AI NARRATION
How is auto-narration helping self-published authors break into the audiobook market? Simon Whaley shares his and another author’s experience
At the end of April 2022, Google Play Books announced a new beta service for selfpublished authors. They launched auto-narrated audiobooks that use AI (artificial intelligence) to help authors convert their ebooks into audiobooks. To qualify, the ebooks must be available on Google Play’s Bookstore.
Initially, it applied to authors in the USA, UK, Canada, Spain, Australia, and New Zealand, with authors receiving a 52% royalty split. Google has since expanded this to more countries.
This service is currently free to authors while the service is still in beta. This means that Google is still testing and fine-tuning the service. To help with this, they need more content for their AI language models to digest, which is why they’re keen for self-published authors to take up this offer.
Traditionally produced audiobooks, ones using human narrators, are expensive to produce. Most of us can’t afford to hire celebrities like Stephen Fry to narrate our writing. However, as anyone who has tried reading aloud their own work without stumbling, stalling, or sneezing knows, narration is a professional skill. With an average narrator fee of £175 per recorded hour, and a typical 80,000-word manuscript transforming into a nine-hour audiobook, it’s easy to see how quickly costs mount. And that’s before factoring in the fees for hiring a recording studio and any editing.
Yet authors who ignore the audio market are missing out. In 2023, the UK audiobook market grew by more than eight per cent and was worth over £222.5 million. Back in 2021, the National