By Elaine L. Orr
Audiobooks are my reading passion; probably 90 percent of the books I 'read' are performed by talented narrators. That has made it all the more joyful to have many of my books made into audiobooks.
I ran into a hitch with the family history mysteries, however. Approximately fifteen narrators (producers) auditioned tor the first book in the series, with my promise of doing all five books. I found the perfect person through Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX).
And then the delays started. They sounded reasonable. A bad respiratory infection, seasonal holiday interruptions. Pretty soon a year passed and almost nothing had been done. ACX permitted me to cancel the contract.
It takes a huge amount of time to listen to a lot of auditions. I was about to start the process again when KDP developed the Virtual Voice program. I discounted it at first, but decided to explore.
KDP has tons of guidance, but here are a few salient points.
- Understand that ebooks are the source, and they must have a table of contents and be reflowable (largely text, not something like cookbooks).
- Listen to the samples of male and female computer voice options in American and British English, with several age ranges. Pick one that seems best for your book's characters.
- Recognize that while the virtual voice distinguishes punctuation, it cannot convey excitement or sadness with exaggerated changes in tone or inflection. It definitely would not work for foreign accents, as would be needed for M.C. Beaton's books, which are set in Scotland.
- Review the created audiobook to be sure you like the pronunciation of names or any nontraditional words.
- Rejoice that you have the option to correct the virtual voice's diction by giving it phonetic spellings of words that are mispronounced. For example, I describe my character Jolie Gentil's name as having French pronunciation (soft J and G, final L not spoken). I told the virtual voice that it should be pronounced Zho-lee Zhan-tee. It complied.
I'm fortunate that my mysteries can be presented in fairly straightforward narrations. Since I can't use a narrator with the talent of Jim Dale, who does the Harry Potter audiobooks, I have generally asked narrators not to attempt distinct voices for my characters. I ask for straightforward narration with good inflections and a steady volume.
My book In the Shadow of Light used a lot of Spanish accents and I had a fabulous narrator who did traditional American and Spanish-accented English. Such a book would not be a candidate for Virtual Voice.
A talented narrator is clearly the best option. However, the nearly-instant creation of a Virtual Voice audiobook could work in some circumstances. You can explore without committing to publish. What's more flexible than that?
April 2024 update: Amazon recently let authors know they continue to improve the quality of the narrators and how they react to punctuation. Authors can republish a book to take advantage of the changes.
To find all my audiobooks, visit my website.
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This is a very interesting look at AI audiobook voices! I wrote an article about AI being a helpful and a harmful tool for authors, and at the end of the day, it came down to the question of how AI is used, whether for good, or for bad. I think a real audiobook narrator is the vastly superior option. But I do like your suggestions here - especially the idea of listening to the virtual narrator with different accents to get an idea of which you would prefer your actual narrator to do for your characters. A sort of planning tool, if you will, in preparation for your actual audiobook recording. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your insight. I've had a lot of books narrated, generally with good results. I decided to try this for a few books that don't have a lot of accents or raised voices. I definitely wouldn't do it for adolescent voices.
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