Yeah, I know. I was excited about this. Really excited. Until I listened back over the audio files and noticed the clicks and the “sounds like I’m in a large chamber somewhere” background effect.

I don’t know how to better explain those things than that, but suffice it to say, my ability is not “professional” quality, and I know some people will expect “professional”. I’ve read enough comments under You Tube videos on how to narrate a book to realize that some people want “perfect” when it comes to audio.

This all made me feel a lot of stress, and the closer I got to today, the worse the feeling in the pit of my stomach got. Something just kept telling me it was a bad idea. So I went into You Tube and Rumble and deleted the Meant To Be chapters I had uploaded there. This was only five chapters, so it wasn’t like I got far. (Bitchute just has a draft option. It won’t let me schedule a post. I was unable to unschedule the videos on You Tube and Rumble. All I could do was delete them to stop them from going live in the upcoming days/weeks.)

To be honest, I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. While this was something I did enjoy, I don’t think it’s something meant for the public. I don’t know if I can figure out a way to make audiobooks private that I can just put on my iPhone or not, but that is what I would like to do. Due to the time I spend on my computer writing, I can’t read ebooks or paperbacks without my eyes giving me a lot of grief. All I can do at this point is listen to books. I get why people like audiobooks. They’re just so expensive to create (or restrictive if an author has to go the split-royalty with the narrator route). I have a Kindle for the text-to-speech feature. I believe Google tablets have the same option. From what I know, Kobo, Nook, and Apple devices don’t have this. If I’m wrong, please let me know. Some people are speculating that AI will make audiobook creation much more cost effective for authors. I guess we’ll see how the technology develops. At this point, all I can afford is me as a narrator, and that won’t measure up to some people’s standards for audiobook.

The fun shorts I did for October are fine. I don’t do those to go with my author brand. I don’t know what I want to do with those channels I have on those sites. For the time being, I’m keeping them up. I used to think I wanted to do videos for writers, which is why You Tube has those old videos. The problem was that I ran out of topics I was interested in talking about, and doing video where I’m talking to a screen doesn’t come naturally to me. I prefer to write things out than speak them. I think better when I type. I used to also think I would make a trailer for every book I wrote, until I realized they don’t do much good for promoting the book.

I’m going to go back to my older posts and edit out the stuff with Meant To Be. I will not be publishing those chapters on You Tube, Rumble, and Bitchute. I’m going to put the audiobook thing on hold for now.