I am certain that all the writers who follow this blog are, like myself, against using generative AI to write our stories for us. Some of you, perhaps most, may also draw the line at using AI in any of its various forms, for any reason connected with your writing. However, if you are interested in offering your readership audiobooks, and lack the business to justify the expense of hiring human narrators, then a new opportunity has opened up for you. Namely, Spotify. Yes, that music streaming service.
Recently Spotify has begun to give indie-authors the opportunity to offer their books on their platform as narrated by a digital voice audiobooks. You upload an ePub version of your book and they will convert it into an audiobook at no cost to you. You set your own price. I’m not an audiobook listener, so I am not a good judge of audiobook narration, but I must admit, I rather liked my narrator, Nathaniel, who was, of course, the voice of a real human who was paid for his work.
The process of setting up an audiobook is pretty much the same as with the other audiobook services I use. You do have to be signed up with Spotify. Currently you have to reside in the United States. You have to give them your banking data so they can send you your royalties and the government your tax info. When you upload your ePub book, your blurb from the web is automatically loaded, which, I guess, is the state of the internet and world these days. There are the usual details to be filled in, like title, series, publisher, author, and genres. There is a character limit of 500,000 characters, so you’re looking at an upper limit of around 100K words. You have 5 or 6 (I forget) male and 4 female voices to choose from. They offer a list of words to check the narrator’s pronunciation, which you can then correct if needed. Interestingly, they offer the chance to post a teaser from your book using up to 700 words that people can listen to before buying. All in all the experience, after your first time, is straightforward.
Not being a book platform, I have no idea how readily your books will be found, though I believe audiobooks on Spotify is a growing business. I am going to upload a limited number of my shorter books, and may report back in a month or two.
If you are interested, you should search for “Spotify for Authors”, since I did not see any option for accessing this service from my usual account page.
