I was reading some of the discussion by the Amazon Audio Book Community and smiled at some of the conclusions drawn about authors that read their own books. In essence, not a good decision. 

As an audio book veteran listener, I have on a couple of occasions purchased audio books read by the author. The first time it was one of those psychological type books and I didn’t give it a second thought. However, after the third chapter of listening, I was exhausted and had to turn it off. I won’t mention the book but the topic was interesting, but the narration was very monotone—I have never finished that book. The other one was a novel with a Christmas setting. The story itself was well, somewhat entertaining but the author and her sister author narrated. What I can say is that authorship and voice acting are not synonymous. 

That said, there are exceptions. The Audies 2009 Finalists demonstrate this for authors/narrators: Neil Gaiman, Augusten Burroughs, Carrington MacDuffie and a few more. Perhaps I’ll listen to one of these, authors/narrators, and hear what was missing from my prior experience. 

What has been your experience with authors narrating their own works?