Dipping My Toe in the Audiobook Stream

Everyone says audiobooks are the thing. You gotta do an audiobook. I don’t listen to recorded books myself. They put me to sleep. Maybe that’s conditioning from falling asleep while being read to as a child. Also, I just don’t have time to listen. When I go for a walk or exercise, I want a break from all the words.

But I have two friends who are legally blind and can’t read anymore, and I know a lot of people who prefer audiobooks. They have no time to read, but they’ll listen. Plus, I was curious about how it would work.

I worried about the technology, having visions of hunkering in a closet speaking into an expensive mic and hoping the sound was good enough. Tech is not my jam, although I can usually figure it out in a couple dozen tries. Finding and paying a professional studio to record a book takes time and money I wasn’t ready to spend.

But then Amazon’s KDP—Kindle Direct Publishing—program, which I have used for several of my books, offered to convert any of my ebooks for free if I would try their beta audiobook program. I decided to try it out with Unleashed in Oregon: Best of the Blog, published in 2017.

KDP provided an assortment of virtual voices, male and female, with and without accents. I tried each one and ended up with a woman’s voice I’m going to call Kate. She sounded so real I let her read the whole book. Now and then I needed to stop her to correct pronunciation—my name, the name of the bridge just north of here (Yaquina), wind as in a breeze not wind as in winding up a toy—but she got most of it right, even words I would struggle with. Her voice never tired. She never had to stop to cough or clear her throat.

In the process of listening to all nine hours and seven minutes, typos were revealed, errors I had not noticed in earlier versions. I marked all the mistakes and made some other changes, based on what I have learned in the last seven years. Shouldn’t I say Native American instead of Indian? Do I really need that line that sounds so whiny? Maybe that photo isn’t worth the space. Those margins should be wider and the type bigger.

I also discovered I really like this book, and I love the way the stories sound when Kate reads them.

It took a week of intense work—I logged 15 hours last Tuesday—but Unleashed in Oregon in its new spiffed-up version is now available at Amazon in print, ebook, and audio formats, and I would love for more people to read it. I may even put together another blog collection next year, just to preserve my stories.

I am not an advocate of using artificial intelligence to do our writing for us, nor do I want to put professional actors out of business, but wow, these virtual voices can do what no human can do as well. “Kate” was not as expressive in some places as I might be, and I think I should use my own voice on my novels and my upcoming memoir. I would never let a computer voice read my poetry. But as a quick way to produce an audiobook for people who are unable to read a book on paper or a screen, this is pretty fantastic. That mellifluous voice reading my words is just computer coding at a whole new level, but it blows my mind.

Where do we draw the line with AI? We have been using it for years, long before it became the latest buzzword. What about Alexa, autocorrect, or the voice in our GPS? Will technology take over? I hope we don’t become people who don’t know the difference, but it is fun to play with.

I don’t know the future of Amazon’s new beta program that uses virtual voices. For years, they have offered ACX–Audiobook Creation Exchange–which links authors with professional studios to record their books. Amazon is not the only company or the best company producing audiobooks. Findaway Voices, Author’s Republic, and SpeechKi are a few. Having not tried them, I am not endorsing any of these, but they are out there. You can also do it all yourself and upload your books to Audible, YouTube, Spotify, etc. Now that I have done one, I’m eager to make audio versions of all my books.

Tell me. Do you read audiobooks? If you’re a writer, have you published an audiobook? Do you think it’s okay to let a computerized voice do the reading? What about using AI for writing or other tasks? I would love to hear your comments.

Meanwhile, Unleashed in Oregon is now available in print, ebook, and audio formats.

Happy spring, happy Easter, happy reading/listening.  

Author: Sue Fagalde Lick

writer/musician California native, Oregon resident Author of Freelancing for Newspapers, Shoes Full of Sand, Azorean Dreams, Stories Grandma Never Told, Childless by Marriage, and Up Beaver Creek. Most recently, I have published two poetry chapbooks, Gravel Road Ahead and The Widow at the Piano: Confessions of a Distracted Catholic. I have published hundreds of articles, plus essays, fiction and poetry. I'm also pretty good at singing and playing guitar and piano. View all posts by Sue Fagalde Lick