

She initially made connections in the audiobook world through her work as a theater actress, but after getting more involved in the audiobook industry, she found that narration has some advantages over acting on stage. “I had never owned an audiobook, listened to an audiobook, or thought about it as a job,” says January LaVoy, a voiceover artist who's narrated books by James Patterson, John Grisham, and Libba Bray.

Several of the audiobook narrators we spoke to started out at the theater, not in a recording booth. Mental Floss spoke with a few industry professionals to learn about what it takes to excel at the job-including their diligent voice-care regimens, the one thing they always look for during research, and the spoilers they sometimes get from authors. The recent boom in audiobooks means that the voiceover artists who bring them to life are especially busy. Contrary to the old idea that audiobooks are “cheating,” scientists say that listening to your literature stimulates the brain just as much as reading it does. New technology has made it easy to listen to large audio files on the go, and the resulting surge in listeners has helped the format slough off some of the stigma of decades past. Once associated with dusty library cassette tapes, audiobooks are more popular than ever.
