In this episode, we interview three powerhouse women of the audiobook industry: Karen Commins, Amy Soakes and Susan Iannucci. Each  works to create connections with others, to foster connections and develop the skills of others — and we ask why this is, and what drives their projects.

KAREN COMMINS:

Karen Commins is an award-winning audiobook narrator, producer, publisher, and leading curator of info about the audiobook industry. She is a 6-time audiobook juror for the Voice Arts Awards competitions. Karen has written about audiobooks on numerous sites and spoken about audiobook creation and marketing at VOAtlanta, on ACX University, and on several podcasts.

After years of helping narrators on their journeys through her articles, videos, online advice, and private consultations, in 2019 Karen launched NarratorsRoadmap.com. This site is THE destination for narrators of all levels, with a knowledge base, video courses, event calendar, casting directory, and an incredible number of resource links.

AMY SOAKES:

Amy came to narrating after a career in television, both in front of and behind the camera. She’s passionate about open communication, flexibility and transparency within the industry, and runs NarratorList.com – a website where authors and narrators can connect prior to committing to an aggregator (Australian and New Zealand narrators and authors can also connect through AussieNarrator.com). Amy has written a wealth of information on independent audiobook production, and provides a venue for rights holders to freely list auditions and contact narrators.

She also runs AudioFreebies.com, which helps authors and narrators distribute promotional and review copies of their audiobooks – not just via Audible promo codes, but also with Findaway Voices or Authors Direct codes, or any other method available to the rights holder.

SUSAN IANNUCCI:

Susan is a full time narrator and voiceover actor working from California, USA. She has been producing multi-cast productions for several years along with her own solo narrations. Pulling together multi-cast projects with actors throughout the world continues to be a great challenge and thoroughly rewarding. Involved in project management, casting, cover design, ad copy and post production mastering of files, these productions are multi-faceted. She is passionate about presenting great literature to the audiobook industry, bringing heart- warming stories from the past into the present, that they might not be forgotten.

Produced by Voices of Today (Production Copyright 2022). Hosted by Sarah Bacaller.