You could say he gives writers a voice — an additional voice, that is.
But as Peter Acker sees it, what he’s really doing is part of a long tradition of oral storytelling that dates back thousands of years.
“The spoken word, passing stories down, predates the written word — that’s how communication happened,” said Acker, a longtime audiobook producer and engineer. “Storytelling is sort of an innate part of our being, I think. We’re just naturally drawn to stories.”
For over three decades, Acker, who lives in Pelham, has been recording a wide variety of authors reading their work, or working with professional narrators or speakers who read others’ books; his company is called Armadillo Audio Group. During that time, he’s watched the industry move from using reel-to-reel tape machines to record onto cassettes — the original “books on tape” — to recording books on CDs, to the varied options of today’s digital world, when people can download books directly to their smartphones.
Along the way, audiobooks have become a big business, with annual sales of over $1.2 billion in the U.S. in 2019, according to the Audio Publisher’s Association, and with an estimated 70 million Americans listening to those titles every year.
Acker, who grew up in New Hampshire and has worked out of his Pelham home for about 16 years, says the growth in audiobooks is likely to continue: “I don’t see a ceiling,” he notes. In part, that’s because so many people seem pressed for time, from jobs that follow them home through emails and texts, to the demands of raising children and any other number of distractions.
“Life makes it hard (to read),” he said. Being able to listen to an audiobook while you’re commuting to work, or doing chores around the house, or perhaps when you’re too tired to read and want to hear a story but don’t want to sit in front of a TV, is one of the appeals of the medium, Acker says.
“In many ways (an audiobook) is more satisfying than a printed book because you’re really engaging on a different level. … When you have the human voice expressing emotion and information, I think you’re just drawn in more than if you’re reading a book.”
Making these recordings is more complicated than having someone simply read into a microphone. As a producer, Acker, who’s turning 63, is also something of a coach.
At his basement studio in Pelham, where the person reading sits in a soundproof room while he monitors the recording in a separate room, Acker says he works closely with clients to get them to keep an even pace and tone in their reading. There can be any number of starts and stops during a session.
“I start with an orientation with everyone,” he said. “We do a rehearsal. I have them read 15 minutes of a book so I can hear them and get some sense of their rhythm. We’re also starting to build a relationship, and that’s important. The days are long, and reading for six hours takes a lot of energy.
“I have to listen for fatigue in the voice,” he added. “And after we take a break, is it a seamless transition from when we stopped, or has the person’s voice shifted a little?”
He’s recorded a number of Pioneer Valley-based writers such as Mo Willems, Barry Moser, Emily Nagorski and Ocean Vuong; he recorded the latter reading his celebrated debut novel, “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous,” in early 2019 alongside another independent producer, Robert Kessler, for Vuong’s publisher, Penguin Random House.
Another client was children’s and young adult writer/illustrator Jarrett J. Krosoczka, who recorded an aural version of his acclaimed graphic memoir, “Hey, Kiddo,” in part with Acker (some of the audiobook was also recorded in Worcester).
That audiobook of “Hey, Kiddo,” by Scholastic Press, won the 2020 Odyssey Award, given to the producer of the best audiobook made for children and/or young adults. Acker said he was happy to work on the project; he recorded Krosoczka and a number of other people who were part of the cast of characters from the original book.
That audiobook “is a classic example of theater of the mind,” Acker says. “Scholastic turned a graphic novel into something that works beautifully as a story you can listen to. … I’m thrilled with the way they put it together.”
This kind of work doesn’t come cheap. Acker says he charges between $350 and $500 per “finished hour” of a book, which represents all the time he spends fine-tuning and fixing a recording. Typically it takes 2 to 2½ hours to get one hour of finished narration, he says, and additional editing will push that ratio higher.
Vuong, in a post on Acker’s website, says he had a great experience working with him: “His sharp eye and ear, decades of hard-earned experience, and crystalline attention to detail is felt every minute in the booth — and turned a first-timer like myself into a smooth-sailing, fluid, even capable, audiobook narrator. Most importantly, he made it fun and joyful.”