Different Opinions about Narrators

We all know how different people and their opinions can be. This is very evident when looking at audiobook narrators where listeners have fewer chances to give their own interpretations to passages than they do when they read a book. In addition, there are differences of opinions on various aspects of the audible:

Do you prefer a male narrator or a female? (I tend to choose the one that the book has most of its points of view written in.)

Does the age of the narrator make a difference? (I want the age of the voice to be somewhat close to the main characters in the book.)

Should the accent of the narrator match the location of the setting? (I prefer this, but it's not crucial if the narrator has a general accent. However, they need to be able to handle any special accents within the manuscript.)

But apart from the issues and choices surrounding narrations, people look at the same thing so differently. For example, one reviewer wrote, "Narrator did a great job on the accents, emotions and differentiating the characters. Looking forward to Hopkins' next novel and hope she teams with this narrator again." However, another reviewer said of the same narrator: "Unfortunately the narrator didn’t do male voices at all so it was difficult to distinguish between the male and female voices and know who was speaking at times." A third reviewer added, "The reader has a smooth voice for this read and does the intonations well. She brings this book to life with her storytelling talents." But another observed, "Some of the voices were a bit choppy. Like the narrator was trying to slow down more."

All of this points to the fact that what appeals to some listeners will not others. The listener who gave a bad review above told me I should check the narrators of an author she liked. I did, but I didn't like those narrators at all and thought the ones I used were much better. There is truly no pleasing everyone. The author should just choose the best narrator possible, knowing that not everyone will like that choice. And perhaps the listener should be a bit more generous in their evaluations. Narrating is not easy, and most narrators hired by the big publishers will not accept books from indie authors.

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