Apple Books’ digital narration feature is currently limited to the English language.
Apple has launched an AI-based narration for select titles on its e-books reading app Apple Books. The company’s digital narration feature is claimed to address the issue of cost and complexity of creating audiobooks, especially for indie authors and small publishers.
“Apple Books digital narration makes the creation of audiobooks more accessible to all, helping you meet the growing demand by making more books available for listeners to enjoy,” the Cupertino company wrote in a blog.
“Apple Books digital narration brings together advanced speech synthesis technology with important work by teams of linguists, quality control specialists, and audio engineers to produce high-quality audiobooks from an e-book file,” Apple added.
The iPhone maker’s digital narration feature is currently limited to the English language and for fiction and romance genres. Apple Books is also accepting e-book submissions in these genres. Without giving any time frame, Apple said that digital narration for the non-fiction and self-development categories will be rolled out in the future.
The feature will be available in two digital voices Madison and Jackson and are available for the romance and fiction category, including literary, historical, and women’s fiction. Mysteries, thrillers and science fiction, and fantasy are not currently supported for the new feature. Apple Books plans to bring Helena and Mitchell voice assistants for non-fiction and self-development narration.
Apple has partnered with Draft2Digital and Ingram CoreSource for the production and distribution of the narrated audiobooks. The American tech giant noted that the publisher or authors would retain audiobook rights.
Further, there are no restrictions on producing and distributing other audiobook versions. Apple app store will apply wholesale price limits, and distribution of the audiobooks will solely be done via Apple Books and to public or academic libraries.
