Briefly Considered an Audiobook

A few promo sites send out regular emails with links to articles pertaining to the writing/publishing process, and I usually scan those to find if any contain useful info. Yesterday there was an article about ElevenLabs and its audiobook capabilities. It uses AI voices, which I've always found to be less than desirable, but because I had nothing better to do, I auditioned its female voices. They're not bad at all. I isolated about ten that I would consider using. And overall, the pricing is not bad, although a bit confusing. One plan provides 500 minutes of narration per month, which according to Google equals roughly 65,000 spoken words, so I would need to double that in order to have my entire book narrated. But does one only get 500 minutes per month? And have to wait until the next month to continue? That said, even if I needed two months, my cost would only be $200.00, which is very cheap for audiobook narration.

Right now, though, it's all too confusing for my exhausted brain to decipher, and why, pray tell, should I even try to figure it out? I've already thrown too much money away. 

Having an audiobook would be "cool", just like having a paperback is cool, but there's really no point to either. These things, for me, are like pretending to be an author. Hey, I've got an audiobook, too! I must really be someone!

I've come to the conclusion that publishing is a money suck. Sure, the mechanics of publishing are free (at least the way I do it), but you've gotta compete if you want to play the game, and competing costs money. Money for advertising, money for various book formats, the psychic expense of degrading oneself to push your novel on social media. At this point, I've completely given up on trying to engage with people on social media; I've just posted my marketing material and clicked out of the app. 

So, while the "what ifs" are fun to contemplate, I'm not going to pursue the audiobook option. But for anyone who is, check out ElevenLabs. It does seem like a nice alternative to paying a voiceover artist thousands of dollars.