How to Create an Audiobook with AI

As a writer, you may have poured your heart into writing your book. And you know it has the magic to capture the hearts of millions of readers worldwide.

But having a great book may not be enough to make it a sensation. Today’s readers want convenience, even for reading books. And you have a great chance of breaking the drought of no sales by converting your book into an audiobook that anyone can access anywhere in the world.

And no. We are not talking about hiring high-paying voice actors or a studio to work on it and taking forever to produce an audiobook version. We are talking about using an AI-powered text to speech platform to create audiobooks on your own. 

But don’t know how to create an audiobook with AI? Well, read on to learn exactly that in this blog post.

What is an Audiobook?

An audiobook is an audio recording of a book that is read aloud by a narrator. It allows people to listen to the content instead of reading it. Audiobooks are available in digital formats and can be played on various devices, including smartphones, tablets, and computers.

Audiobooks are often used for convenience or to make reading accessible to individuals with visual impairments or reading difficulties. Some of the popular platforms that offer audiobooks across diverse genres are Audible, Spotify, and Google Play.

What Is Driving the Dynamic Growth of Audiobooks?

The audiobook market is booming and there are several reasons for this growth. Here are a few of them:

Audiobooks enable multitasking

Audiobooks enable audiences to multitask even when listening to stories. This is convenient for a majority of users as they can listen to the stories even when working, traveling, walking, etc.

Audiobooks are convenient

Reading a book requires you to dedicate time and effort. You also mostly need a comfortable place to sit to read a book. However, audiobooks take these inconveniences away by letting you listen to them anywhere.

People love listening to stories

Humans have always loved listening to stories from their parents, grandparents, teachers, and friends. Listening to stories allows them to live through these experiences again.

Audiobooks are easy to carry around

Books are heavy and take a lot of effort to carry around. This makes it hard to carry your favorite books everywhere you go. On the other hand, audiobooks are easy to carry around as it is available via apps like Audible, Spotify, etc.

How to Create an Audiobook with AI?

Creating an audiobook is often riddled with challenges, such as hiring voiceover artists, editors, dubbing equipment, etc. To make things worse, it will also take a lot of time.

This is where AI tools like Murf AI can help. They accelerate the process of creating audiobooks while ensuring the quality you expect from them.

Here is how to create an audiobook with Murf AI.

Step 1: Get your book ready

Murf needs the book for conversion in .txt., .docx., or .srt format. Hence, have the book ready in one of these formats.

For this demonstration, we use the title ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ by Alexandre Dumas.

Step 2: Create a project in Murf AI

Access Murf AI and click Create Project on the platform to get started.

Let’s title this project ‘Audiobook for Murf - The Count of Monte Cristo’ and click Create Project. Adding a title is always a good habit to get into, as it helps organize your projects better.

Step 3: Upload your file to the platform

Upon creating the project, you will land on the platform’s project dashboard. This is where you will be working on the project and customizing it.

Now, on the left-hand side, you will see many options, such as Upload script, Audio to text, Translate, etc.

From these options, click Upload script.

A new pop-up will show, asking you to upload the script. Since we already have the file, let’s upload it.

After uploading, another pop-up will ask you to Select an Import preference. 

There are three options:

1. Split Script by Paragraphs
2. Split Script by Sentences
3. Don't Split

Let’s go with the default option, Split Script by Sentences. Within the context of our project, this option also seems highly suitable.

Once you hit Import Script, the platform will process the .txt file and arrange them into blocks of sentences.

Now, you can work on each block separately. Now, click on the block you want to work with. It will show you a variety of customization options.

Step 4: Pick an AI voice of your choice

By default, the voice avatar is Natalie. You can change it by clicking on the avatar's name and pick one of your choice.

It also gives you a lot of options to choose the best voice.

Step 5: Customize the narration

Murf AI offers you diverse options to customize the narration:

• Emotion: General, Cheerful, and Sad
• Pitch
• Speed
• Pause
• Custom pronunciation

This allows you to get the exact output you need for each sentence spoken.

For example, characters speak differently in different situations. How a character speaks when they are happy is not how they speak when they are sad or concerned.

These customizations available at Murf AI enable you to ensure that the emotional tone of the characters can be accurately conveyed to the audience.

This helps the audience relate with the characters deeply and have a unique, immersive audiobook experience.

Once you have finalized these elements, click the play button to generate the audio.

You can also listen to the audio and make changes to the text to get the accurate audio output you need.

Now, do the same for the rest of the blocks till you have finished generating an audio output for the entire book.

Step 6: Download the generated narrations

To download the narration for each of the blocks to your system by clicking the three dots you see when you highlight the block.

Choose the Download Audio option to download the audio you created.

You can use these audio files and an audio editor like Adobe Audition to put together the audio files to create an audiobook exactly as you need.

During the editing process, if any part is not up to the mark, you can return to the platform, pick the part you want to improve and create a new audio output. You can use the newly created output to replace the older bit in the editor.

Benefits of TTS for AI Audiobooks

Text to speech offers a plethora of benefits for creating AI audiobooks. Here are a few of the most important ones.

1. TTS engines allow writers and publishers to use custom voice clones to create unique listening experiences for users.
2. It reduces the cost of traditional audiobook creation by automating narration.
3. It helps produce audiobooks faster than human narrators and scale up production.
4. It makes books accessible to users with visual impairments, dyslexia, or other disabilities.
5. TTS-powered audiobooks integrate with Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant for more convenience.
6. Users can personalize the playback speed, voice type, and tone for personalized experiences.
7. Fixes or updates in narration can be done quickly using TTS without re-recording.
8. TTS engines create audiobooks in any language and accent, ensuring global reach.

Challenges in Using AI Voices for Audiobooks

While AI-powered platforms like Murf AI offer unlimited possibilities for generating audiobooks faster and more efficiently, AI-created audiobooks also have a few challenges to overcome.

Here are a few of these challenges.

Restriction of AI-generated audiobooks

Many audiobook platforms like ACX do not allow the publication of audiobooks generated using AI. This poses a significant challenge for creators who want to use AI to accelerate the production of audiobooks and scale it cost-effectively.

Lack of control in narration

While platforms like Murf AI allow creators to have full control of the narrations, there are many that do not offer such customization options. This lack of customization harms the quality and experience, alienating audiences.

Threat of piracy

With the availability of AI platforms for creating narrations, the risk of intellectual property (IP) threats has also increased. It is now easier to produce audiobooks quickly and at scale, often using pirated books in the process.

Complex pronunciations and Accents

AI voices may mispronounce names, technical terms, or words with multiple pronunciations. Accurately handling regional accents and dialects can also be a challenge for AI voices.

What Does the Future Hold for Audiobooks?

As the demand for audiobooks continues to grow, the number of authors, businesses, and publishers using AI tools to create audiobooks will continue to grow. This is a great sign for authors and publishers to use these platforms to cost-effectively create audiobooks at scale.

Two great examples are the audiobooks ‘Trump: Never Give Up’ by Donald Trump with Meredith McIver and ‘The Truths We Hold’ by Kamala Harris on Audible. These books show how fast we can now produce audiobooks for global audiences.

As TTS technologies improve daily, the quality, voice variabilities, tones, and emotional depths that an AI voice can deliver will also increase. This will surely lead to more human-sounding voices than ever before. And it is a great time for you to capitalize on the opportunity and stay ahead of the competition.

If you are looking to create audiobooks faster and affordably with human-like voices, try Murf AI for free now.