Find a quieter room. There is no substitute for this - recording in a “not so quiet” room will seriously compromise the recording quality.
Take regular sips of water, and don’t try to read too much at a time. Pauses can be easily edited out later, and are much easier to deal with than saliva sounds.
“Cheap” or “bad”. If your mic sounds poor, then you really need to get a better microphone. “Inexpensive” microphones are not necessarily bad, though anything under about $30 probably is bad.
While processing can do wonders to polish a reasonably good recording into something that is very good, it’s pointless putting lipstick on a pig.
There’s a caution here. The mastering tool order is not accidental. EQ (Low Rolloff) is there to prevent low pitch rumble and ‘affordable microphone’ trash out of the processing steps. There was a recent post from someone whose sub-audible rumble was three times the volume of the voice.
All that is different from voice quality Equalization (screechiness, booming etc.)
Change the room.
If you’re reading for audiobooks, you are a business. The best return on investment is a room and system that doesn’t require constant babysitting and post production. ACX Human Quality Control watches for processing errors. They call the errors distracting.
Also distracting is room echoes (reading in a bathroom). There is no filter for that.
Take regular sips of water, and don’t try to read too much at a time. Pauses can be easily edited out later, and are much easier to deal with than saliva sounds.
There was a recent note from ACX to stop using condenser microphones. Dynamic microphones sound perfectly fine and aren’t subject to boosting sibilance, tongue, lip and other mouth noises. Again, reducing post production time and effort.