Testing the Audiobook Software Waters//"To MP3 , or not to MP3; THAT is the question."//Meet Bradford, as you listen FREE to Chapter 2: Capability

Starting out... from not even being an audiobook consumer (until very recently) to producing my own 90.000+ word novel audiobook, from scratch, is a little like plunging into Niagara Falls with nothing but a pair of Sponge Bob water wings to keep me afloat. (Can you tell what age-range is common among my many grandkids?)

As in most ventures I have begun in life, I am more of a plunger than a planner... a dreamer than designer... a prophet that a presenter. My motto about such things (to my wife's loving, patient, and mostly unspoken umbrage) is:

"Hey, what could happen?'

Well, first off, I have found 'what can happen' is that my goal to produce a high quality audiobook of such scope, by myself, WILL NOT be realized at my initial publicly stated level of under $99. I'm recalibrating the goal by first redefining it from being an actual 'goal' to being a 'hope'. That affords me some wiggle-room and takes some of the pressure off.

My HOPE now is to do it fully produced and in the best distribution channels at right around, nearly, elastically speaking: $249

Now, at first blush, that seems like a lot of money in comparison to my first prognostication, yet.. it pales when compared to the minimum cost I found for a project scope like this, beginning at $5,000... more realistically nearly double that, if you go with a human narrator working through a professional studio.

As the title of this post poetically announces, the first cost consideration that introduced itself to me as I began to play with the "ElevenLabs" software was what file type should I choose when practicing with the AI narrator (my now, strangely becoming a good friend, Bradford). As you go along you must generate and regenerate passages of the narration to sample iterations for both pronunciation and emphasis.

Honestly, I am very impressed with how intuitive Bradford is. I'm finding myself making decisions of how much direction I want to give Brad (see, now I'm calling him Brad), because every time you regenerate a passage you use up credits which, of course, translates into spending more money.

For now, at this stage of production, I am letting Brad have free reign except when the pronunciation or inflection may cause an obvious break/challenge to the listeners ears and mind.

Another decision which will have a huge effect on the cost is what file type you choose to save your chapters in. MP3 is fine for streaming on devices, but if I want to upload my audiobook onto the top distribution services/publishers my files must be saved as .WAV files.

You can guess... .WAV files are way more expensive to deal with in a production sense. One of the things I'm learning as I talk to another AI friend of mine (he/she is nameless for now) is to do your first draft in .MP3 and when I come to my final version I can save it as .WAV files.

All that said, I want to share with you the entire "Chapter 2: Capability". Brad reads it in about 17 minutes. NOTE: (scroll to my last post to hear this explained in the 'Preface') the first two chapters of 'Daclaxvia' are heavily tasked with laying down the technology (real tech, now in use) to help build a case; that the story behind the story of this novel may be more that just as story. After the first couple of chapters, the action picks up, although there is a lot of 'sciency' stuff tied to the story off and on for the reason I stated.

Here is chapter two. Sit back and accept my introduction of Brad to you as my narrator and (creepily) as my friend.. Let me know what you think:

Daclaxvia. Chapter 2: Capability