No publisher is going to pay a professional to narrate their audiobooks when they can have AI do a shitty job for much less.
A shitty narrator can get me to hate a book I like. A great narrator can bring the characters to life, enhance the experience, and turn me from a listener to a fan. I’ve searched for books by narrators like Nick Podehl and Jeff Hayes and bought audiobooks I wouldn’t have otherwise.
I tried, and failed, to get into audio books for years. Then I listened to Dungeon Crawler Carl narrated by Jeff Hayes and what an absolute delight it was. There’s no way I would’ve gotten even 10 minutes in if it was one of those soulless AI voices instead.
The thing with this is that there won’t be shitty narrations any more. Hate it all you may, fact of the matter is that AI-powered voice generation is pretty good at what it does. So in the future you won’t have shitty narrations and great narrations. You’ll have decent narrations and great (human) narrations.
No publisher is going to pay a professional to narrate their audiobooks when they can have AI do a shitty job for much less.
A shitty narrator can get me to hate a book I like. A great narrator can bring the characters to life, enhance the experience, and turn me from a listener to a fan. I’ve searched for books by narrators like Nick Podehl and Jeff Hayes and bought audiobooks I wouldn’t have otherwise.
That depends entirely on how profitable it is and how much they can get authors onboard.
I do agree that a good narrator delivers a performance that adds the work. James Marster will always be Harry Dresden in my head.
I tried, and failed, to get into audio books for years. Then I listened to Dungeon Crawler Carl narrated by Jeff Hayes and what an absolute delight it was. There’s no way I would’ve gotten even 10 minutes in if it was one of those soulless AI voices instead.
Currently listening to the first book.
Nick Podehl is such an amazing narrator. The voices and performance are amazing.
I’ve been slowly getting through the Kel Kade books and the narration just makes it for me
The thing with this is that there won’t be shitty narrations any more. Hate it all you may, fact of the matter is that AI-powered voice generation is pretty good at what it does. So in the future you won’t have shitty narrations and great narrations. You’ll have decent narrations and great (human) narrations.
And teslas will have full self driving tomorrow and crypto currency will replace normal currency within one year! Always believe in the hype!