As part of this week’s focus on audio, Publishers Weekly talks with an award-winning narrator about bringing books to life, how he prepares for a recording session, upcoming projects, and all things audio.

Here’s a sample of my conversation with the great Scott Brick, narrator of more than 500 audiobooks and winner of audio awards galore:

What drew you to audiobooks? How did you get your start?

There’s no purer form of storytelling than audiobooks; it’s just the narrator’s voice and the listener’s ear. I got my start when an old buddy of mine from UCLA got me an audition at Dove Audio, where he’d been working. Stefan Rudnicki was running it at the time and hired me for a few short stories. The day I went in to record them, Dan Musselman was leaving Dove Audio to become executive producer at Books on Tape. Stefan suggested to Dan that he listen to me in the studio before he left, Dan liked what he heard and gave me his card. Since then, of the 500 or so titles I’ve recorded, easily 300 have been for Books on Tape. I wonder every day what would have happened had I not met Dan that day. I owe that man my career.

Did anything in your background, aside from formal training, come in useful?

Other than my acting training, the thing that came in most handy was my passion for books. I know lots of people love books. I’m not unique there, but I was voracious in how I’d devour them. I’d set goals, challenge myself to see how much I could read. A hundred books a year was pretty much standard for me, and absorbing that many books, you tend to get an instinctive feel for how stories play out, their pacing, their resolution, character development, etc. That helps tremendously when narrating a book, because you really have to be aware of the ending of the story, even when you’re narrating the beginning.

Check out the rest of my Q&A with Scott Brick here: The Storyteller.