How AI is Shaping the Audiobook Industry
AI technology is transforming the audiobook industry, offering publishers unprecedented opportunities to expand their reach while reducing costs and production time.
Bryan Heathman, CEO of Made for Success Publishing—a book publishing company that specializes in selling audiobooks—was a guest speaker at the 2024 Publishing Innovation Forum and joined us on the BookSmarts Podcast to continue his discussion on how AI technology is transforming the audiobooks industry.
With over 20 years of experience in publishing audiobooks, David offered valuable advice and intel on the future of audiobooks and the benefits of using AI narration vs. traditional narrators, as well as common misconceptions and consumer hesitations regarding the new technology. Here’s a look at some highlights from his conversation:
What advice would you give publishers regarding audiobooks?
For a large backlist, the main question publishers ask themselves is do we get a narrator involved or do we employ AI? From a publishing perspective, I generally use the 80-20 rule—I’ll take a look at the 20% of my catalog that’s producing the most sales and start with that segment of titles first. At Made for Success, we then also take a look at which titles have been converted to ebooks because the production of audiobooks using AI technology starts with an EPUB or Ebook file.
In terms of the frontlist, it’s no longer a question—100% of our frontlist titles will produce an audiobook because that’s our audience. Audiobooks are a $2 billion industry in the United States and there are some readers out there that you just completely miss if you don’t have an audiobook.
What are some of the benefits of using AI over traditional narrators?
The obvious benefit is that you can get an audiobook created at a fraction of the cost of having a human do it. In fact, at Made for Success, we’ve dove into the audiobook narration space pretty aggressively, and we’ve been able to reduce our cost of producing audio books by well over 90%. Our production cost for an audiobook can now be as low as $120 a title.
Another benefit is time. I’ve produced thousands of audiobooks. From start to finish, we would finish our audiobook production in about a three month timeline. The day I tested my first AI-narrated audiobook, I was able to record and publish an ten hour audiobook in just three hours—a ridiculously low amount of time.
What are some factors for publishers to consider when deciding on a narrator?
In the audiobook industry, there are some listeners who follow certain narrators because they love the style, voices, and acting. But hiring a celebrity audiobook narrator does come at a heavy price. Some listeners will seek out an audiobook that’s actually narrated by the author; however, not every author can read a script or has the patience to go into the studio.
If a book has the potential to sell over 10,000 units or have a significant long tail for many years to come, that’s where I’ll bring in a skilled narrator or even a celebrity. It all depends on the budget of the publisher and how many listeners you can draw.
What recent advancements in AI narration are most exciting for audiobook publishing?
From a publishing standpoint, there’s a number of things that excite me greatly about AI-generated audiobooks, like the 90% reduction in cost. Nobody can ignore that.
There are at least companies (that I’m aware of) that can take a celebrity voice, sample it, and produce an audiobook out of the celebrity voice—Speechify, Well Said Labs, and Camb AI. Each of these companies are very exciting; for instance, Camb AI can produce an entire audiobook off of a 90 second voice sample. Publishers will need to have permissions for celebrity voices. Now, I’ve done a lot of licensing deals in my career. If you talk to certain celebrity foundations and offer them a 15% royalty off of the earnings, they would probably be open to this.
Do you think consumers are receptive to the idea of AI narration?
There’s a lot of books out there that haven’t been narrated. If I’m a consumer and my favorite series of books now can get narrated, that’s a pretty big benefit. So you’re now producing more content in a format that some consumers strongly prefer to things that normally weren’t available to them.
However, I think some consumers are going to feel like AI voices are a little mechanical, and that’s a valid concern. The AI voices are not going to have a lot of voice inflections in their performance; it’s very expensive to produce that type of dramatic voice response from a machine. That’s definitely a legitimate concern that publishers have and it’s a balancing act between what consumers feel about audiobooks and what the reality is.
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AI narration is changing the game for audiobooks, making it easier and cheaper for publishers to grow their catalogs. While some listeners still prefer traditional narrators, AI technology is opening up new possibilities to reach more readers and share more stories.
Remember…
“There are some readers out there that you just completely miss if you don’t have an audiobook.”
For more insights, tune into the BookSmarts Podcast episode for Bryan Heathman’s full discussion on how AI is shaping the audiobook industry. If you have questions for Bryan or are interested in further research regarding AI and audiobooks, he can be reached at MadeForSuccess.com/contact.