At TecnoTur, we have previously produced and distributed many audiobooks for our author-clients, either narrated by a professional voiceover talent, a third-party cloned voice or with the author’s human voice. So far, we have produced audiobooks in Castilian, English and Italian. Most of the prior audiobooks we have produced have been short or medium in length. When Anna Pittman contracted us to edit, produce and widely distribute her first book, Remembering in all formats, we knew it was going to be longer than average. The final manuscript ended up being 308 pages, with 63,325 words. Considering that even professional voice over talent can only work a relatively few hours per day for consistent deliverabilities, this project would have been a colossal task to record, including recording, retakes and editing. Anna wanted the audiobook narration to sound like her own voice, so for both practical and budgetary reasons, she decided to have us clone her voice in English, for the first edition of Remembering:Wholeness and Awakening through the Twelve Steps.

Raw recording of Anna’s human voice for cloning

Even before I first met Anna via a videoconference to discuss her project, Ernesto Morales-Ramos had already recorded her voice for a relatively smaller project: Anna’s recorded audio meditations. (Ernesto Morales-Ramos has been previously featured in two other articles in ProVideo Coalition magazine before now: Puerto Rico business: complexity, embarrassment and solutions and E-commerce sales tax: Let’s stand our ground. Don’t let them bully you!.)

Ernesto Morales-Ramos is also the author of The Disciple.

Ernesto informed me that he had recorded Anna’s meditations using an MXL 770 microphone, a condenser microphone I have not yet personally used or reviewed. Fortunately, it produced good audio recordings.

Cloning with ElevenLabs Pro plan

After all the comparisons I had done with my article Cloned Voice Shootout: FlexClip, ElevenLabs, Descript, DaVinci Resolve Studio (and several others later), I chose to use ElevenLabs Pro plan for this project. Every time I use the ElevenLabs service, I notice how much better it becomes with time. I am not just talking about the general quality, but also what I am going to call a «proactive voiceover glossary». Shortly after importing the ePUB version of the book, ElevenLabs analyzed the original 63,325 words and created a list of some terms or names where it wasn’t sure how to pronounce them. Near each listed term, there was a play button to hear ElevenLabs «first-guess» pronunciation, followed by an optional field to type in any word or name phonetically, when appropriate (when the first guess wasn’t ideal). That is a wonderful feature. It doesn’t replace the necessary human audition of each chapter/section to make any manual modifications for the speech rendered version of the book, but it is a great headstart in the process. I applaud ElevenLabs for this «proactive voiceover glossary», in addition to having chosen the first important palindromic number for part of its name.

Distribution of Anna’s book in all formats

Since we authors always get the highest royalty with direct sales (especially with the interactive audiobook and ebook versions), the primary distribution of these are direct e-commerce sales at Remembering.info. This is part of what we offer with TecnoTur’s MyBookPortal and our Prolific Website. Since some purchasers of the interactive audiobook (in M4B format, with navigation between chapters and sections) and ePUB version are unaware about what apps to use to read or listen, we added subpages to Remembering.info at Remembering.info/m4b and at Remembering.info/epub to make suggestions depending upon the user’s preferred platform. We also added those two subpages to the footer menu and to the automatically-generated receipts that purchasers receive instantly upon paying via email. (For those who don’t know about this work, this audiobook is also available via Spotify, although the author receives a much lower royalty.)

The dedicated website Remembering.info also includes links to the 11 countries where her print book is available so far. As of publication time of this article, they include Argentina, Australia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, México, Puerto Rico, Spain, Uruguay, United Kingdom and the United States. Each country link shows the print book in the local currency. The Latin American countries listed are thanks to TecnoTur’s latest (yet to be announced) extended distribution.

Lee este artículo en buen castellano

Primer audiolibro narrado por la autora con su propia voz clonada

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FTC disclosure

None of the listed individuals or companies mentioned above has paid for this article. Some of the manufacturers listed above have contracted Tépper and/or TecnoTur LLC to carry out consulting and/or translations/localizations/transcreations. So far, none of the manufacturers listed above is/are sponsors of the TecnoTur, BeyondPodcasting, CapicúaFM or TuSaludSecreta programs, although they are welcome to do so, and some are, may be (or may have been) sponsors of ProVideo Coalition magazine. Some links to third parties listed in this article and/or on this web page may indirectly benefit TecnoTur LLC via affiliate programs. Allan Tépper’s opinions are his own. Allan Tépper is not liable for misuse or misunderstanding of information he shares.