Audiobook distribution

[worldly merlin]

audiobook distributors - I have some slightly good news.

This morning, my ai narrated audiobook was accepted by a distributor.

You can take a look at https://www.bookrix.de/ or at https://www.streetlib.com/ and check them out. Currently, the available shops for ai narration are bookbeat.com, direct.streetlib.com, Google Play Store, ilnarratore.com, kobo.com, store.streetlib.com.

I was told that there are more to come (more shops) .

If you want to upload your audiobook, make sure they are edited and have no glitches, since they review personally and carefully your narration. Also, you get to keep only 55% of the revenue.

There are things you should also be aware of. If you chose a streaming service like bookbeat, make sure you produce shorter parts of appr. five minutes. Your revenue depends on finished tracks, not on time. So, if you have a chapter of one hour, divide it into sections of 5 or six minutes each.

Also, the price for your complete audiobook will influence what the streaming services pay. if your audiobook costs 5 Euros you will earn less, if your complete book costs 15 Euros, you will earn more per finished track.

Alternatively and if you are willing to invest some money in marketing, you can also try to set up your own shop via Gumroad or lemon squeeze.

[crystal epoch]

thanks for sharing. was under the impression Google Play only accepts AI audiobooks narrated by their own voices though? Has this distributor found a way to circumvent that?

[worldly merlin]

I am not sure how they did and if my audiobook will finally be available there, but it is definitely listed as available shop. I´ll let you know; I think it will take some days before it's finally visible on google.

[crystal epoch]

Do let us know please, thanks!

[worldly merlin]

I will!

[royal flame]

Hi Winter_treu
Thanks for the update. Are you saying that bookbeat.com, direct.streetlib.com and ilnarratore.com accepted your ElevenLabs generated audiobook? Last time I checked, with the exception of Kobo, the distributors were still requiring that you use their in-house conversion system before accepting an AI narrated audiobook, which eliminated anything produced by ElevenLabs. Or they wanted you to create the narration track using your own voice, or select a narrator from one of their approved lists. For example, Spotify/Findaway requires using Google Play for the conversion. KPDP requires using Polly.
Did you have to disclose the source of your AI narrated track?
There's this curious statement on Ingram Spark's website: "Once you've finished recording and the producer has finished editing, you can upload your files to an audiobook platform like ACX or Findaway. These platforms then upload your audiobook to listening platforms like Amazon's Audible, Apple, and Scribd." I seriously doubt this is true, or at the very least, it is misleading. But, it may be a way around the absolute ban on AI narration instigated by ACX. I've also stumbled into another way around the ban on ElevenLabs. One author cloned her own voice using ElevenLabs. She then recorded her own voice for just part of the narration track and then used the ElevenLabs clone of her own voice for all the rest of the narration track. It worked. It was accepted by KDP. The only problem is, those who want to use multiple voices in the narration track, which is the real advantage offered by ElevenLabs, are still excluded by these major distributors.
I'm going to check your referrals to make sure I understand, and I hope you are correct. Keep up the good work.

[worldly merlin]

If those shops really accepted my elevenlabs audiobook remains to be seen. i am still a bit sceptical, since it sounds to be too good to be true, especially google play and bookbeat. But yes, their support mailed me that those shops accept ai narration, and those were the shops I could chose from (see screenshot). I will wait until next week and check if my audiobook is available.

[worldly merlin]

There was an option to chose at the narrator section, but it only said "synthetic voice female / male", not the source.

[worldly merlin]

This in-house restrictions are what annoys me most. Of course, they want to make money, that´s understandable. But this boarders on gatekeeping, imo. Neither the google voice nor Polly, nor the apple voices are as good as elebnlabs' voices, so why those restrictions? I think that in the long run, they will accept other than their in-house voices, but that does not help us now. I am really, really annoyed.

[worldly merlin]

Thank you for sharing your way around the ban. ha! It made me smile, and it could be usable for many authors!

[worldly merlin]

I am still hopeful that the StreetLib / bookrix approach will work, because if I take a look at the distributors, audible and others are listed, but not enabled yet (again, see screenshot). I imagine they are negotiating behind the scenes, which might take a while.

[smoky vessel]

Has there been any word form elevenlabs on possible agreements with Audible or other distributers? Using my PVC in projects does a better job on my novels than I do. There's a bit of work redoing some sections, but 95% of the content is solid. I can't see using elevenlabs for my books though, if none of the distributers will take it - especially if Elevenlabs is helping them identify that I've used their services. If they didn't, I don't think anyone would be able to tell!

[worldly merlin]

Why do you rely on elevenlabs as the one to find a solution? Yes, I totally agree that it would be great if elevenlabs reached some agreement with the big name companies. But if you had read my initial post, you could have seen that there is, indeed, some movement. And that Bookrix / StreeLib seem to accept ai narration and distribute them.

[smoky vessel]

I read your post and will be looking at those options, thanks. That said, Audible is the big player on the scene and it'd be nice if Elevenlabs (which is marketing its voices as publisher quality, with publisher plans...) helped clear the path.

[worldly merlin]

Yes, I agree. But I do not see this happen anytime soon, because always, when audiobooks are mentioned, there is quite a bit of silence on this discord from elevenlabs. I totally get they are busy, but I miss their support for audiobook distribution as well. It feels like we have to rely on ourselves.

[worldly merlin]

Update: the audiobook is available in the italian StreetLib Store. No other store, yet.

[royal flame]

I agree with every point you make. I found a prolific YouTuber (My Freedom Empire) who included the following statement in last month's posting: " Amazon is okay with books containing AI content." Based on her accent I believe she is Brittish, and I was curious to know if Amazon operated with a different set of rules in Europe. So I added a rather lenghty Comment to her post (I was polite) challenging her blanket statement. After a few days, my Comment was removed. But now, a week later, my Comment is back. I also browsed BookBeat, StreetLib Direct and il Narratore. Did you translate your book from German to Italian and English using ElevenLabs?

