What you can Expect:

• Small groups that maximize learning, personal attention, and most importantly, booth time.
• Practice, Practice, Practice! In-studio and during discussion between coaching sessions, audio book performance technique will be broken down into specific actable tools and rehearsed.
• Five recording/coaching opportunities. Participants will work in the booth on various narrative genres, identifying performance challenges and employing storytelling techniques to meet them.
• Each participant will be coached and directed by Paul.
• Learning to self-direct. With the advent of home studios and lower production expenditures, publishers are employing fewer directors. More and more, talent can expect to work alone or with an engineer. The workshop focuses on specific self-direction vocabulary to compensate for lack of director feedback.
• A "nuts & bolts" guide to generating employment: From who does the hiring to how to create a best-foot-forward demo.
• Audio tracks of your recordings, including Paul's coaching will be sent to you.
• A Sample Narrator CD; Audiofile Magazine; Narrator Worksheet.
• Participants will be asked to bring excerpts, (three to five minutes), of the following genres: Fiction, (first and third person that features mostly narrative), Fiction, (first or third person that features male/female dialogue), Non-fiction, (first or third person). Children's is optional. Paul will also have some narration excerpts available. Personalized pre-event assistance with excerpt selections.
• Note: The excerpts you select should be contemporary (no Greek literature, please). Most importantly, selections should be work you could be cast to narrate.

New York producer, Paul Ruben, has produced and directed award-winning audio books for every major publisher since 1990. Among his prestigious achievements, Paul is a two-time Grammy Award winner for Best Spoken Word Album: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, written and narrated by Al Franken/2003 and Always Looking Up, written and narrated by Michael J. Fox/2009. His APA (Audio Publishers Association) Audie Awards include: It's Not About the Bike, Raymond and Hannah, Brimstone, The World is Flat, and A Slight Trick of the Mind. Paul's productions have been graced with dozens of Audiofile Magazine Earphone Awards.

        Paul is the most sought-after producer/director in the audiobook industry, not only by audio book publishers, but by narrators as well. When Paul Ruben coaches, narrators listen: From beginners to experienced professionals, narrators have been soliciting Paul's unique coaching expertise to acquire the performance tools that will assist them to becoming more compelling, and more employable, storytellers.

         Paul has worked with numerous celebrity talent, including: Johnny Depp, Joan Collins, F. Murray Abraham, Felicia Rashad, Oliver Platt, Burt Reynolds, Ron Livingston, Meryl Streep, Lynn Redgrave, Peter MacNicol, Michael J. Fox, Alfre Woodard, Al Franken and the inimitable Amy Sedaris. But it is the first-time narrators Paul has cast over the past decade, many of whom have gone on to award-winning audio book careers, that he is most gratified by, including: Oliver Wyman, Holter Graham, Maggie-Meg Reed, Kathleen McInerney, Eliza Foss, Beth McDonald, David LeDoux, Cassandra Morris, Pete Larkin, and Charles Stransky.