Why are audiobooks all of a sudden such a big thing? Zak Annette at Doubleday Canada, the director of my audiobook for Maple Syrup, summed it up simply: it’s about technology, he noted. When Zak, who hails from the United Kingdom, started working in audiobooks, they were on cassette. Then, they migrated to CDs. Now, through apps like Libby, I can download an audiobook using my library card of the Toronto Public Library, and plug my phone into my headset or, more often, my car, for long road trips. Like many people I’ve become a huge fan; most recently I listened to Whoopie Goldberg read John Grisham’s recent novel, Camino Ghosts. That was a lot of fun.
Doubleday Canada will release my book Maple Syrup on Oct. 21, and Penguin Random House Audiobooks wants the audiobook to come out on the same day. They asked me to read my book. My family was surprised. “We were thinking maybe Liam Neeson or Morgan Freeman,” they said. But, turns out, the publisher wanted me. I hear that, in the case of non-fiction, more often than not it’s the author that reads their own book.
It turned out to be a fun challenge. The studio is close to my house: it’s at the base of the CN Tower in downtown Toronto; a nice morning ride on my bicycle. The second day the director, Zak, asked me when I arrived at Penguin Random House Canada, “Did you ride in this morning? I think I passed you on the Wellington Street bike lane. I saw you and I said, ‘I’d better get to the studio before the guest.’ ”
Zak is a pro. He’s worked on 1,000 audiobooks. What a nice guy to work with. The producer of the audiobook is Jaclyn Gruenberger, also top drawer. The process can be painstaking; Zak sits outside in the control room and his voice comes to me in the sound booth through headphones. I read, “Maple syrup lives in me as a proxy for happiness, stability and community,” but I’d moved my arm slightly, and Zak’s voice came in: “Once more for clothing.” There are also problems with a rumbling stomach, which the microphone picks up; the studio keeps a stash of granola bars for this eventuality.
A further challenge comes with pronunciation. I pronounce “burial” with a “u”; turns out the correct pronunciation is “BERIAL.” Lieutenant is one of those weird words in English pronounced nothing like it’s written. And my book has lots of Anishnaabe words and phrases. Zak and Jaclyn were able to track down a lot of recordings of someone saying, for example, “ninaatigwaaboo” which means maple sap. But nobody could track down a recording of the word enji-nooj-mo-haad, which translates as “A Place of Healing” in the community. I solved the problem with a return trip to Wasauksing, an island in Georgian Bay that is home to Wasauksing First Nation, where I recorded the chief, Shane Tabobondung (the “n” in his surname is silent, by the way) saying “enji-nooj-mo-haad.” I brought the recording back to Zak and he played it in my ear while I sat in the booth, and eventually we recorded a version that met his standard.
Zak noted that he likes authors to read their own work because they have lived the words they write, and thus bring an extra enthusiasm—or whatever the right emotion might be for the sentence in question—to the read. For example, when I read this passage: “She spoke as she laid out a seasonal lunch for her visitors: white bread and buckwheat bread, hot from her oven; pea soup, deep-fried smoked pork jowls, ham baked in syrup, baked beans, new potatoes, sausages, coffee; and for dessert, maple syrup pie, maple ice cream, whipped cream and des grand-père en sirop—dough balls fried in syrup. Beside the spread rested a bottle of the first syrup of 2015.”
That set both of our stomachs growling.
I hope some listeners have as much fun when they play my audiobook as I had recording it.
One last detail: turns out reading back your book is a great way to find little typos and things; we found a few errors—minor stuff that the publisher can correct in the next printing of the physical book. “We always find stuff,” Zak said.