Voice AI firm ElevenLabs is now letting authors publish AI-generated audiobooks by itself Reader app, TechCrunch has discovered and the corporate confirmed. The announcement comes days after the corporate partnered with Spotify for AI-narrated audiobooks.
ElevenLabs, which raised a $180 million mega-round final month, began inviting authors to check out their publishing program by way of their app on a trial foundation final yr, TechCrunch beforehand noticed. That program is newly open to all authors as of at the moment.
The corporate confirmed the event to TechCrunch, explaining the concept is to supply inexpensive and accessible instruments for audiobook creation, which could have in any other case value far more to supply in a studio.
The platform itself goals to compete with Audible, which ElevenLabs believes affords decrease royalty charges for authors. Underneath its mannequin, ElevenLabs’ audiobooks will likely be supplied inside its personal Reader app and the corporate pays authors when customers interact with their content material.
At the moment, it pays roughly $1.10 to authors when listeners interact with an audiobook for 11 minutes or extra.
ElevenLabs stated the common consumer spent 19 minutes listening to the printed books on its app in the course of the testing section. Whereas the startup thinks that these charges are among the many greatest within the business, they may nonetheless change as this system scales.
At launch, the payout is obtainable to authors in the U.S. and for English-only titles. Later, it goals to increase payouts to titles within the 32 languages it helps for audiobooks.
The corporate additionally plans to create a market the place authors can promote their content material.
The larger alternative for ElevenLabs includes authors and publishers producing audiobooks utilizing its AI tech by the use of its paid plans starting from $11 to $330 monthly. That is inexpensive than reserving studio time and paying voice actors.
Notably, ElevenLabs has already powered different audio platforms like Pocket FM and Kuku FM to show textual content into audio content material.
The corporate’s transfer to change into a publishing and distribution floor to host extra indie content material is in step with ElevenLabs CEO Mati Staniszewski’s plans to broaden into extra client experiences.
