Many audiobook coaches and teachers are full-time narrators. They know what they're talking about because they do it every day. If you can get advice from Scott Brick, Cassandra Campbell, or Johnny Heller, you should absolutely listen. Those are smart people!
However, the biggest publishers, like Penguin Random House Audio, don't ask narrators to narrate audiobooks alone. The most challenging audiobook projects from any publisher usually have a budget set aside to hire a director. Why?
Because they know that a director will hear what a narrator may not. A director has a whole range of different strategies for a given scene that may not yet be part of that narrator's toolbox. While an actor is inside the performance, the director is the first audience. Did that joke land? Was the accent too heavy? Are the two policemen sounding too similar to each other? Is the energy too low? Was that complicated explanation clear? Did that line make you tear up like you did when you read it on the page? A good director will answer all of those questions. They will also call you out on bad habits or point out strategic pacing opportunities you may have missed to tell the story with the best possible impact.
Billy Wilder said, "A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard." We are here to support actors in doing what they do best. A director has a different type of experience from an actor: figuring out what someone can do, and getting them to do it at just the right time. Good directors have worked with hundreds of different narrators. They have learned how to handle a variety of technical, verbal, emotional, and narrative challenges across all genres--a much wider variety than any single narrator will see, since most narrators make their career in the same two or three genres. In the world of stage and film, the role of the director is well-established. The audiobook industry is younger, and we are in an exciting time when we are all learning just how good we can make it sound. The additional input of a director can be the difference between good and great.
