I just tried Amazon KDP’s Virtual Voice service (still in beta) to create an audiobook of one of my books. This is going to be a game-changer.
Previously, it would cost me around $500 to $750 to hire someone to narrate and create an audiobook for one of my short books It would also take around 2 hours of prep time and around 3 to 4 weeks total (between starting the project and seeing it on Amazon)
With Virtual Voice (computer-generated narration), the cost was free, and it took 52 minutes between starting and having it show up on the marketplace.
Is Virtual Voice perfect? No Can it be improved? Certainly However, I don’t think you can beat getting an additional revenue stream that’s free to produce and boils down your production time from 1 month to 1 hour Here’s how it works
Step 1
Make sure your book is eligible (you’ll know if the following shows up in your KDP dashboard)
Step 2
Pick a voice that you like (you can play audio samples)
Step 3
Enter a list price (this is different from the Amazon ACX service where I had no control over the audiobook pricepoint)
Step 4
Optional (but highly recommended): open “Virtual Voice Studio” to preview and modify how your audiobook is narrated
You can play sections of your book in the selected voice. You can also edit by changing pronunciations or the voice speed. You can even include pauses in the narration.
Step 5
Publish. They say it can take up to 72 hours for the audiobook to show up. It took less than 1 hour for me.
There are a few areas of improvement that I can think of, but I’m sure those will be ironed out as this service opens to more authors.