Since you wanted constructive feedback, I would like to check out your noise cleaning though. Are you using Audacity ? How did you noise-clean your file ? Because the silences are quite clear of background noise, but while you are speaking there is some rustling which does mar the whole listening experience a bit. Not too muchh so one couldn't understand, but we are still at the beginning, so maybe we can try to find out the source of the error right away and your future files will be noise-free. Please let me know a step-by-step what you did while editing / noise-cleaning. And if you still have the "raw unedited" file, would you mind uploading it to my folder as test so I could look for myself what can be done against the noise. You have such a nice voice and diction, it would be optimal if we could enhance the pleasure by making the file cleaner.
I use Audacity to record, on my Windows 10 desktop, via a USB Corsair headset mic which unfortunately seems to have a factory defect that picks up sound very clearly yet VERY quiet, so I used the MP3Gain app to amplify my reading to an acceptable dB level. I have seen the Librivox recommendations to amplify via the Effect>Amplify... tab option within Audacity, but that doesn't seem to want to let me amplify it so far. It just greys out the OK button if I try to adjust the numbers or sliding scale.
So, step-by-step, my procedure so far has been to open a new track
(should I be opening a new Project for every Section? I thought at first the Projects were more of a Folder, but now I think I'm wrong), record the Intro, Section, and Ending,
(is this where I should be doing Save lossless copy of Project?) and start on the editing:
I select the whole track, go to Effect>Amplify>Manage>Factory Presets>Defaults, then OK. This bumps my volume to nearly-sufficient dB levels.
From there, I select the last five seconds of silence, go to Effect>Noise Reduction>Get Noise Profile, then select the whole track and return to Effect>Noise Reduction: it sets the factors automatically at Noise reduction: 12, Sensitivity: 6.00, Frequency smoothing: 3, and Noise: Reduce is selected. I leave those settings as they are, and hit OK.
Then I check for lip smacks or other obnoxious noises I can identify and cut out, before Exporting the file as MP3.
I open MP3Gain and upload the MP3 file in there, hit Track Analysis to amplify the volume to the last bit of parameters, and Track Gain to save the changes to the file. Then I open the File folder and double-check the MP3 file in Checker, before uploading.
I'll upload a Raw recording as a test, though. It would be good to find out now, if there is a better way to amplify and clean, or if my recordings are going to be fuzzy for as long as I use this headset.