The Joy (And Suffering) Of An Audie Award Nomination (Or No Nomination)
How do you handle Award Season for Audiobookland?
Audies Awards will be announced any moment, if they haven’t already been. If you’re nominated, congratulations! We celebrate you and appreciate that you’re representing human, career narrators. Many nominations will be for celebrities, or those top-tier narrators, and that’s great. That lifts our industry up. And there will be a few surprise nominations for lesser known or new narrators. All of this is great. Yay, audiobooks, yay great stories, yay great performances!
But it’s hard when you’re a hard-working narrator, have been at it for years, and another year goes by when you’re not acknowledged. The feeling just sucks. It does. It especially sucks when you’ve done your very best, and your best wasn’t good enough.
That may or may not be true, but it feels true. Audie nominations feel personal.
But they’re not.
Let’s take a step back. Take a breath. And let’s adjust perspective.
Audiobooks are increasingly competitive, for actors, yes, but also just for the audiobook itself in getting heard and noticed. Just like the Oscars, major studios and major stars have a bigger chance at Oscar nominations than do indie producers or character actors. Why? Well, one thing is content. Bigger stars equal bigger budgets equal stories with more marketing equals more chance of an audiobook being reviewed equals more chance of a book being submitted for an Audie in the first place. That’s a lot to put together. Think of it this way: the more high profile a piece, the bigger and brighter the spotlight can be, the more famous the team they can hire, the more people want that high budget piece. That’s just a fact.
It's fucking hard. It’s a hard industry.
So please know that even though your performance might be terrific and authentic and true and beautiful, it just might not be able to compete with what’s being pushed and noticed in the industry.
If you don’t get a nomination, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad performer. It just doesn’t.
I know I’m not a bad performer. I’m actually confident about my skills. And I’m also 99.999% sure that THE TUESDAY GIRL isn’t going to get a nomination. I gave that book my blood and guts and soul, but there’s a lot beyond my control. I’m an indie writer and narrator. I’m self-published. And the piece hasn’t sold in comparison to the Britney Spears audiobook. My little book is a grain of sand in a swirling ocean.
That doesn’t mean the piece isn’t important. It was important. To me, and to many people who’ve heard it.
We have to adjust our expectations as performers. As narrators, we don’t get applause, and we rarely get awards. Our performances are posted in silence to an unknown audience, so we don’t get that feedback. We don’t get that rush of an audience approving of us, and we want it. It’s okay to want it.
So we don’t get applause, or we don’t get awards, but you know what we do get? We get the next gig. And the next. And the next.
We greet every new book with energy and love, with blood and guts and soul, and we trust that this performance will mean something to someone out there, because it does.
So. Awards season is great. And it’s terrible. It is both things at once.
Here’s what I suggest: Celebrate your colleagues who are being spotlighted. They’ve worked hard. They deserve it. And they’re representing all of us and our work as human performers. Let’s applaud that. By applauding them, we’re applauding all of us: authors, narrators, casting, producers, publishers, postproduction, marketing, distributors.
And if you’re not nominated, celebrate that too. Because you’re IN it, you’re still a part of this amazing industry. You are sharing your talent with others. You may not get direct applause or medals, but you do get to connect with a story, follow the lead of an author, share your interpretation and your brilliance (as in: your light).
So, how do you handle award season? With grace.
Be grateful. Celebrate others. Celebrate yourself and your accomplishments. Share some of the books you recorded that maybe didn’t get noticed this year, then rejoice in the next book you get the honor to perform…and perform the fuck out of it.
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TANYA EBY likes having her feet rubbed, but not by strangers. That said, she’ll endure a pedicure if she has to. Like her work? SHARE IT. Please, for the love of Pete, tell a friend, subscribe, or whatever. She really appreciates it. Almost as much as she appreciates applause.
Yep! And hey you did get a fabulous review in AudioFile! As a fellow narrator/author/lots of other stuff, I feel you and love your writing :)
I ALWAYS celebrate any success of my colleagues! I offered a connection to the guys in my accountability trio with an indie publisher I’d been working with. One of the guys said, “You know, now we’re competing with each other.” Maybe true. But, I’m excited each time they book a gig. And for me, all boats rise when any one of us finds work!
Looking forward to seeing you with Johnny Heller & Don Baarns on, “Ask Us Anything!” next Tuesday, Tanya!