Altadena audiobook narrator Rebecca Lucas runs a fully independent operation. From recording in her DIY audiobooth to editing her own sound, she’s a one-stop shop for indie presses looking to elevate their catalogues.

How does one stumble upon the career of an audiobook narrator? “I think it was mostly my sister being like, ‘Hey, you should be an audiobook narrator!’ And then I did. So here I am,” Lucas joked over a recent phone call.

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For the sake of full transparency, reader, I am her sister. While I don’t typically write stories about my family members, I’ve had a front-row seat watching someone with no background in audiobook narration carve out a niche in the growing field — from learning to edit sound to adhere to Audible standards to building her own audiobooth — and thought it would be instructive for anyone interested in the business or who just likes audiobooks.

The Audio Publishers Association‘s annual consumer survey reported that audiobook sales revenue in 2024 reached $2.22 billion, a 13 percent increase from the previous year. Between January and October 2024, digital audio represented a 15 percent share of the adult book market.

While some might think narrating audiobooks doesn’t have the same razzle-dazzle as a stage or screen acting role, many professional narrators have pointed out one major appeal: they (typically) get to play all the parts.

So I’m using my insider access to find out how she did it.

“I went to ACX, which is part of Audible, and all I had to do was sign up and create a profile,” Lucas said. ACX, which stands for Audiobook Creation Exchange, operates as an “all-in-one marketplace for independent creators” and allows budding audiobook narrators to upload samples and audition for open titles.

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Lucas didn’t have any samples, so she read from her daughter’s Nancy Drew Diaries book, pulled a rom-com from her shelf and a fantasy novel she liked, and read from those too. While she’d never narrated anything professionally before, she was qualified to handle the narration like a pro.

“I have a master’s degree in theater; I’m a trained actress,” she said. “I haven’t worked in theater since I had kids, but one of my best qualities as an actor has always been my voice and my articulation and my ability to do accents and things like that. I’m an avid book reader, and I like to read out loud to my kids, and just out loud in general. . . It felt like the perfect job for me.”

Although ACX gives users the ability to audition, Lucas said that within a week of signing up for the platform and uploading her samples, an author reached out and offered her a gig reading a short story. Since then, she’s had consistent work reading everything from sci-fi and fantasy to spicy romance and gory horror. She’s narrated children’s nonfiction books as well.

But landing the gigs wasn’t the biggest hurdle. She had to build a booth and learn how to navigate editing software.

“So my first booth — I’m saying booth in air quotes here — was made out of PVC pipe and some sound blankets,” Lucas joked. “My brother-in-law is a sound engineer, so he helped me get a good microphone and taught me how to edit to give it a quality sound.”

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“I still spend most of the time editing. I go through, chop it up to get all the bad takes out, make sure that I said everything correctly, didn’t skip anything, or say a wrong word — all the weird noises, awkward pauses, airplanes flying by — I cut that. And then I go through it again with a fine-tooth comb and make sure the sound is crystal clear.”

After completing and shipping several books off to publishers, she thought, I need a better booth.

“We found blueprints online and my husband and I built it,” she said. The more than six-foot-tall booth has insulated walls and ceilings, and it’s padded inside with foam. While it’s not completely soundproof, she said “it’s definitely sound deadening,” before admitting she kicks her kids and husband out of the room if she’s reading anything risqué, just in case the sound breaks through.

They built a vent into the top with a fan that can blow air inside between takes. The construction took about a month, spending an hour here and there putting it together when they could, and it cost upwards of a thousand dollars, not counting the recording equipment.

“It looks like a phone booth, and it just sits in the corner of the office, and that’s my little workstation.”

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Of the myriad titles Lucas has narrated, her recent audiobook release of “American Narcissus” by Chandler Morrison is her favorite.

She landed the gig at Morrison’s book release party. “I hadn’t even read the book,” she said. But after a night of hopping from Permanent Records Roadhouse to various bars around L.A., Morrison invited Lucas to narrate the book. At first, she shrugged it off, thinking all deals made after midnight are likely to fall through, but a few days later, an email from the publisher arrived in her inbox. “By the time I heard from the publisher, I had finished reading the book and loved it, so I was really excited.”

In “American Narcissus,” the American dream is dead, Los Angeles is on fire, and the motley crew of characters that run amok through the pages are searching for love in all the wrong places.

Lucas spent weeks workshopping all of the voices for each of the novels’s main characters, from a surfer with a porn addiction who falls in love with a chatty sex robot to a booze and drug-addled insurance executive who’s sleeping with an employee who makes the trope of “crazy ex-girlfriend” look like a Girl Scout.

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“I love L.A. books, and ‘American Narcissus’ feels spot on. It’s very funny and very dark,” Lucas said. “And even though all of the characters in the book are horrible people, you still have empathy for them. You feel like you know all of these people. And sometimes you are some of these people. So it’s like the ugly part of LA, but the beautiful part of LA … but how ugly the beautiful part is?”

But as the adage goes, life imitates art, and just as wildfire creeps closer to the characters in “American Narcissus,” Lucas had to evacuate her Altadena home due to wildfires that claimed thousands of her neighbors’ homes.

“Mine didn’t burn down, thankfully,” Lucas said. “But it meant that I couldn’t work because I wasn’t in my house, and I didn’t even know if it was safe to be in there, so I wasn’t able to get back to my booth for almost three months.”

By late April, Lucas moved back into her house after a lengthy clean-up process. She’s returned to her booth and is narrating again, most recently, “Janitors vs. The Living Dead” by the Sisters of Slaughter, Melissa Lason and Michelle Garza.

You can listen to “American Narcissus” and other books narrated by Lucas via Audible, Libro.fm, and other audiobook platforms, or if you’re like me, you can just pick up the phone and ask your big sister to read you a story.