Virtual Voice Audio is here…

I’ve dipped my toes into Artificial Intelligence (AI) narration for one of my older series! I selected the Christmas at the Miss Snowflake Pageant three-book series (with copyright dates of 2014, 2016, and 2017) as an experiment.

Let me explain my thought process here, including the arguments for and against that I’ve seen all over the internet for the past several years as various AI narration programs have been rolling out. People are either very for it or very against it. Sometimes, we don’t realize how much we already use AI every single day. It’s already infiltrated our lives.

Negative: this is taking livelihood from a human narrator.
No. For me, for this series (and others), a paid narrator has never been an option. Audiobooks of this length cost anywhere from $2000-$5000 each (and up, honestly) to be professionally narrated. I have ten novels human-narrated, but I cannot afford that much money for each of the other titles in my backlist. And the way-backlist is not even on my “I wish” list.

For me, I didn’t choose between an AI narrator or a human narrator. I chose between AI narration or no narration. I know I have vision-impaired readers and busy readers for whom AI narration will make a positive difference.

Negative: next thing you’ll be using AI to write your books.
No. Never. My stories are straight from my strangely convoluted brain. While AI can, in theory, string a story together with all the requisite plot parts, it cannot CREATE from scratch. Even if it could, my brand means I write all my own books. Always will. When I stop writing (hopefully not for a long time yet!) then there will be no new books with my name on them. There won’t be fake products.

To me, when I see this argument, I’m always dumbfounded at the leap people make that if authors use AI for narration, it means they’d use it for creation. It’s not a natural progression from one to the other at all. Not for me, or for any authors I know. These are two absolutely separate items.

Negative: the voices sound like robots.
Not nearly as much as you’d think. I’ve just listened to the narration of all three titles in this series (More Than a Tiara, Other Than a Halo, and Better Than a Crown). I was pleasantly surprised by the accuracy of pronunciation and inflection. As good as a human? No. But much better than I expected.
Within Amazon’s Virtual Voice (VV) dashboard, authors have options to edit some things, but not others.
– Pauses. I could (and did) add longer pauses between scenes to give a heads-up that we’re changing point-of-view.
– Pronunciation. Within limits. Sometimes AI narration seems to take on a life of its own. One case in point: the word “does.” Usually it was pronounced correctly as “duz,” but when at the beginning of a sentence, it became “doze.” I could edit that. Hopefully I caught them all! Sometimes there wasn’t an edit that I could make stick, but honestly, those were few and far between.
– Enunciation/ emotion. This was/ is the biggest issue. So much of it sounded really good, but then suddenly there’d be a breathless exclamation (almost of glee) in a paragraph where the tone should have been somber. There was no edit button for that! Also, no edit button to emphasize words. There’s a big difference between “he shouldn’t have done that,” and “he shouldn’t have done that!”
– Content. There was no way to edit front or back matter from what the automatic program included within the audiobook.

Positive: Accessibility
This is the primary reason I’ve chosen to dabble in Virtual Voice. I have visually impaired fans who will now be able to enjoy three more of my stories than before, with the potential to roll out more. To me this is huge because I have vision problems myself. I can set my computers, phone, and Kindle to a large enough, bold enough font for me to read text, but not everyone can.

Positive: Convenience and Quality
Some readers have told me they set Alexa to read ebooks to them. I tried listening to a story that way and honestly, it was pretty bad! I think those readers will find this narration to be far superior.

Positive: Cost
Instead of paying several thousand dollars per title to create an audiobook, authors can opt to use Amazon’s Virtual Voice for free. It does take time to listen and edit (as much as we can), but that’s minimal.

And for readers/ consumers? If you own the ebook, you can add the narration to any title for $1.99! You can also purchase the audio version on its own for a bit more. Authors have some control over pricing, within limits. Mine are set slightly higher than the corresponding ebooks.

Check out the Christmas at the Miss Snowflake Pageant in audio here!

I want to be very clear that I think human narrators are WORTH the money authors or publishers pay them. Becky Doughty has narrated my Farm Fresh Romance series, and they are far superior to the VV (Virtual Voice) experience. Narrators spend hours recording, editing, and mastering the files. They work hard to get the inflection and accents correct.

Most of the time, they’ll manage different, consistent voices for the various characters. Kids will sound younger, men deeper, women a bit higher, old folks a bit more quavery. They definitely manage accents a thousand times better than VV can!

But hiring a narrator requires a major investment per book, so an independent author generally chooses not to spend his or her income on audio, which may never pay out.

I keep talking myself out of narrating any of my own books in audio. The equipment and the space and the learning curve AND THE TIME it would all take seems like a big investment, as well. Would it pay off?

You tell me! Do you love author-narrated fiction? If I do any of my own, it will be the Montana Ranches Christian Romances. And that’s already a lot of titles, too!