Episode 22: Who Gets to be an Audiobook Coach?

We are such a little niche, and there is no licensing board, and there's no certification or master's degree where somebody comes down from the heavens and taps you on the shoulder and says, "'Congratulations! You have narrated exactly enough books, and you may now charge $200 an hour to tell other people how to do it.'" So in truth, technically, anybody can call themselves a coach.

And I want to say up front that I don't really have an answer to the question of who is allowed to coach.

I mean, I coach.

So I am obviously coming into this conversation with my own experience and my own biases.

And I also don't necessarily think that somebody needs to have been doing this for 25 years before they have something valuable to teach, but it depends on what they're offering.

But I do think we're in this really interesting moment where there are basically shifts happening in our career and in the industry at large.

And we're seeing basically three different kinds of audiobook coaching happening.

And all three of them have value.

And all three of them have some pretty significant blind spots.

So we're going to break it down.

I think you need to know what those blind spots are and go in fully aware.