrates, I wanted to introduce her to the blog reading world, so she agreed to write up a little sumthin’ sumthin’ about her journey to the fun career.

Here’s Anna Marie Peloso in her own words….

My journey into narration began after my husband took a trip to Sweetwater Studios in Indiana. Now for those who don’t know, Sweetwater is a music emporium; everything music. My husband was there to have a private recording session with Eric Johnson, an all time favorite of his. Sweetwater arranges these sessions and it’s really awesome. While there my husband had many conversations with those also in attendance about voice-over work. Intrigued, my husband asked a lot of questions because he thought that might be something I would really enjoy.

Upon my husband’s return home he told me all about his experience and then shared all that he learned about voice-over work. I was immediately interested and we began looking into how I could start.

My husband is the one who actually set up my room/closet to record in and all the bells and whistles. There is a lot to consider when beginning this kind of work and I’m very fortunate my husband knows a lot about the gadgets and would be able to do the work to master my finished recordings. ACX is very popular and so we read up on them and decided to start with them to see how this all would go. Being new can be very intimidating, but I set up my profile and started to read about available manuscripts looking for a narrator. I selected three and followed the proper protocol for submitting an audition. It’s all very exciting and nerve wracking at the same time, cause now you wait…until you get a notification stating that you have been hired!

And that is how my lifelong love of reading became what I do today and I get to call myself a Narrator.

You can visit Anna Marie’s website and listen to some of the books she’s already narrated here. Currently, she’s working on my next San Valentino audible selection, CHRISTMAS & CANNOLIS and I hope to be able to offer it on Audible soon!!!! Stay tuned for more info coming your way about this!