How an Audiobook Gets Made (with Julia Whelan!)

How does an audiobook narrator know how to pronounce everything? Do they have editors? How many books can they do a year? What differentiates the live voice from AI — and how do they get paid (vs. how should they get paid)? And why are so many beloved books read by Julia Whelan? WELP, FRIENDS, GOOD NEWS, WE GOT JULIA WHELAN TO COME ANSWER ALL THESE QUESTIONS. This is a conversation about mechanics and production flows and vocal health... but it's also a conversation about how we conceive of and compensate artistic labor. This one's gonna stick with you — it's certainly stuck with me.

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Show Notes:

• Follow Julia Whelan on Instagram here and find out more about Audiobrary here

• An interview with Julia about the Audiobrary model

• The episode of romance podcast Fated Mates featuring Julia

• Julia Whelan named Spotify's Top Audiobook Narrator for 2026

• To give you a sense of how many books Julia has narrated, you can see 432 of them listed over at Audible (she's narrated more than 500)

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• What would LIFE AFTER CARS look like?? (With the hosts of the War on Cars pod!)

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  For this week’s discussion: What did you learn about audiobook production from this ep — and how are you going to think differently about audiobooks moving forward?

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