A VO's Journey: Voiceover and more voice over

Send us Fan Mail How do you voice a woman if you're a man, or a man if you're a woman? Gabby Nistico and I answer that and a few audiobook questions in this Open Forum Friday episode. My answer is to leave your pitch alone. A big pitch change almost always sounds silly unless the piece is meant to be over the top. Gabby says to do a little less and let the character's attitude carry it. Then I show how moving your voice forward toward your nose, or back toward your throat, changes the sound w...

Send us Fan Mail Academy Voices has something new called Story Series, and in this episode Gabby Nistico and I talk about what it is and why we built it. A Story Series is a story told in episodes, with a new one out every week. Listeners can buy one episode at a time or a season pass. Kindle Vella closed in 2025, and very few places give serial writers an audio version of their work. That's the gap we wanted to fill. Serials aren't new, either. Charles Dickens put his novels out in monthly p...

Send us Fan Mail If you were starting voice over today with no clients and no network, what would you do first? Someone asked me that on this Open Forum Friday at VO Journey Academy, so this episode is how I'd build a voice over business from zero. Training comes first, then a studio set up properly and a community around you. After that I'd make 30 to 50 demos and put them everywhere under the same name. Next is a website with real pages and a listing on Google Business and Bing. Then social...

Send us Fan Mail Do you need a pen name to narrate spicy romance? Gabby Nistico and I get into it on this Monday live at VO Journey Academy, the day after our spicy romance workshop. You don't need one, but it can help. We talk about when a pen name makes sense. Sometimes the work could cause real trouble at your job or at home. Other times you might just be a little embarrassed. A pen name also means a second set of accounts to run, and at some point people will want to see the person behind...

Send us Fan Mail Is your voice over website bringing you any work? Gabby Nistico and I answer your questions on this Open Forum Friday at VO Journey Academy, and most of them were about websites. For years my own website brought in nothing. Gabby explains the difference between design and function: design is the pretty part, and function is how buyers move through your site. She also says there's no such thing as a beginner website. We talk about what buyers need from you, why most visitors a...