Tag Archives: audiobook

Spotify Audiobooks

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. NOTE: I discovered that there is a limit of 5 books to this service. There is a character limit of 500,000 characters, so you’re looking at an upper limit of around 100K words. You have 6 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. You can only regenerate the audio 4 times, including while you are setting up the book, so determine your voice and corrected words before actually creating the audiobook. Still, 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.

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.

Apple Audiobooks; Not for the Fainthearted

From Debra Purdy Kong’s blog via her comments on Audrey Driscoll’s blog, I recently learned that Apple is offering to convert the ebooks into auto-narrated audiobooks – for free. Audiobooks are popular and the price was right, so I investigated the prospect. I found that I did not have to get my books into the Apple Store on my own, rather the conversion is done in partnership with Draft2Digital. I already had my books on D2D, but I was only distributing them to the two European stores, using Smashwords for Apple and all the rest. I would have to switch to D2D to be able to take advantage of the offer. Which I did, and adding all the other stores while dropping Smashwords for distribution, while I was at it.

So here’s the deal. To create an Apple audiobook, you simply select your book on D2D, and click on the audiobook tab next to the description of your book. Here you are offered two options; one to to work Finaway Voice, and the other to have them auto-narrated by Apple. Clicking on the Apple narration takes you to a very (i.e. too) simple interface to create your audiobook.

First, you will need a square cover for your book, which you can either provide a (3000×3000 pixels) one, or let D2D make one from your ebook cover. I had made square covers for my Google audiobooks, but I had to up size them to the 3000×3000 size required by Apple.

Next you have a choice of two voice tones for narrators; a soprano voice, i.e. a female voice, or a baritone, i.e. male voice. And that, my friends, is the only choice you have. Apple actually has 6 AI narrators; one in each sex for fiction and romances, a slightly different one for science fiction and fantasy, and a very serious one for non-fiction. However, the narrator comes with the genre of your book, you don’t get to choose more than the genre.

After you select the sex of your narrator, and the genre of your book, you get to choose your price, and then agree that, among other things, that you will not be able to make changes in the audiobook without paying for them, and that you need to keep the book listed for at least 6 months. And that the conversion process may take up to 2 months .Agree and you’re done. If there is anything more to do after the audiobook is generated, nothing was mentioned.

Debra Purdy Kong decided not to go with the auto-narrated books for reasons you can read in her post. I decided to take advantage of the offer, not without some misgiving. The primary reason for signing on is that my auto-narrated Google books now account for 1/3 of my sales – over 12,000 copies since May of 2022 – and their ratings match their ebook ratings, so that it seems my auto-narrated customers are happy with Google’s results. I would think Apple wouldn’t do auto-narration half-assed, despite the total lack of control the author has over the final result, so I expect them to be as good as AI narrators get. Secondly, I sell the audiobooks for free, so I don’t have to weigh value/quality with price. If people want to look a gift horse in the mouth and complain, fine, but I won’t lose any sleep over it. Thirdly, all my books are first person narratives, so a single narrator is the natural way to read my stories. I’m not an audiobook fan, and from what I’ve sampled, I’ve found that narrators using different voices for different characters sound hokey. No doubt that’s just me. I know some audiobook fans buy books just to hear their favorite narrators. And finally, while my books on Google far outsell Apple, being able to offer my audiobooks right in the Apple Store for an attractive price, may prove to be popular. Time will tell.

I will admit that the total lack of control over the final product is a bit worrisome. I outlined my experience with Google’s audiobook procedure in this post. Suffice to say that you have not only far more options for voices – 12 different English voices for each sex; including American, British, Australian, and Indian accents – but the book is ready in hours, so that you can listen to it, or individual words, to hear how the AI pronounced them – and, if necessary, change how they are pronounced – before you publish the audiobook. For a writer of science fiction who makes up a lot of words for names and places, the ability to hear how they sound is kind of important. This lack of oversight and control makes the whole Apple audiobook venture not for the faint of heart. Or for the persnickety and /or control focused author. But nothing ventured, nothing gained, and trying new ventures is how I promote my books. I’ll report back in a few months to let you know how I fared.