William Gallagher
Apple has detailed how its AI-powered digital narration for books will expand, but says it is "committed to celebrating" human-read audiobooks too.
In early January 2023, Apple Books very quietly release myriad audiobooks with full narration — and not one single narrator. Instead of actors reading the books, the audio was created entirely through AI.
Now in a new support document intended to help authors use this new capability of Apple Books, Apple stresses that it's not intended to get rid of actors. Instead, it's in order to increase the number of audiobooks available.
"More and more book lovers are listening to audiobooks, yet only a fraction of books are converted to audio — leaving millions of titles unheard," says Apple. "Many authors — especially independent authors and those associated with small publishers — aren't able to create audiobooks due to the cost and complexity of production."
"Apple Books digital narration makes the creation of audiobooks more accessible to all," it continues, "helping you meet the growing demand by making more books available for listeners to enjoy."
"Digitally narrated titles are a valuable complement to professionally narrated audiobooks, and will help bring audio to as many books and as many people as possible," notes Apple. "Apple Books remains committed to celebrating and showcasing the magic of human narration and will continue to grow the human-narrated audiobook catalog."
This is just the beginning
Apple's support document goes on to say that there are currently two AI-generated voices. An adult woman's voice is called Madison, while the adult man's is Jackson, and both are speaking US English.
They are both "created and optimized for specific genres," too, and initially that means that the effort is starting with fiction and romance. Via two specific publishing partners — Draft2Digital and Ingram CoreSource, Apple is now accepting ebooks for the AI-read program in only these genres, but says this is just the beginning.
"Our nonfiction and self-development narration program is kicking off and will be available more widely in the future," it says.
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11 Comments
Besides author-read books by household name celebrities, I am 100% on board with AI Narration. I stopped listening to an author-read book from a writer clearly struggling with some sort of GI/throat/sinus issue AND stopped listening to a talent-read book that sounded like it was being read by a smarmy 1950's radio advertiser AND I stopped listening to a nonfiction book voiced by the writer's SON... who clearly fancied himself a capital-T thespian and overacted and over enunciated every word.
Based on that experience, I'd imagine a general distaste for audiobook voicing quality is holding back the market.
The global audiobooks market size was valued at USD 4,219.0 million in 2021 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.4% from 2022 to 2030.
There's nothing "holding back" the audiobook market, as these growth numbers far outstrip growth in traditional publishing and ebooks. I have nothing personally against Apple (or anyone) using AI-based narrators, but as is typical of Apple and its maudlin, truth-stretching, self-celebratory press release language, their motivations for pursuing AI-based readings is avoiding SAG-AFTRA union rates for narrators. It's expensive to commission a reading for a book where the author and/or publisher has chosen not to pursue an audiobook as a first-party effort, and Apple's share of the ebook and audiobook markets is miniscule and falling (I work in book publishing). It's a purely practical/financial move for them to sidestep the traditional process in order to offer a "competitive" catalog against much, much larger competitors (e.g. Audible).
Neoncat, interesting info I long suspected was true. After the court case it was like Apple dropped investment in ebooks for quite a while. It is only with iOS16 there has been any significant update to the Books app. I find I have shifted to more and more to kindle ebooks over the years.
How can Apple compete with that or muscle in when no doubt Audible has most rights? While I agree it isn’t good for narrators, the use of AI might be a solution to reintroduce competition in the audiobook market (even the ebook market), and could even increase revenue for authors, and seems to be targeting them with this AI technology. Supply and demand and their relationship to price and all that.