How Apple Books is bringing narrative to indie authors’ books

Apple Books, the company’s application that lets users read ebooks on their devices, has announced support for an AI-enabled feature to turn titles into audiobooks. Apple says the Digital Narration feature will make audiobook production more accessible by reducing costs for publishers and authors. The company will use AI-enabled speech synthesis to read books and turn them into audio. The feature is currently available for English romance and fiction books and will be expanded to non-fiction later.

The Cupertino company divided Details the new digital storytelling technology on its support page, stating that “making audiobook creation more accessible for everyone” by reducing the “cost and complexity” of production for authors and publishers. The tech giant says the feature is currently available for romance and fiction books, and the company is currently accepting e-book submissions in those genres.

The digital narration feature will be available in two digital voices, Madison and Jackson. These voices will cover romance and fiction genres, including literary, historical and women’s fiction. Apple says the feature doesn’t currently support mysteries and thrillers, sci-fi, and fantasy.

The company says it will also bring two more language assistants, Helena and Mitchell, for non-fiction. In particular, the service is currently only available in English.

Users can also search for AI narrations in the Books app and get a list of romance novels with Narrated by Apple Books. It also displays the specific name of the artificial narrator used i.e. Madison or Jackson which reads “This is an Apple Books audiobook narrated by a digital voice based on a human narrator.” In addition, the listing includes also free and paid audio books and artificial voices.

Apple says it has partnered with Draft2Digital and Ingram CoreSource for the production and distribution of converted audiobooks. However, it has been stated that publishers and authors retain the audiobook rights and can release other versions of the audiobook if they wish. The App Store will apply wholesale price limits, and distribution of these audiobooks will be through Apple Books and to public or academic libraries, according to the company.