Some authors read their work beautifully--Neil Gaiman, for example. Others--Madeleine L'Engle comes to mind, bless her--do not. It depends on the author's reading ability and voice. I'm reading my main series, I'm farming the others out via ACX.
Anyone done an author read audio book? Anyone ever bought one?
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Yes, I'm doing the VO for my own books. COMPLETE KITTEN CARE is already live and I'll be voicing several others of the nonfiction titles this year. The thriller LOST AND FOUND hasn't yet gone live but should shortly. In another life I'm a stage actor. 
Nonfiction is pretty straightforward. And that can work well for authors because after all, YOU are the expert and readers may indeed want to hear it in your voice.
But fiction can be quite a challenge as others have said, using multiple character voices. I agree that especially for fiction it's best to go with a pro (unless you ARE a pro!). Because it's not just the reading. The equipment ain't cheap, and there's a skill to editing and mastering. It's also time that you could instead spend writing.
Nonfiction is pretty straightforward. And that can work well for authors because after all, YOU are the expert and readers may indeed want to hear it in your voice.
But fiction can be quite a challenge as others have said, using multiple character voices. I agree that especially for fiction it's best to go with a pro (unless you ARE a pro!). Because it's not just the reading. The equipment ain't cheap, and there's a skill to editing and mastering. It's also time that you could instead spend writing.
I'm with Amy. For non-fiction, you actually want the author to read it since he/she's the expert. For fiction, you don't want to hear the author -- you want to hear the character. So if the author is trained as an actor and can become the character flawlessly, then sure. But most of us haven't progressed much beyond the middle-school-play level of acting. 
If you look on the stuff at Podiobooks, the majority of it is author-read, and a lot of the authors are excellent at it (obviously, it's a spectrum, with everything else), but a lot have professional set-ups, or at least a decent soundproof closet.
.JB Rowley said:
Sorry .. I meant it as an example of a range of results. Librivox is all done with volunteers donating their reading time. So they record for fun as much as anything. The one I noted on Dicken's was good and I think he did that book like we do freebies on Amazon - get noticed and pull in some followup business. At either the beginning or end of a chapter he says his web site so you can find him.
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Somewhere I saw pictures of a bunch of narrator's sound booths. And most are really like closets as noted. Foam draped walls and a computer system with a good microphone. No toddlers screaming in the background
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