An Audiobook for Every Occasion

Who wants to read when they can listen?

I wrote a piece a while back about how I was making auto-narrated audiobooks. I was disappointed in them because I didn't like how the limited voices sounded when they swore (I write fiction), but I also liked the auto-narration because then an actor can't offer an opinion on the text through their tone. It was cheaper. It was faster. I'm not an important novelist. I don't have a publishing company. I'm an independent novelist and I just do my own thing. It's more important to get my books under the eyes and ears of the public than to concern myself about perfect presentation. There's no need to die under my perfectionism. If there was, I would have quit writing ages ago and focused on cleaning my bathroom.

Let's talk auto-narrated audiobooks.

Let's talk about Google.

Google has ordinary voices that you can use to narrate your audiobook. They're not very inspiring, but they are clear and that is the number one most important thing when creating an audiobook. IT MUST BE CLEAR. Even if the voice isn't great, even if the enunciation isn't great, even if you can make the text sound more natural when you read the paragraph instead of the auto narrator - I dare you to actually produce an audio recording as clear as what Google can produce... For free, no less.

That's it. It's free to create an audiobook with Google.

The strongest bonus is that you can really get into your book. You can have different voices start and stop reading at any point. In theory, you could have a different voice read the dialogue for every single character in the book. In theory. They don't offer that many voices. But if you did write something with a limited cast of characters, it would be entirely possible.

When I write books where some chapters are written from the woman's point of view and some are written from the man's point of view, I find this feature completely loveable.

The worst thing about the Google auto-narrated book is that once you make it - you're pretty much stuck with it. If you want to post your book through FindAwayVoices (which distributes to a LOT of audiobook retailers including Audible and Spotify), they'll take your Google audiobook and distribute it for you. They won't accept anything else, except a person who is a voice actor who is literally reading your book out loud into a microphone. So... I hope you like it. A lot of people are going to hear it.

Let's talk about Apple.

It is incredibly simple to create an Apple audiobook through Draft2Digital. You have a book? They will turn it into an audiobook without asking you any questions. You merely click that you want to create an audiobook and they give you the option to choose a voice. When I do it, they offer two female voices (they say three, but two of them sound the same), and three male voices. All the voices are better suited to reading fiction than any of the voices provided by Google. Once you have chosen your voice, you click another button and that's it. They say they'll make your audiobook for you and it will be available sometime in the future and you can't make changes or pull the book for at least six months (it might be longer).

This means you'd better be dead certain that you're comfortable with your book being published EXACTLY the way it is. It also has the added bonus of being free to create.

I have never had the courage to listen to any of my Apple-created audiobooks, but my friends have listened to them. I asked for brutal feedback. They said they sounded fabulous. I believe them. Part of the reason is that I make my books go through five grueling editorial cycles. If there are any errors, they're teeny.

The biggest problem with the Apple audiobook is that it can't change from a masculine to a feminine voice. You're stuck with the same voice all the way through. This is a problem for some of my books. In particular, my novel 'If I Tie U Down' has been utterly rejected for being made into an Apple audiobook. I know that with a title like that, you're all concerned that it was rejected because of explicit content, but 'If I Tie U Down' is a PG-rated romantic comedy about vandalism and pranks gone a bit too far. It was rejected because it is written in the first person with the two main characters taking turns telling the story. Bummer, right?

Anywho, the other problem with Apple audiobooks is that they don't have the same distribution power as FindAwayVoices. They're only on a few sites, unlike the 40 sites FindAwayVoices offers.

Now let's talk about ditching Google and Apple and making your own auto-narrated books.

After scouring the internet and making myself into a crazy person, I decided to use Narakeet. It offered the most minutes for the best price. Granted, it didn't have some of the really fancy voices that some of the other services had, but it was also a good deal more affordable. Those other sites averaged $20 a month for less than three hours of audio (per month). I have a humongous catalog of books (19 titles) and most of those books take more than three hours to read. Those other sites would have crippled me. Narakeet let me buy 10,000 minutes for around $0.05 a minute and I can have them whenever I want.

Narakeet has some really cute voices. Many of them are cuter than Google's and a few of them sound as good as Apple's.

The biggest problem with making your own auto-narrated books is that there aren't that many places that will distribute them. Hilariously, Google will. You can't extend it to FindAwayVoices, but Google will host your book. Apple won't. DriveThruFiction will. They are a tiny site, but they will.

I'm in the middle of this, and so it's so hard to say. I haven't tried everything yet. We'll see how it pans out.

The point is this. If you have a book through Google, you may as well make it into an audiobook and get going.

Oh... and one more thing. For some backward reason, making all these audiobooks has made me into a graphic designer. I've got to have a different cover for each version, so... I'm a graphic designer now. Life is weird.