Audiobooks continue to surge in popularity, with listeners craving everything from epic fantasy sagas to meditation guides, soothingly narrated in their ears. Traditionally, creating these audiobooks required actual voice actors to record themselves reading page after page - often exhausting work requiring days sequestered in studio booths, reading copy, editing out clicks and other errata, costing authors a LOT of money. Now, Ai voice cloning is shaking up that process.
I was invited to Amazon/KDP’s beta program
to supply content for free to The Audible Plus Library (unlimited listening
that uses Virtual Voice). I jumped at the chance. I used two (of the offered
eight) Virtual Voice narrators for several (okay, sixteen) of my books. I
matched the tone and genre of the story with the pitch and inflection of the VV
narrator. I carefully curated every word in the books, correcting
pronunciation, adding pauses, and slowing down or speeding up the VV’s speech
to match the mood of the story. Was I satisfied? You betcha!
The earthy, masculine voice I chose for the Arlie Undercover series was a great match, even better than using my own voice. I used ‘his’ voice for Too Fast For You, The Polar Xpress, Three Are One, and That Twin Thing romantic suspense series, too.
For my romantic comedies, I went with a female British voice. I liked ‘her’ sprite inflection more than any of the others. Check out samples of The Purebred and the Mutt and The Wizard of Odds and let me know what you think.
I’m waiting to use my own voice, professionally cloned by Eleven Labs, for The Fairies Saga books. To do that, I need to produce three hours of cleaned-up narration files for them to plug into their algorithms so they can create a clone. My cloned narrator will not only match my pitch and tone but will also incorporate the inflection and pacing I use when speaking. I want to use it for Triplets: Three Aren’t One series, too. However, production costs for Ai Voice audiobooks are still high. Converting doc to MP3 files when charged by the character is spendy. Plus, I will still have to listen to around two MILLION words of text, making sure my clone pronounces every word correctly before I release it. Are there enough hours in the day? I think so. And the great thing is even if I get laryngitis, once my cloned voice is created, I can narrate for hours and hours!
For more info on getting the most out of the new unlimited listening program by
Audible (Amazon), check out: https://www.audible.com/mk/l/lto
(limited-time offer ends January 16, 2024).
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