[worldly merlin]

The written ai content and amazon is a story on its own, as well as the attitude of most writers towards ai. Don't get me started on this 😉 If you upload a book to amazon, they ask if and to which extent ai was used. I am totally okay with this, but it is funny. For three years now, the German market is flooded by awkward DeepL translations. Yes, DeepL has been the best machine translation for years, but it still does not produce well flowing prose. And now amazon wants to know if ai was used? Haha. Lmao.

Which is a nice transition to your next point. No, I would not recommend the elevenlabs translation for audiobooks. It is okay-ish. Not bad. There are almost none grammar mistakes, but in about ten to twelve percent, the translation fails to grasp the meaning in the original language and translates wrongly. Often, the sentence structure of the original language is copied 1:1, which just sounds awkward. The flow gets lost. Tone? Sometimes it´s there, but most of the time not.

I would not recommend the translation for fiction, except in genres where the readers really don't care and devour everything regardless of the quality like erotica, mafia romance, dark romance and some fantasy sub genres. I also suspect that it will be different with audiobooks, because when reading, our brains correct mistakes and do not notice most of the time. I think that listening is a different experience, it requires more attention and consequently, mistakes in pronunciation, in structure and grammar are noticed more often.

If you are interested, I can tell you my "best practice" for translations, but I use it for languages which I have a decent knowlege of.

I uploaded my German audiobook to StreetLib, no translation. I had 3 of my books translated by a human in French and one in Italian, but stopped paying for translations when I noticed that they both hardly changed the DeepL translation (the first two french books were translated well; I suspect that they outsourced or hoped I would not notice next time). So, no Italian translations for me in the foreseeable future.

[charred swift]

Gotta tell you, I am extremely annoyed at Audible, and their restrictions smack of a monopoly. I had planned to self publish my printed and e-book versions on Barnes and Noble Press, who simply want a properly produced PDF. A PDF is a universal analogue of an MP3. WHy Google/Amazon/Audible needs a propriery format like ACX just maddens me. WHy not allow MP3 to ACX converters? If B & N Press can anazlyze the PDF you give it and approve that the format adheres to print/production values, why can't Audible do the same for MP3s?

This IS gatekeeping in yet another form. We as Indie producers untethered ourselves from TRAD publishers by allowing us to produce our own printed books. The same revolution has to happen with AudioBook platforms. We should have the freedom of choice to use whatever AI voice we want. Have you listened to the Audible samples of the "Virtual Voice" actors? First, there seem to be a few of them, and second they have a low quality that doesnt even approach the majority of presets on Eleve Labs.

[worldly merlin]

I suppose it will take some time for everyone, including the audience and the major companies, to get used to the idea that a writer can be independent and not only survive, but thrive. I am old enough to have seen selfpublishing change from "this must be one desperate author" to mostly accepted writer. Last weekend, I had a discussion with a friend who acted almost aggressive when I told her about ai narration. This, more than anything, convinced me that it will take at least 3 to 5 years until ai narration will be accepted.

Update: After one month, StreetLib managed to get my audiobook in their own italian store. That´s it. Parallel and for testing reasons, I uploaded some of my book backlist also to StreetLib. I don't know where to begin - with their awful and counterintuitive backend system? With their slooooooooow distributing? After one month, they did not manage to get the books distributed to google play or ibooks, just some italian and spanish shops (makes sense with German books). I decided to delete my StreetLib account; you have to send an e-mail and ask them to do so. Guess what happened? They transferred my account to the German publisher they bought last years without asking me. Obviously, I cannot recommend StreetLib at all.

In this month, I had a lot of contact with the really helpful BookRix support (the distributor StreetLIb acquired last year), so I am hesitating at the moment to give it another try.

[charred swift]

Kobo.com seems to feature audiobooks that specifally state they were generated by ElevenLabs voices. Some even sound like presets I've tried, and not professional voice clones. Others may be PVC. They seem to identify the voice: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/shining-lights-in-dark-corners-1

In fact, searching with the keyword "ElevenLabs" brings up all the ones produced with voices from ElevenLabs. I find this to be good news at this point, but I'll wait until major audiobook services accept these voices with no constraints except a quality-level production. I can see how that might be an added effort on their part. I dont know if these major services use real people to review the submissions for quality or not.

[untold knot]

Any idea how much of that author used her own voice for that submission? I'll probably try it.

I just made a PVC audiobook of a book I wrote a few years ago because so many people requested an audiobook version, I'm so happy with the PVC version, but disappointed to see Audible doesn't accept AI... do they detect it automatically or manually?

Nice to see you are taking legal action @safe token

[royal flame]

Audible, which is tied to Amazon's KDP, will not accept an AI narrated audiobook accomplished with ElevenLabs. I've already tried. There are some on this platform that claim they can get by this barrier by using SST but not TTS. This allows them to claim that the audiobook was generated with the "assistance" of AI tools, rather than "created" with AI tools--which is a completely illogical conclusion. If you wrote a book using your brains, your typewriter or word processing software on a computer, and then decided to use ElevenLabs to do the audiobook because of superior quality and the ability to use multiple voices, you are absolutely the creator of the book in every sense...except in the view of Amazon and their subsidaries: ACX and KDP/Audible. Why? Because they want you to convert your text via one of their subsidiaries or corporate partners, like Polly, or Draft2Digital, or Google Play. Only Kobo will accept an audiobook produced with ElevenLabs. Why? Because Kobo produces their own eReaders and does not fear the intimidation of Amazon's Kindle. It's all about corporate market share.

[untold knot]

Well said... sad situation...