At Ooligan Press, we use KDP to upload our upcoming titles and our ebooks. It is a fast and easy way to publish a title that seemingly doesn’t have much screening process. After creating a couple of KDP pages for our upcoming titles, I thought to myself, “That’s it? I just have to click a box that says ‘this was not written by a computer’ and I’ll be able to sell it?”
Less than one year into Spotify’s new US literary foray, and already, we can track its effects on the book publishing industry, both positive and negative.
Blogs were put on hold for about a year while the website was being updated. Since all of the managers in Ooligan Press are part of the book publishing master’s program at Portland State University, the life expectancy in any given position of the press is also about a year. That is to say, I had never even written a blog post for Ooligan Press when I was put in charge of managing them. But that’s ok. As someone smart once said, “Confusion is a Learning State.” I learned how to manage blogs, and I can teach you as well.
On today’s blog we will be discussing one of its latest implementations in publishing, audiobook narrations using AI. Different players in the industry have started selling books narrated by an artificial or synthetic voice thanks to AI technology that can process a text and turn it into audio.
Being a college student, I am often hesitant to outright purchase or even rent my college textbooks. Even more so when the course’s material is a trade nonfiction or fiction, which is common for my fine arts courses. I typically try to find these titles through the library, so imagine my surprise when nearly four years into my degree I discovered the Libby app.
Creating accessible content means that a person with a disability can absorb the same information, engage with your content, and enjoy the same services as someone without a disability effectively and efficiently. At Ooligan Press, we’re committed to learning more about how to make our content, including our e-books, as accessible as possible.
There are three problems shared by almost every reader: wanting to read more; wanting our friends to read books we love; and being a little concerned with how much we spend at bookstores. Libby, a library reader app powered by OverDrive, answers all of them.
Discovering a balance between listening to and reading books can help you find more time to do what you love while still being busy and productive. Audiobooks have the potential to open the door to more reading.
Nothing beats holding a paper- or hardback book in your hand, but when it comes to e-books there are so many pros and cons. Is the e-reader experience worth the cost or does a tablet with the free Kindle app do the job just as well?
With the increasing availability of Artificial Intelligence (AI), companies are now selling AI-created products such as images, database searching tools, chat bots, and even AI-narrated audiobooks. AI models are created by first designing an algorithm, and then feeding the algorithm content that trains it to then create similar content. Companies have been able to create AI models that are considered “synthetic voices” by contributing voice data to the model. The AI model then replicates human voice in reaction to text prompts. This is the manner in which AI-narrated audiobooks may be produced in minutes!