Voice AI company ElevenLabs is now letting authors publish AI-generated audiobooks by itself Reader app, TechCrunch has learned 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 last month, began inviting authors to check out their publishing program through their app on a trial basis last yr, TechCrunch previously spotted. That program is newly open to all authors as of today.
The corporate confirmed the event to TechCrunch, explaining the thought is to offer reasonably priced and accessible tools for audiobook creation, which may need otherwise cost way more to supply in a studio.
The platform itself goals to compete with Audible, which ElevenLabs believes offers lower royalty rates for authors. Under its model, ElevenLabs’ audiobooks will likely be offered inside its own Reader app and the corporate pays authors when users engage with their content.
Currently, it pays roughly $1.10 to authors when listeners engage with an audiobook for 11 minutes or more.
ElevenLabs said the common user spent 19 minutes listening to the published books on its app through the testing phase. While the startup thinks that these rates are amongst the perfect within the industry, they may still 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 supports for audiobooks.
The corporate also plans to create a marketplace where authors can sell their content.
The larger opportunity for ElevenLabs involves authors and publishers generating audiobooks using its AI tech by means of its paid plans starting from $11 to $330 per thirty days. That is inexpensive than booking studio time and paying voice actors.
Notably, ElevenLabs has already powered other audio platforms like Pocket FM and Kuku FM to show text into audio content.
The corporate’s move to turn into a publishing and distribution surface to host more indie content is in step with ElevenLabs CEO Mati Staniszewski’s plans to expand into more consumer experiences.
