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By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
Carrigan: ‘We’ll Be Able To Bring More Stories to Life’
Amid the din of near-constant debate around AI in the audiobook field, Audible today (May 13) has announced to an invitational group of publishers the roll-out of its AI narration services with an extensive translation offering expected later this year.
The programs are at different stages of development, but both are being pointedly marketed toward publishers who, in the age of automated voicing and audiobook production, have a potential to surge their audiobook availabilities in a more affordable way than in the past.
The Association of American Publishers (AAP) StatShot report released today for the month of February indicates that publishers in the United States reported the digital audio format was up by 6.8 percent in February over the same month of 2024. In terms trade sales, digital audio came in at 12.2 percent, the high end of its usual share-of-market range between 9.5 and 12.5 percent.
In addition, the February StatShot report reveals that digital audio comprised 17.2 percent of total fiction sales that month—a 16.6-percent increase year-over-year, and a 22.1-percent increase year-to-date.
But of course, with the question of any form of mechanized reading of an audiobook comes difficult questions of work for human readers. And should the translation construct be launched soon, publishers will be able to have mechanized translations available from English into Spanish, French, Italian, and German, the company says, with “human review from professional linguists” available for verification of the efficacy of these translations. A beta edition of that program, anticipated to arrive with “more than 100 AI-generated voices,” is also expected, the company says, “to access voice upgrades” for books already in audio formats.
Bob Carrigan
“Audible,” according to the company’s CEO since late 2017, Bob Carrigan, “believes that AI represents a momentous opportunity to expand the availability of audiobooks with the vision of offering customers every book in every language, alongside our continued investments in premium original content,” as he puts it in today’s announcement.
“We’ll be able to bring more stories to life,” he says, “helping creators reach new audiences while ensuring that listeners worldwide can access extraordinary books that might otherwise never reach their ears.”
That, of course, creates a larger overall boost to the content that Audible can offer. With 10 percent or less of the world’s catalogue of books estimated to be available in audio formats, there’s a lot of content that can be developed for the listening readership, both to publishers’, consumers’, and Audible’s benefit.
As Lauren Forristal puts it in her article at TechCrunch,” This initiative aims to quickly expand its catalog as it competes with Apple, Spotify, and others in the rapidly growing audiobook market.” The kind of competition she’s talking about was seen earlier this year when Spotify announced it was accepting automated readings of books that used ElevenLabs’ systems.
If anything, then, Audible’s efforts take the international book industry deeper into both availability and controversy around human recording vs. machine-rendered options.
‘End-to-End Production’ and ‘Self-Service’
For publishers who chosen to work with the Audible AI-reading options, there are two pathways offered.
- In one, a publisher gets what Audible refers to as “Audible-managed, end-to-end production,” which essentially means, “Audible handles the entire audiobook production process for selected titles, managing every step from initial text ingestion to published audiobook,” boom.
- A second option is called “self-service production,” and in this, publishers have access to the same tech but direct the production of their own material.
The company says it’s also open to being approached by publishers not invited to work in the AI-narration option as yet, and ask about participating. And the company, keenly aware of its international potential with its heavyweight position in the field at the moment, assures those following today’s news, “Our roadmap includes expanding our offerings across more languages, accents, and unique character performances to serve increasingly diverse global audiences and unlock new creative possibilities.”
More from Publishing Perspectives on audiobooks is here, more on developments in artificial intelligence and they’re impact on publishing is here, and more on digital publishing in the broader sense is here.
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