And advances in audiobooks

I’m using computer technology to create auto-narrated audiobooks. Race to Refuge is my first such audiobook and, it has already been released on Google Play Books.

One of the areas where recent technological strides have been made is in the area of artificial voice technology. This is sometimes called digital voice technology or text to speech technology. Think of Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and the Google Assistant, but these are not the best. Text to speech technology has become so advanced that it’s hard sometimes to distinguish it from actual human voices. Have you ever received a robocall and been uncertain if it is a person or machine?

 You might be wondering why I would use digital voice technology when I could simply pay a human. The answer is money and time. An audiobook produced by a professional narrator typically costs between $250 and $500 per finished hour and represents about 10,000 words. This means the standard novel consists of eight to ten finished hours and costs between $2,000 and $5,000. The finished production might take several weeks to produce.  

 Many novel-length stories, and most short stories and novellas, don’t have the readership needed to make such audiobooks financially feasible. However, the new artificial voice technology is changing that equation. While improvements in voice technology are still needed, authors can now create new audiobooks in minutes on Kobo and Google Play Books for a fraction of the cost. I suspect Amazon will soon follow.