Various Amazon companies continue to experiment with ways to increase the number of audiobooks available for sale. The newest initiative comes from Audible, whose Audible Creation Exchange (ACX) division is geared toward helping authors publishing their own audiobooks.
In a September 9 blog post, Audible said that it is inviting a small group of narrators to participate in a beta test that will enable them to create and monetize replicas of their own voices using AI-generated speech technology. Under the program, participating narrators will be able to create a voice replica for free and then submit a sample voice recording to ACX, which will turn it into "a high-quality replica of the participant’s own voice," the blog post states. Narrators can then use that file as part of their audition and, if they are selected by a rightsholder, rather than reading the book, the narrator can use ACX’s production tools to manage and review the final production, including editing for pronunciation errors and pacing.
The post stresses that narrators remain in control on the works they want to audition for, promising that "Audible will not separately use a narrator's voice replica for any content without their approval." Audible sees the program as a way to give narrators a chance to take on new business with more projects simultaneously, thereby increasing their earning potential while also adding more titles to Audible's catalog.
The post says that narrators "will be compensated on a title-by-title basis via a royalty share model designed to fairly reflect the work involved in creating and managing voice replica productions." Titles narrated using voice replicas, the post adds, "will be labelled in the narrator field of the title’s product detail page."
The narrator project is just the latest effort by Amazon and Audible to increase the number of audiobook titles as demand for the format continues to grow. The creation of ACX itself, which was launched in 2011, was an effort increase the number of audiobooks by matching authors and other book rights holders with actors, studios, and publishers. Last November, Kindle Direct Publishing announced that it has begun a beta test on technology allowing KDP authors to produce audiobook versions of their e-books using virtual voice narration.
