Hey there!

Last week, I wrapped up the fourth day of recording the 4 nonfiction books I have out through Microcosm Publishing. Before we started I recorded a podcast episode with the fabulous Joe Biel and Elly Blue (Microcosm's Founder/CEO and VP, respectively) about why audiobooks are so important.
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​Accessibility! Connecting with readers! Providing content to learners who prefer different formats!​
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And last week—after we wrapped recording the fourth book—Joe and I recorded a podcast on the lessons I learned narrating my own books.
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Here's (roughly) what I said.
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1. The first day was the hardest. I wish I'd learned more about how to properly warm up and care for my vocal cords, because I was in a good amount of pain after that first day. I should have listened to the tips Todd Eflin gave when I interviewed him on narrating your own audio! —> Watch that interview here.
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2. It took me some time to get into the swing of performing. I wish I'd practiced a bit first, and gotten used to my cadence.
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3. Sometimes you get into a rhythm, sometimes you get tongue tied and just need to take a deep breath to get back on track.
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4. Maybe read your books aloud before you send them to print, lol. I had more than a few convoluted sentences that ABSOLUTELY were not conducive to audiobooks.
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All in all, it was a great experience!

And.

It was four full work days.

I'm incredibly lucky that my publishers absorbed the costs of recording, editing, and mastering. And I didn't have to pay for talent (because I was the talent).

But narrating your own audiobook is incredibly time consuming.

It was the right choice for these projects, where I was able to give the level of performance I wanted. But I'm not going to lie—I don't have the time to narrate every piece of audio that I want to get out in the world.

That's where Spoken comes in.

Tomorrow, I'm going to be talking with Phil Marshall, the founder of Spoken, about how nonfiction authors can use their platform to clone their own voices.

(You might remember I did a tutorial about this a while back.)

Is human narration the gold standard? Absolutely.

Is Spoken's AI narration pretty damn good? Also, yes.

If you're a nonfiction author who wants to...

1. make more of your work accessible by audio
2. and use your own voice to do it
3. without spending four full business days in the studio

...then you're going to want to attend this call.

​Click here to add it to your calendar.

Phil is a dear friend and the founder of Spoken, a company that helps authors bring their books to life with AI. (Including using voice-cloned actors who have licensed their voices and get paid when authors choose their voice.)

He's going to be giving us a demo of how nonfiction authors can Spoken's personal voice cloning feature to narrate their own books—a feature which I've tried out, and loved.

The bottom line is that many of our readers do want audio, and nonfiction readers in particular like to hear books read in the author's voice. Spoken is making that extremely painless!

So if you're a nonfiction author, coach, or someone with a lot of written content you'd like to make more accessible as audio, you're going to want to make this call.

The call will be one hour, live, with time for Q&A.

(And, yes—there will be a replay. It'll be available for 72 hours.)

Along with the narration demo, I'll also be asking Phil about a fascinating new study the company just did with Edison Research about people's listening preferences and how AI narration factors into that.

​Add it to your calendar here.

Talk soon,

Jessie

P.S. Can't make the call but you still have questions for Phil? Hit reply and I'll make sure to ask them during the audience Q&A portion.