As the narrator of your audiobook, you have a broad, but limited, selection of voice tools at your disposal to get your meaning across.

There are a lot of exercises in this section. You have do to them out loud. You will not get the full benefit of these exercises unless you actually do them. Reading about them is not the same as practicing them. And when you do them, give them 100% – don't mumble them.

Don't try to do these exercises while driving. To do these exercises, you will need to be looking at the words.

Many of these exercises are designed to force you to narrate 'badly'. Set aside your internal critic, and try them. You will get new insight into the narration process if you experiment with what you have been doing, Don't think about how you sound to someone else. Focus on one voice tool at a time. A big part of the process is forcing yourself to consciously read out loud in a certain way. Don't go on autopilot. When you start to lose your concentration, take a break.

You have to use a recorder to get the full benefit of these exercises. You can't hear yourself while you are practising these exercises. What you use for recording is not important. Use whatever is handy – a handheld minitape dictation unit will work fine. You don't need to set up the equipment you plan to use for making your audiobook. At this stage it is actually better if you keep the decks cleared of any issues regarding equipment, so you can focus entirely on your voice. So any kind of recording equipment will do, even a cheap portable tape recorder. You can get by with just a tape or two. You don't need to save the tapes; you can record right over them. If you are recording through your computer, put the files all in one directory. You can delete them as a group later to space on your hard drive. There is no need to keep old practice sessions. Listen to them,then erase them.

You may be tempted to not bother to listen to the recordings, but do it. Listening to the recordings is just as important as making them. Set aside enought amount of time and make sure the room is quiet and that you are not going to be disturbed. When you are listening, your focus should be on the specific technique that you just worked on.

The purpose of each of these exercises is develop control over a particular aspect of your voice. Don't think about what you are doing in terms of good or bad. For many of these exercises you are going to read “badly” on purpose.

Don't overdo these exercises. It is easy to strain your voice. Allow yourself a reasonable length of time for each practice session . A half-hour of recording and another half hour to listen to the playback is a plenty long practice session.

If you develop a cough, get hoarse or start feeling a throat irritation, stop doing the exercises right away until the condition has improved.