I’m not an A-list writer. I’m happy with the ideas I parlay into scripts and novels, and I aspire to make a decent living from it, sure. But I’m also an introvert comfortable in her own introvert skin, and I don’t spend a lot of time investing in the marketing aspect of the business. I get decent reviews for my books and hit the upper echelon of script entrants who make it to the finalist lists often, but I don’t make a lot of money from it. I work a “real job” for a living, and what I make from writing versus what I spend would clearly put me in debt if it was my sole source of income. I’m also not into podcasts or audiobooks, so I’ve never seriously considered converting my novels to an audiobook format.
But I’ve recently come to the conclusion that it would be foolish to dismiss the audiobook audience. We all have busy lives, and reading, while arguably beneficial to both mind and soul, is time consuming. It’s not designed for multitasking, while audiobooks allow us to listen and drive, or listen and mow the lawn above the roar of the machine’s motor, with headphones or earbuds in place. So, I decided to look into the transfer of book to audiobook and found that to do it properly is…expensive.
Here, you can revisit my opening paragraph that outlines how I don’t make a lot of money. The cost of creating an audiobook—a good audiobook—involves talent. It involves narrators who do their jobs well, and who should be paid a decent wage to do it. But that’s a difficult cost to swallow for an Independent Author (IA, not AI) who is already spending their negative cashflow on things like professional book review sites (Kirkus isn’t free) or the “opportunity” to get honest reviews through NetGalley or other review sites for a fee—by offering your book to readers for free (And those readers love free books—but they don’t always reciprocate with a review…).
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| (Image found on Twitter no copyright infringement intended) |
Enter the rapidly growing technology of AI or, if you live in a cave, Artificial Intelligence. The technology is among the list of things that the WGA (Writers Guild of America) is currently striking over, and with good reason. Computers are learning to make art, write stories and read in surprisingly accurate likenesses of real people at an exponential rate. It’s currently a point of contention in the book publishing world too, as using credible sounding AI voices to narrate books puts real people out of a job. But back in November of 2022, the technology was being utilized by lay people as a cool thing to play with.
Soon, I began wondering if having an audiobook available might be a good idea, especially for the visually impaired who would benefit from access to more narrated books in their lives; because everything has some catch-22 built into it, and I found a reasonably priced audiobook package through BookBaby that would convert my books to audiobooks using AI voices. My first novel, The Schoharie, was my experiment. Needless to say, I was disappointed and I regret that experiment.
BookBaby uses Speechki for its audiobook conversions, and I had reservations from the start. The fervor over AI wasn’t at a fever pitch yet, but there were rumblings. BookBaby and Speechki give their AI narrators names – like Derek Torres—and my first thought was, well that’s kind of deceptive… I told them that I didn’t want to follow through with the order unless it was clear to the buyer that the voice was indeed AI generated. BookBaby assured me that an AI disclaimer would appear on the cover image of the book, and it does. I’m not going to delve into my disappointment with BookBaby’s review and rejection policies during the audiobook’s conversion except to say that maybe it soured me more over the process on a personal level, but in the end, I felt like the conversion was a waste of my money. Lesson learned from that experiment.
Here's why, and it’s not what you might think. First, the conversion is still expensive, especially for Independent Authors who might not have the money. If you can justify the cost of creating an audiobook, aim for real people who can inject the right amount of emotion to your words. The Speechki AI conversion failed to add the right inflection throughout my book – especially when it came to dialogue lines that were questions and…I don’t know. Maybe that’s a good thing, because if AI can’t add the right inflections to achieve the right emotional punch, then we still have a way of telling the difference between a human voice and an AI one. I don’t know how long that difference might last though, and I’m not enthused about the potential to have that line erased.
But let’s address the simple fact that AI is already an important part of our lives. We have Alexa and Siri, and we don’t think twice about asking them for directions or the weather. Although, the endless promotional ads enticing me to sit back and chat with an AI generated therapist is just…creepy as fuck! Stop it! I may be an introvert, but I’m not that hard up for friends. Back on track, though—we don’t think twice about using autocorrect or Grammarly as writing tools. But on that note, autocorrect irritates the hell out of me. I don’t use the word duck as regularly as it thinks I do, and if I do, it’s usually a mistake that it doesn’t correct. And Grammarly…I downloaded it once, then said nope, and deleted it the next day. It ruined the flow of thoughts spilling out of me, and I already write and correct things in spurts.
Anyway, those are some things to think about regarding the future of books and art and movies with AI. I haven’t even touched on the insane level of digital actor replacements being used by deepfakes. It’s a lot to comprehend, a lot to keep watch on, a lot to worry about. Artists already struggle when it come to being compensated for their work. They let some of it slide because of their passion for that work. They don’t need Artificial Intelligence replacing them because of some formula. Screenwriters in particular are confronted with the notion that their scripts should adhere to some “formula,” but in reality, it’s the rulebreakers that take the audience by surprise.
My AI narrated audiobook version of The Schoharie is currently available exclusively through BookBaby. As of the date of this blog entry, the audiobook version hasn’t made one cent.
And I’m okay with that.
