I know, I know. AI can never take the place of the human ability to inject feeling and emphasis into reading aloud – the core component of a fiction audiobook.

However, are you aware of how much you will need to pay a human narrator to read your novel and turn it into an audiobook?

For the length of my novels, it works out around $4500, which is not a sum I intend to invest on spec.

But wait, I hear you say, there are other options, royalty shares of various types using Audible and Faraway Voices.

Yes, I have considered, and am still considering, both of these. However, in the meantime, I have become interested in the idea of AI narration. Joanna Penn has dabbled in this and has written a great overview along with a sample of one of her short stories read by AI: have a look on her site where you can listen to a sample of one of her stories being read by an AI. Click on the text below:

My reason for writing about this now, is that during the week I had an intriguing email from Draft2Digital, the aggregator I use for publishing on all non-Amazon book platforms.

“For the past year and a half, Draft2Digital has been working with Apple Books on their new digital narration technology to help bring books to audio that might not have been financially viable before. This program creates compelling audiobooks from the ebooks you already have, with no effort on your part, and is currently free of charge.”

Interesting, huh?

The reason I recieved this notification is because Apple has expanded the genres they are working in to include Fantasy, and so my novels are now eligible.

• Mystery
• Thriller
• Science fiction
• Fantasy
• Contemporary romance
• Women’s fiction

There are restrictions. Books must not already exist in human narrated versions, and no bundles or boxsets. You also have only 2 choices of narrator: soprano or baritone, English language with an American accent.

On the upside:

• after production you are free to produce human narrated versions.
• Apple does ALL the work for you, including turning your existing cover into an audiobook cover if you don’t have one, and all editing and quality control.
• The price is one of the biggest draws: tiny, compared to a human-narrated audiobook, making it far more accessible for people of restricted incomes. From the email: “We strongly believe there is room in the market for lower cost digitally narrated audiobooks alongside human narrated version, much in the same way the market supports paperback and hardback works. There are buyers looking for the best deal and there are others looking for the best version of a work.”

The downsides are:

• You can’t listen to the files before they go live, although Apple is working on this. From the email: “Apple is working on making this a set-it-and-forget-it style of offering. After listening to dozens of these titles I can say they are doing a great job on this and they have been constantly improving. The readers who have purchased these have been rating these close to human narration offerings.”
• No books with too many foreign words (I’m wondering how far my made up words and names will count against me)
• Only for sale on Apple – you can’t use the files anywhere else, although D2D will be able to offer them to library services
• You can’t delist the audiobook for 6 months after it goes live, should you wish to do so.

Apple assesses each book individually before accepting it into the programme, and the process takes about 1-2 months before the audiobook goes live.

I decided this was an opportunity I would like to apply for, although I nearly backed out when I read the Ts & Cs and came across this clause:

“For each Chosen Work, in addition to the rights otherwise granted under the D2D Terms, you grant Draft2Digital the worldwide, nonexclusive, and sublicenseable right and license to: use, copy, modify, reproduce, distribute, translate, transmit, display and make derivative works of those Works and Related Materials as Audiobooks, as well as the right and license to retain a copy of each such Audiobook and corresponding Related Materials and distribute, sell and offer for sale such Audiobooks, in whole or in part, by all means now known or later developed, and in all languages and formats“

I sat and thought about that for a while. I’m not at all happy with ‘copy, modify, reproduce, distribute, translate, transmit, display and make derivative works ‘. although I understand the why, which is to produce marketing material related to each book.

It’s a minimum 6 month contract, so in the end I decided to go ahead and dip my toe in with one book at first, assuming it’s accepted.

What do you think? These are the sort of worrying clauses that are so prevelant these days in book contracts, especially since AI popped up on the scene.

And would you turn it down on the ethical grounds of potential AI competition with human narrators? I like the concept of 2 tier audiobooks, with AI as the cheap version and human production for the quality product, but I wonder how many narrators would feel that way.