Adventures in Audiobooks

As promised, here is my report on my experiences with the various free programs to convert ebooks into auto-generated audiobooks.

The first off Google.

Google’s conversion process offers 12 female and 12 male voice options with various accents.

You can use different voices for different characters within the book.

You can listen to the book, modify the pronunciation of words, and edit the text of the book. Improvements to the technology are automatically applied to all audio books.

You can charge and change your price as you like, including free.

The process is pretty simple, given the many options.

It takes only hours for the audiobook to be available for sale.

Next Apple via Draft2Digital.

This service offers you essentially no options. Apple/D2D chooses from 2 female and 2 male voices according to the story’s genre.

You can not listen to the narration before the book is released nor modify pronunciation or text.

You can charge what you like. Changes after release will cost money. You cannot withdraw the audiobook in the first six months.

The process takes a minute, given that you essentially have no options to choose from beyond price.

You can set your price, including free.

It takes months for audiobooks to be available for sale. Five of the twelve ebooks I uploaded on the first of January 2024 remain unconverted on the 29th of April 2024. Conversions appeared at random over the course of five months.

Lastly, Amazon.

You currently have a choice of five female voices including one with a British Accent, and three male voices. More are promised coming this summer.

Promised upgrades this summer include using different voices for different chapters, and improvements to the voices. It seems that you will need to manually republish the book to receive the upgrades.

You can listen to your audiobook and edit pronunciation and the speed a word is spoken prior to release.

You are limited to books under about 240K words, or 27 hours of audiobook narration.

Books require a table of contents. The Kindle Create app will add tables of contents automatically.

The process is simple, and depending on how much you want to review and modify, fast.

Minimum price is $3.99. Audiobooks are listed in both Audible and Amazon

Are auto-generated audiobooks worth it?

Note: My audiobooks are free on Google & Apple.

Google – First month sales 431 audiobooks vs 288 ebooks. Second month 1,179 audiobooks vs 506 ebooks, with 5,813 audiobooks sold April 2022 – Dec 2022. This month, April 2024 I’ve sold 461 copies of both audiobooks and ebooks to date.

Apple – Given the erratic release of my books, and the limits of D2D reports, I’ll offer my March and April-to-date numbers. In March I sold 33 audiobooks vs 63 ebooks. In April to date (28th) I’ve sold 51 audiobooks vs 83 ebooks. Five month total: 127 audiobooks sold.

Amazon – I am only including the sales of books at retail price. In March I sold five $3.99 audiobooks vs 40 paid books. Of those 40, 24 were my new releases. In April I sold 2 audiobooks vs 15 retail priced ebooks.

Major downsides.

Google – the necessity of converting your manuscript into an epub on your own which may not provide a perfect ebook to convert. The last book I converted missed chapter headings, so they did not appear in the table of contents for the audiobook, though the text was there. I changed the chapters titles to include them.

Apple – The lack of any options or control over the product and their whimsical attitude to actually publishing the audiobook.

Amazon – the limit to the length of the book, the limits to pricing.

My takeaway.

Audiobooks increase total sales significantly, and can boost ebook sales as well – in proportion to ebook sales volume. They extend your reach into a new and growing market. And, well, you’re in the game at no expense to you.

Auto-generated audiobooks provide an acceptable listening experience, especially if priced below human-voiced audiobooks. I’ve had no reviews critical of the narration, and rating parallel the ebook version. They will only get better over time. And probably fast.

All three programs are free to use vs hundreds to thousands of dollars needed for a human to read your book. This gives you flexibility in pricing.

Published by chucklitka

I was born in 1950 and spent the 1960’s reading hundreds of SF books while dreaming of becoming a SF author when I grew up. I enrolled as a journalism major in college, but dropped that after my freshman year when I realized I was too shy to be a journalist. I then decide I either had the talent to write or I didn’t. Time would tell. In the late 1970’s I finished and submitted a SF novella, a SF short story, and a fantasy novel. They brought me a small collection rejection slips. I continued to write for fun. In 2009, now with a computer with a built in spellchecker I got more serious and completed three novels the course of next six years, for the fun of writing. I had no intention of submitting them to traditional publishers. Been there, done that. If I felt they were good enough, I’d self-publish them, which I did in 2015, for free since I don’t need to be paid for having fun. As of 2021 I have published 10 SF/adventure novels, 2 novellas and one children’s short story. I’m married. My wife and I have two children, and two grandchildren. I have lived most of my life in Wisconsin. I’ve worked at various jobs, including 13 year with a commercial printer and small town daily newspaper. I operated a cottage industry mail order tea business for a decade, and quit my day job at 53 to try my hand a making a living as an artist. Never made it big, never went bust. We’re retired these days and living a quiet life. The type of life I like.

4 Comments

  1. Audrey Driscoll says:
    April 29, 2024 at 7:50 pm

    It looks like Google is the best choice for those who don’t like Amazon’s restrictions. How hard is it to convert a ms. (Word) to epub? Is Calibre the only option?

    Also, I seem to remember you saying Google audiobook is available only to those who published their books on Google Play Books before a certain date. And that Amazon is offering the audiobook thing only as a beta in the US at this time. Still true?

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    1. chucklitka says:
      April 30, 2024 at 7:58 am

      I use Calibre to convert my books to epubs, though I know that I can make “export” as an epub in LibreOffice, and I suspect in Word as well. I think Calibre produces a better copy – at least one that works on Google, where as the LibreOffice didn’t. In any event, I don’t get into the weeds making epubs. To convert a book, you add the book to Calibre, and then select it to convert it. It gives you a number of options in a number of categories – most of which I don’t understand and ignore. I just click the “houristic” check box, use the generic e-ink setting, and select ver 3 for epub. Version 2 is the default, but it didn’t seem to work for Google, hence ver. 3. I don’t know how good a job it does, but it seems to be good enough.

      Originally Google said audiobooks was a beta program and hinted that it might charge later, but it is still free for any ebook on Google. It took me several years to get traction on Google, and I think that there is a specific audience for free books, and because there are far fewer free books, they are easier to find, and pick up, which likely explains my success on Google – that and a lot of people read books on their phones.

      I received an invite for Amazon’s program. If you can take advantage of it, the option to create an audiobook will be listed on your bookshelf on Amazon alongside paperbacks, hardcovers etc. I have no idea how many people were invited, and why.

      Apple is dead simple if you have your books on 2D2, and maybe they work faster for books that are not free. As I see it, you have nothing to lose by giving it a try. Right now it appears that all my audiobook sales are in addition to ebook sales, so it’s a win. And long books are popular as audiobooks. My daughter spends several hours in a car each day for work and listens to audiobooks when she drives. A lot of people, including truck drivers do this. As I see it, you’re reaching a new market with audiobooks.

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      1. Audrey Driscoll says:
        April 30, 2024 at 8:46 pm

        Helpful info, Chuck. Thanks!

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  2. robbiesinspiration says:
    April 30, 2024 at 10:19 am

    This is interesting and useful information. Thanks for sharing.

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