On this episode of the Self-Publishing News Podcast, Dan Holloway reports that Audible has launched a major AI narration program featuring 100 synthetic voices, with options for both publishers and indie authors. He also covers upcoming changes to KDP Print royalties and costs, a 10,000-signature petition from European creators calling for stronger AI copyright protections, and news that the UK government has rejected a proposed AI transparency amendment. He closes with the latest developments in the Apple–Epic Games legal case, which could affect in-app book and audiobook sales.
Listen to the Podcast: Audible Expands AI Narration Program
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About the Host
Dan Holloway is a novelist, poet, and spoken word artist. He is the MC of the performance arts show The New Libertines, He competed at the National Poetry Slam final at the Royal Albert Hall. His latest collection, The Transparency of Sutures, is available on Kindle.
Read the Transcripts
Dan Holloway: Hello and welcome to another Self-Publishing News, with news from Audible and KDP giving us the headlines this week.
Audible's Big Step into AI Narration
Dan Holloway: Audible has just taken a very big step into the AI-narration game. It's not something new. They have been working with and permitting AI-narration for a few months now, but last week they have rolled out a huge new program consisting of 100 AI-voices, and this has been made available along two streams.
The first is an invitation only end-to-end program for invited publishers, which will see Audible apparently offering all sorts of services to publishers such as recommending which elements of their backlist might be best suited for turning into audiobooks with AI-generated narration, for which they will be presumably also advised which of the hundred voices would be most suitable.
There will also be a more a la carte offering for indies who wish to choose to use one of those hundred voices for themselves.
This, obviously, has provoked a reaction at a time when one of the other news stories, as we will see, is petitions involving AI and AI in the creative industries.
This has caused The Society of Authors, amongst others, to raise some serious concerns about whether this is the right time and the right thing for Audible to be offering.
The motivation seems to be, as seems to be the standard sort of motivation in these cases, or stated motivation, that there is a lot of backlists available, it's not finding its way to readers. Audible explicitly says that it would like to see a future in which all books are available in audio format as well as the format they're currently in.
So, there we go, audible is firmly nailing its colors to the mast with AI-narration, and they have also said that a similar offering for translation will be coming soon in beta.
So, it's clear that this is very much the way we are going.
KDP Print Books Royalty Changes
Dan Holloway: While we're still on the subject of Amazon subsidiaries, news from KDP. There are some changes to the way that royalties will be calculated on KDP print books.
This will take place from June the 10th, and basically what they are doing is they are going to be launching a reduction in the royalty rate from 60% to 50% for books that do not meet a certain price cutoff.
That price cutoff is set at a rate of $9.99 US and Euros, £7.99 UK. $13.99 Canadian or Australian, 99 Swedish Kroner and 1000 Japanese Yen.
On the face of it, cheaper books are going to be taking a bit of a hit, which needless to say, reflects higher print costs, or seemingly reflects higher print costs, but KDP Print have announced that from the same time, June the 10th, print costs will be going down.
So, that means that essentially what will be happening is you will get less of a royalty, but you will get a royalty on a larger proportion of the cover price. So, the actual extent of how much you're affected may well not be as high as it might have been had print costs remained the same and royalty rates gone down at the same rate.
If you go to KDP, you will find there are some toys you can play with to find out how much different books will be affected according to the different price points that you want to choose for them. So, you can go and have a play and see if you want to think about resetting your book price at a new rate, depending on where things fall.
Petitions and AI Legislation Updates
Dan Holloway: Talking of AI, I mentioned there have been petitions and specifically the petition being run by creators for Europe United, which has been going for quite some time now, have announced that they have reached 10,000 signatures.
It's a petition that has some very familiar demands. Those are transparency around how we use copyright material or how copyright material is used, making sure that anyone who uses copyright material has paid for that use, enforcement of fines and punishment for unconsented use, and a seat at the table for creators when the future of policy and regulation is being shaped.
All of those demands, especially, interestingly the last one, feed into news from the UK last week that, shall we say, the new Labor administration has shied away from reversing too much of the tech favoring focus of the previous administration.
So, a bill around AI and copywriters is currently going through the various stages to become legislation in the UK's House of Lords.
To phrase it for people who don't come from a country where there is such an arcane and ancient legislative system, like most countries we have two houses, an upper house and a lower house. The lower house is elected; the upper house isn’t but nonetheless plays a vital role in scrutinizing the legislation passed by the lower house.
Political history out of the way, the Upper house had amended the bill to ensure that it included transparency when it came to the use of copyrighted material in training AI. That amendment was brought by Beeban Kidron. Most of you will have heard of her, a very famous filmmaker and also a member of the upper chamber.
That passed, significantly with a large majority, but was then overturned when it came back to the lower chamber, so will not as it stands, find its way into legislation.
The UK government said what governments often say, is that we have removed this, not because we disapprove of transparency and creators retaining their copyright and being rewarded for copyright, but because we don't think this did that properly. We will in due course look at a measure that does the same thing, but better.
Those of us who've been around the block a little while and are thoroughly cynical, we'll know that later and better has a miraculous way of not actually happening. We will see if this is the exception that proves that rule, but for now the UK government has not enacted legislation that will protect copyright creators and provide transparency.
That brings our AI to a close.
Epic Games vs. Apple: Ongoing Fallout
Dan Holloway: Just to say that we are still seeing what the fallout from the Epic Games and Apple ruling might actually be in the long term. So, I reported last week on various changes to apps available in the App Store as a result of the ruling that stopped Apple taking a 27% cut from all in-app purchases.
This, obviously, affected us. It affected Spotify, it affected Kindle, and it affected Patreon. That looked quite positive, but as I said then, Apple is fighting back against it and Epic Games has now gone to court again because they are saying that Apple are refusing to accept their new Fortnight app, and they've gone to court to make Apple accept it, along with the in-app payments from which Apple is not taking a slice.
How that pans out is going to have a knock-on impact to other apps that affect us more closely.
So, obviously, I will keep an ear on that and make sure that when I do hear something that is going to be important to us, I will share it with you.
For now, I wish you farewell and a very happy rest of your May. Thank you as always for listening, and I'll speak to you again next week.
