Record close, in a soft room, on a phone if that is what you have — proximity beats equipment every time. Say the date and who is speaking at the start of every file. Never put the microphone on a hard table between you. And with an older relative, do not tell them it is an interview.

How to record audio for a book

Before you press record

Six of these take under a minute each and every one saves an hour later. The last three are the ones people skip and regret.

  • Microphone 15–30cm from the speaker's mouth, not on the table between you.
  • Soft room: curtains, sofa, carpet. Kitchens and conservatories are the worst rooms in the house.
  • Turn off the fridge hum if you can, and the radio you stopped hearing an hour ago.
  • Phone on aeroplane mode — an incoming call ends the recording on some devices.
  • Check you have battery and storage for twice the session length.
  • Record ten seconds, play it back, listen. Every time. This is the step that saves whole afternoons.
  • Say aloud: the date, who is speaking, and where you are.
  • Prepare a name list — people, places, ships, streets, terms — before you start.
  • Ask permission to record, out loud, on the recording.
  • Back up the file the same day. To two places.
  • Note the timestamp of anything that made you sit up. You will not remember which of the eleven files it was in.
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The recording checklist and interview questions

The one-page setup checklist, plus the question sets grouped by who you're recording and what part of their life you're asking about — including the guidance on sensitive subjects.

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Proximity beats equipment

A £900 microphone across a room sounds worse than a phone eighteen inches from someone's mouth. Distance picks up the room; proximity picks up the person.

If you are buying anything, buy a small lavalier microphone that clips to a collar — under £30, plugs into a phone, and will improve your recordings more than anything else at any price. Two of them if you are recording a conversation.

And never put the recorder on a hard table. Tables transmit every cup, tap and shift of weight straight into the microphone.

Recording someone who doesn't want to be recorded

This is the real problem with family interviews, and it is not a technical one.

Do not call it an interview. Do not set the phone down between you like evidence. Say you would like to record it so you do not have to keep stopping to write things down, put the phone somewhere unremarkable, and then have a conversation.

The first twenty minutes will be stiff. That is normal, and it is why the good material almost always arrives after the first hour — which is also why the second session is nearly always better than the first. Plan for two.

Ask permission clearly, on the recording, and mean it. Say what the recording is for. If they want something kept out later, keep it out.

Session length, and when to stop

Sixty to ninety minutes. Beyond that people tire and repeat themselves, and you end up with three hours of material where ninety minutes was better.

Stop before they want to stop. An interview that ends while someone still has something to say guarantees a second session; one that ends in exhaustion does not.

And when someone becomes upset, put the recorder down and stay with them. You can always ask again another day. Whether they will talk to you again is the only asset that matters here.

Getting the material into shape afterwards

Two habits make the difference between an archive you use and an archive you avoid.

Name each file properly on the day: date, speaker, subject. `2026-09-09 Mum childhood Kerry.m4a`, not `New Recording 47`.

Note the moments. After each session write three lines: what surprised you, what she would not talk about, and the one story to follow up next time. Ten minutes, and it is the closest thing to a table of contents your book will have for months.

What Your Book Pro does here

Your Book Pro is a British book-writing platform. You bring a book — an idea, a folder of notes, half a draft, or a finished manuscript written somewhere else — and it gives you the editorial process a publisher would run: a plan, structured feedback, a simulated beta read, a line edit, a proofread, a cover, a blurb and a print-ready file. You can type it, upload it or speak it. The tools sit in one place and work on the same manuscript, so the feedback compounds instead of arriving as twelve disconnected opinions.

You can record and upload, or type, or both, and the same tools work on either — most people do a mix, and there is no correct answer.

Transcription turns your recordings into clean verbatim with speaker labels, checked against your Book Dictionary so names come back right. Themes from Bulk Audio is the one built for archives: it reads across all your recordings at once and reports what the material is actually about, which is the question you cannot answer by listening back linearly. And the free interview question sets give you the structure — grouped by relationship and by period of life, with guidance on the sensitive ones.

What still favours a human transcriptionist: heavy accents, several people talking at once, poor rooms, and specialist terminology. If your recordings are difficult, budget £60–£120 an audio hour for the hardest ones and use the tools for the rest.

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Questions people ask

Is a phone good enough to record a book interview?
Yes, if it is close. A modern phone 20cm from someone's mouth in a carpeted room produces a perfectly transcribable recording. Distance, not the device, is what ruins most audio.
What file format should I use?
Whatever your device produces natively — m4a, wav or mp3 are all fine. Do not re-compress it to save space; storage is cheap and audio quality is not recoverable.
Should I take notes while recording?
Very few. Note timestamps and follow-up questions only. Writing while someone talks changes how they talk, and it is the main reason people clam up.
How many hours of recording make a book?
Roughly 15–40 hours of interviews for a full-length life story, which is about what a professional ghostwriter would gather. Ten hours makes a substantial family book.
What if the recording failed?
Write down everything you remember immediately, before you do anything else — and ask to talk again. The second telling is usually better anyway. This is also why you play back ten seconds at the start.
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