BookLocker has been invited to participate in Amazon’s new “Audiobooks with Virtual Voice Program.” Audiobooks will be for sale on Amazon, Audible, and Alexa.
You can listen to a sample of a book by clicking on the “virtual voice sample” link on THIS PAGE. You have to wait a few seconds to get past Amazon’s intro. Yes, that’s Brian’s book, narrated in the southern gentleman’s voice. Another example, from Bake’s Brigade: An End Times Tale by John F. Finkbeiner, is on THIS PAGE. That’s another one of the American male voices. BookLocker authors who sign up for this program will receive several sample voices to choose from, both male and female.
Cost: $149 during our “beta” phase. This price will likely increase in the future.
What’s the catch, you ask?
- The BEST news is you don’t need to buy your own sound equipment, nor rent a sound studio, nor hire a professional voice actor! Doing that costs THOUSANDS of dollars. Authors very rarely get their investment back when going that route. That’s why we haven’t previously offered audiobook services.
- The narrators are AI voices (that’s why they’re so affordable!). After you sign up, we will send you a list to listen to, and choose from. You’ll be impressed with how far technology has come in just the past year!
- We will convert your ePub (ebook) file to an audiobook file, using the voice of your choice, and will list it for sale on Amazon.
- Amazon doesn’t give us a free copy of the book. We will list your audiobook at the lowest price ($3.99 to start) so you can go in, buy a copy, and listen to it to ensure you don’t have any changes you want to make. Yes, you’ll earn a commission that sale. Audiobooks can be priced from $3.99 to $14.99. You will choose the final price for your audiobook and we’ll update it in Amazon’s system.
- Since it’s AI, if your book contains any foreign words, or ones that AI has a hard time with (think very unusual names), there might be some burps. If those are unacceptable to you, you will need to make a list of those “burps,” and send those to us so we can make manual updates to the file. We are able to change the pronunciation of most words (we must spell them phonetically for the system). Since every book is different, some will come out completely clean while some will have some burps. THE CHARGE FOR CHANGES DURING OUR BETA PHASE IS $50 PER HOUR with a 1-HOUR MINIMUM.
- At this time, a few days after an audiobook goes up for sale on Amazon.com, they also start selling the audiobooks through Audible and through Alexa. Of course, we can’t guarantee Amazon’s future actions. Nobody can. But, for now, our audiobooks are showing up on Amazon, Audible and Alexa Audible.
- WHICH BOOKS WON’T QUALIFY? No fixed format e-books. No photo books, cookbooks, or graphic heavy layouts. No books that are already on Audible (even if it was an earlier edition of the book). English and Spanish books only. NO BOOKS LONGER THAN 240K WORDS. Title must be under 200 characters.
- Many of the voices are excellent while some of them are not. We only are offering our authors the excellent ones. There are different accents. For example, regular American, southern American, Australian, etc. All, of course, are available in male and female voices. One voice narrates the entire book. There is no option to have more than one voice in an audiobook.
We’re expecting a HUGE response to this awesome new program so sign up right away so you’ll be in the front of the line. 🙂
Order form:
https://secure.booklocker.com/mc/pay.php
If you have more than one title to convert to audiobook format, multiply $149 by the number of titles you want converted, and enter that in the “amount you are paying” box.
THE FINE PRINT
Commissions (royalties) for authors will have the same terms and percentages as ebooks.
Because of the nature of this type of technology, it should go without saying that there may be instances where a word or something else will never come out exactly the way you want. BookLocker is not responsible for AI errors. Example: One book we tested had “…” after a word and the AI made it sound like that was a question.
If you want to make any changes to your audiobook after the initial listing, additional fees would need to be charged.
If Amazon rejects an audiobook for any reason, we can’t offer a refund because the work on our end will have already been done.
