Happy Weekend, terrific people!
There’s been a question I’ve long wanted to ask.
For the past few years, readers on social media and email have asked me about audiobook versions of my novels. I’ve always responded with a vague “maybe someday,” but truthfully, I haven’t had any concrete plans. Until recently, I hadn’t even listened to audiobooks myself, so I couldn’t fully grasp their appeal from a reader’s perspective.
Things have changed, though. I’ve been enjoying podcasts on my walks, and I see their potential for some readers. While I prefer human narration, AI is okay as long as the messaging is transparent and doesn’t mislead me into thinking it’s a human narrator.
Here’s the dilemma: there’s a demand (from my perspective), but time spent on audiobooks takes away from writing the next page of the next book. After researching production (process, time, cost, terms) and disliking many aspects (plus, I wouldn’t want to “half-ass” a series by narrating only one book and abandoning the rest), I’ve decided against commissioning narrated audiobooks.
However, many readers simply want to “listen” while commuting, waiting, or multitasking, and wouldn’t mind text-to-speech versions. There are apps to serve such audiences.
What do I do?
Recently, Amazon invited me to try their automated voice feature for some books. It was decent, but not great (and I’m sure it’s improving). Ultimately, I decided not to pursue it not only for quality reasons but because I needed to ensure the produced book clearly disclaims machine translation to avoid misleading customers. Machine-voiced or not, I want my readers to enjoy what they’re listening to.
On the other hand, some promising new companies enable high-quality AI narrations that offer a middle ground between no option and the “best” option. Production is still involved, but less so. I’m leaning towards trying this for one book to see how it turns out and how readers respond.
So, if you’re an audiobook listener or considering it, I’d love your input on the simple poll below. Assume the audiobook would clearly state it’s not human-narrated (licensed voice) to avoid setting false expectations and it will be priced competitively with my e-books. The audience is readers who just want something to “listen” to.
In other news, Crimson Aten is coming along nicely and racing towards the final 20% of the book. I already have plans for the next two, one which will be a successor to The Weave and the other a non-fiction (but based on ancient history) but I’ll share more about it later.
And that’s it for today.
Thank you for being my readers and I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
Jay