To quickly separate failures from the tons of newbies reading audiobooks, ACX has a “robot” that blindly checks for basic sound values.
https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/measure-between-23db-and-18db-rms/32770/16
There is an analysis tool flynwill developed that you can install and it will tell you all the numbers on your show in one pass.
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Nyquist_Analyze_Plug-ins#ACX_Check
To your specific point: you can’t just beat your performance bloody and force it to be “robot compliant,” because the very next thing that happens is Human Quality Control. They have a failure called “Overprocessing.” That will crash the submissions with honky, wine-glass voices; compression artifacts; odd, pumping background noises and excessive voice clicks and pops. If you’ve been Control-Lling your voice clicks, you may have odd sounding holes in your Room Tone or background sound.
Are you recording in 44100, 16-bit, Stereo; or maybe Mono, or 32-bit, Mono? Your Analyze > Contrast numbers may come out funny if you’re trying to record in much too high sound standards.
Almost all new posters have trouble with their “studio,” giving them a seriously high background noise for any of a number of reasons.
If you feel like it, record a forum test clip and post it. Only post the raw sound file. No processing.
http://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/TestClip/Record_A_Clip.html
Koz