Methods

I record using whatever cheapie little microphone I’ve managed to acquire, and create a .wav file. (Any audio editing software will do.) I edit out the hums and clicks with my software, then use LAME to turn my .wav file into an .mp3. Again, whatever software you’ve got will do; but LAME is good, small, and free.

My preferred text is generally the Gutenberg digital edition. For religious texts (like the Fathers), usually the Christian Classics Ethereal Library digital edition is what I use. On occasion, I use other digital editions, like Blackmask or the digitized magazines online at major libraries. I do, however, reserve the right to use pre-1923 works which haven’t been digitized yet. (Ooooooh, real paper!)

In general, I strive to produce a faithful audio edition of what’s on the page. At all times, I reserve the right silently to correct typos. (Of which there are many, both in Gutenberg and CCEL editions — though the CCEL ones are more confusing.)

However, particularly in translations, I also reserve the right to change the wording slightly for clarity’s sake. If there are homophones in the text, or unreasonably archaic words with simple synonyms, I will use them. Since “naught”/”nought” and “aught” are pretty much indistinguishable from “not” and “ought”, I will generally change them to “nothing” and “anything”. “Spake” will also usually become “spoke” without further ado. I realize that this is not the way Librivox does it, but it’s how I do it.

On occasion, I may inadvertently introduce verbal typos, or forget to edit out mistakes. For this, I apologize.
On most occasions, I will not read the footnotes, or I will reserve them to endnotes or even a separate file. These are audiobooks done by me and for free; they’re not really intended for scholarly work. They are intended to flow and be interesting.

Please feel free to use the comment boxes to point out any problems, mistakes, or difficulties in accessing files. The way WordPress is set up, all new comments on the blog come to my attention whenever I log in, whether they’re about the latest post or the first one I ever made.

If you go to the archive.org link, you can download a .zip file of all the soundfiles for an entire book (or the book thus far). This will save you a lot of clicking around.