 Straight Shooting Advice w/ a Cheerleader's Vibe
This book was highly recommended to me by a producer in New York. I read it and immediately knew that this is who I wanted to learn from. Great tips throughout - she really wants everyone to succeed - she's not selfish with her knowledge at all. I subsequently contacted the author through her website (www.terriapple.com) and signed up to train with her while she was in New York. She's widely recognized as one of the BEST in the business; professional, positive, smart and she has a real "Go Team!" attitude that shows in her writing style. Without a doubt, this book is the first step in working toward a career in voice-overs.
 Frustrating Read and Repetitive
There are so many typos in this book that it is actually frustrating to read. There is also so much repetition, not in general, but huge paragraphs that can be found word for word three pages earlier. Terri Apple is very good at cheerleading and she obviously knows the business but there's too much emphasis on LA contacts and way, way, way too many text errors to recommend this book. And I'm not talking about grammar. I'm talking about "The re" "and and" or whole words left out. I found myself struggling to read this book. Since it was published in 1999 some of the advice is out-of-date, like carry a pager (pre-cell phones) which is not Ms. Apple's fault, nor her editors, if she had one. I do find her responsible for the content of her book. With so many books on voice-overs out there, I would recommend another.
This is a terrible book!
I doubt that Terri Apple even edited her book one-time through. There are a number of grammatical mistakes and spelling errors, making the meaning of several sentences nearly incomprehensible. Had she or an editor read this book, they would have caught many of the obvious mistakes ahead of time. The chapters were not very well laid-out and extremely inconsistent. The book's content was not organized well. Much of the information in each chapter did not coincide with the chapter title and she would skip ideas from one paragraph to the next. Also, she repeated much of the same information in several different chapters under different sections. Perhaps she wrote the book in between her many voiceover auditions. The information in this book is outdated since the industry has changed so dramatically since its publication. Terri Apple has proved that pretty voices should only be used when they have something to say. And that a pretty voice can be an ugly read.
Not exactly what I expected
Personally I expected more helpful hints and techniques for improving your skills in voice-overs but instead most of the book is concentrated on advising how to promote your talent. So if you want to know how to be a voice-talent this is propably not the best book for you, but if you feel you already have what it takes to be a voice-over artist, it gives you advise what to do to get yourself into business.
Good Advice in Less-Than-Perfect Form
The massive amount of helpful information in this book is marred by only two things: o It desperately needs some copy editing to remove the sentence fragments and other "word-processing glitches," and o The discussions of technology need to be reviewed by someone with a firmer grasp of how such things actually work. Because of this, I would give it 4-1/2 stars instead of 5 if that rating were available. In the big picture, however, these are minor quibbles with a book that otherwise covers a lot of ground and answers a lot of questions that aspiring voice actors would have. It provides an in-depth look at the voice-over business (with particular focus on Los Angeles) from the perspective of a busy, in-demand performer who has paid enough dues to know what she's talking about, and because it is fairly new it covers recent developments that older books omit. Certainly well worth the modest investment for anyone wanting to know more about this business.
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