Career after retirement

What I really wanted to do when I retired after 28 years teaching public high school, eight years substituting from kindergarten through twelfth grade, 10 years of tutoring in person and online for various spans of time during those years, and teaching a few classes of speech and college writing for Somerset, Kentucky Community College.… What I really wanted to do for my next career was to narrate audiobooks. I wanted to bring in an income to supplement my pension and tiny, little social security checks. As I began a narrating audiobooks career on ACX.com, I soon learned I had to not only narrate the books I contracted, but also to edit and master the digital files that I recorded in the sound studio at HeadFirstMedia at The St Catherine, Louisville, KY.

I learned that the editing and mastering took many, many hours for each audiobook on my Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) on my computer at home. When the audiobooks went on sale, there were not near enough buyers to recoup my out-of-pocket expenses for even one of my 6 projects; and none have paid me even $15/hour for the time I invested. I realized my Audiobook Narrator/Producer career would continue to cost me money rather than supplementing my income. I was personally financing the authors’ books. It was a good investment, and I’ve learned much about the technology required to produce audiobooks. I’ve also successfully edited and mastered the digital audio files. Now, that’s an accomplishment!

I do very much enjoy narrating books, and editing them is fascinating. I’m glad I’ve learned to produce audiobooks, and I look forward to the next author who asks me to narrate their book. In the meantime, to make use of all those years of teaching and tutoring and the knowledge and experience I gleaned from my students, I’ve developed an online tutoring career you can read about in Tutoring can be nerve-wracking.