{"id":36608,"date":"2025-07-31T20:56:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T20:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/36608\/"},"modified":"2025-07-31T20:56:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T20:56:08","slug":"julia-whelan-has-narrated-600-audiobooks-and-counting-so-why-isnt-she-paid-like-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/36608\/","title":{"rendered":"Julia Whelan has narrated 600 audiobooks and counting. So why isn’t she paid like it?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Chances are, you’ve heard Julia Whelan’s voice. She’s the award-winning narrator behind more than 600 audiobooks by a long list of bestselling authors including Taylor Jenkins Reid,Emily Henry, Michael Crichton, V.E. Schwab and Kristin Hannah. She’s also narrated long-form articles for The New Yorker, The Atlantic and Vanity Fair<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You may have read her own writing, too. Whelan’s first novel, 2018’s \u201cMy Oxford<\/a> Year,\u201d has been adapted to a Netflix<\/a> film, out Friday, starring Sofia Carson. The story actually began as a screenplay by Allison Burnett and had been gestating in development for years. Whelan was brought in to help with the script because she had studied abroad at Oxford her junior year of college. Producers then asked if she thought it would make a good book. <\/p>\n

\u201cI was like, \u2018Nothing has ever wanted to be a book more. Please let me do this,’\u201d she recalls. It ended up an international bestseller. Her second novel, 2022’s \u201cThank You For Listening,\u201d was critically praised. (\u201cThank You For Listening\u201d is about a former actor-turned-audiobook narrator who falls in love with another audiobook narrator.) <\/p>\n

You may have even seen Whelan on TV \u2014 she began her career as a child actor, with roles in \u201cFifteen and Pregnant\u201d and on the series \u201cOnce and Again.\u201d Despite her various pursuits, though, she has no plans to leave narration behind. \u201cI feel like I was born to do it,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s everything that I love and that I\u2019m good at and everything I want to be doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

That’s a good thing, because the audiobook industry is growing. Statista<\/a> projects this year it will reach $9.84 billion because of smartphones, the increased popularity of audio content and people’s desire to multitask. Despite the appetite for audiobooks, for narrators, \u201cthe financial aspect makes zero sense,\u201d says Whelan. She’s founded her own publishing company, Audiobrary, to help narrators get paid more fairly.<\/p>\n

Whelan, who has narrated as many as 70 books in one year, spoke to The Associated Press about the audiobook industry, Audiobrary and her own writing. Answers are edited for clarity and brevity.<\/p>\n

AP: Why did you start your own audiobook publishing company? <\/p>\n

WHELAN: The only reason I was doing 70 books a year was because that\u2019s how many books you have to do when you\u2019re first starting out to keep your head above water because the rates are low. It would be OK if there were a kickback for success, but narrators don\u2019t get royalties. As we\u2019ve seen the industry grow and as we\u2019ve seen the cache of certain narrators expand, and we know listeners will seek out audiobooks that their favorite narrators record. It doesn\u2019t make sense to me that we should be cut out of the long-term financial benefit of success. Audiobrary does a profit-share model with writers, who I also feel don\u2019t get enough percentage of the pie, and a royalty share for narrators. We are also a direct-to-consumer retail channel, so when you buy directly from us, you\u2019re not giving 50-75% of that sale to a retailer. You\u2019re giving it directly to the people who made the product.<\/p>\n

AP: How do you prepare before narrating? <\/p>\n

WHELAN: I create character lists. I create pronunciation lists, and I do the necessary research for that. The prep time can vary book to book significantly, depending on how complicated the book is. <\/p>\n

AP: If you feel a cold coming on, do you panic? Do you have to protect your voice? <\/p>\n

WHELAN: It ruins everything. I\u2019m probably the only person left who wears a mask on a plane at this point, but everything falls apart if I get sick. You\u2019re messed up for three or four months. Everything just gets delayed, especially when I was doing 70 books a year, there\u2019s no room for error there.<\/p>\n

AP: There are big-name celebrities who narrate audiobooks. Do you worry about them taking jobs? <\/p>\n

WHELAN: At this point, there\u2019s still enough work to go around and they are doing the books that have the budget frankly to use them. But I think that audiobook fans \u2014 not your casual audiobook user, but fans \u2014 have favorite narrators and they\u2019re going to look for books by those narrators. So, in stunt-casting situations, sometimes someone is incredible at it, and they are perfect for the book. But sometimes it feels like a very craven, just marketing ploy. I don\u2019t feel infringed upon by them, but I do worry about a future situation where most of the work is going to AI. I don\u2019t lie awake at night worried, but everyone\u2019s threatened right now. It\u2019s very, very hard to even begin to predict what the future could look like.<\/p>\n

AP: What do you say to people who are almost sheepish about admit ting to listening to an audiobook instead of reading it? <\/p>\n

WHELAN: I think the kids would say that it\u2019s ableist to say that if you didn\u2019t read a book with your eyeballs, then you didn’t read it, considering many people have many limitations that would prevent them from physically reading a book. So then are you telling them they\u2019ve never read a book before? Actual data and studies show that listening to a book actually triggers the same response in the brain as reading it, and that the interpretation and understanding of that book is on par with having read it.<\/p>\n

AP: When do you see yourself writing another novel? <\/p>\n

WHELAN: There\u2019s been about four ideas that are constantly in rotation, but I think I\u2019ve narrowed it down. I think I\u2019m ready to at least start exploring one of them at the beginning of next year.<\/p>\n

AP: Do you think \u201cThank You for Listening\u201d could ever be adapted for the screen? <\/p>\n

WHELAN: I very much think we could. I have said no up to this point because, this time around, I want to be very creatively involved. There\u2019s just too many things about audiobooks that someone could get wrong not knowing anything about the industry. I want be involved so I\u2019m willing to hold onto it until the right situation comes along.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36609,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[457,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-36608","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}