Mark Piesing's Blog, page 8
April 26, 2023
British Council Feature No.1: The New Space Race
The British Council recently asked me to write two features for a new website they are launching.
The first was a long piece on the New Space Race.
It was great to fun to write.
As soon as it is published I will post the piece here.
The Bookseller Comment: Another country
Having your books published outside your home country is rife with both challenges and opportunities.
Check out my latest opinion piece for The Bookseller in full below – or the original here.
It should be straightforward – you have a story to tell; you find a publisher, get a contract, write the book; and then it’s published. But it is not, or not always.
It turns out the country where your book is traditionally published can matter as much as the fact you have had a book published at all – and I should know, because I am a UK-based author whose first book, N-4 DOWN: The Hunt for the Arctic Italia was published in the US.
I call it the Waterstones Effect: A brief chat about my book with a potential UK reader is followed by a question like: can you buy it in Waterstones? I then reply: “No you can’t, but you can buy it from Barnes & Noble or Amazon for next-day delivery, it is in stock on Waterstones.com, and it’s on sale in independent bookshops.”
Their eyebrow twitches. The story they were gripped by moments ago is forgotten, and we are suddenly having a good pop-up briefing about the publishing industry, price points, and why I don’t have a British publisher.
I am not alone in experiencing the Waterstones Effect. “Yes, it’s the number one question I get asked,” says Amanda Hellberg a bestselling Swedish author living in Britain, whose seven women’s popular fiction books are published by Bonnier in Sweden. A Crinoline Christmas (Jul i Krinolin) was the number one fiction paperback bestseller in December. “Followed by, why don’t you write in English? Why don’t you have an English publishing house?” Hellberg tells me that a writers’ group she applied to join a few years back was hesitant to admit her because none of her novels are available in English.
Writers lead an insecure life. It feels as if the globalised publishing industry has been brought closer together by Covid, and writers’ lives transformed by new technology, but writers must stay confined within their national borders when it comes to their publishers. Interestingly, the Society of Authors doesn’t have any information on the number of UK authors who have their principal publisher in other countries, yet authors are clearly waking up to the good reasons there are to pitch their books to publishers outside their home market. When I signed my contract with HarperCollins pre-Covid, I struggled to find anyone else who was in a similar situation. This side of the pandemic it is relatively easy.
My story is that I first found an agent, who happened to be American, and that naturally led to the decision to pitch my non-fiction proposal to New York publishers. I was then incredibly lucky to work with an editor at HarperCollins to develop a new proposal based on one paragraph in the original pitch, and whose first edit was a line edit. Then Covid hit New York.
Interestingly, the Society of Authors doesn’t have any information on the number of UK authors who have their principal publisher in other countries, yet authors are clearly waking up to the good reasons there are to pitch their books to publishers outside their home market
The size of my advance was larger than I would have expected in the UK as a first-time author because the market is much larger, and it certainly brought the dream of being a full-time writer that bit closer. However, I didn’t feel the benefit given the time it took to get the finished manuscript onto the bookshop shelves, which is typically longer in the US than UK, and made worse by Covid. It also brings with it the pressure to sell a load of books.
Other reasons range from wanting to work with a special publisher or address a specific audience, through to wanting to address subject matter that has a greater appeal in another market, and work in a more or less commercial publishing culture.
It might be that an author doesn’t feel confident writing in a second language; or that their only hope to get a traditional book published is to write in their second language. It might be the need to escape the weight of their home; or that they have a story they desperately want to tell and just won’t take no for an answer.
American author John J Geoghegan’s proposal for his third book, When Giants Ruled the Sky: The Brief Reign and Tragic Demise of the Rigid American Airship, received great feedback from New York publishers but was rejected because it wasn’t expected to sell enough copies. “It was incredibly discouraging because I had fully expected to be published in America,” he tells me. “But it is a story that spoke directly to me – and I couldn’t let it go.” So Geoghegan decided to approach British publishers, and he received an almost instant response from specialist independent publisher The History Press. “So why is an American author publishing his book in Britain? I would say because they clearly understood what I was trying to do.”
Yes, of course there are disadvantages to this. The one that is usually mentioned is that it will be harder to market your book so far from your home market. Others include the tax arrangements, currency fluctuations and cultural differences (a Zoom call with three brilliant New York publishing professionals made me feel very British). However, the reality is much better, thanks to the new technology Covid ushered in. My book was well supported by the excellent marketing team at HarperCollins in New York and it was launched by a virtual lecture at New York’s The Explorers Club to around 600 people. It received good coverage in the US media, including a breakthrough review in the Wall Street Journal. Yet all this great publicity didn’t have the same cut-through in the UK without good reviews in the British media. Similarly, Hellberg receives plenty of coverage in the Swedish media, and virtual events have proved ideally suited to a country whose population is so dispersed.
Other authors have had to rely on their own platforms and networks in both markets, which has made a great deal easier by the same technology. British social entrepreneur and writer Zaid Hassan chose independent US publisher Berrett-Koehler to publish his book The Social Labs Revolution: A New Approach to Solving our Most Complex Challengesbecause of its unique collaborative approach and a desire to reach a global audience. Hassan then studied book marketing. Without any support, he designed a global book tour of 20 cities on four continents in one year. “When I decided to do this, I didn’t know if it was going to work, but it did,” he says.
I asked Justine Solomon, founder and director of Byte the Book networking group about this. “It is important for authors to find opportunities anywhere they can, and to use their networks to help,” she says “The pandemic has also had the effect of making the world a little flatter with the advent of platforms like Zoom. I know of authors who have struggled to be published on either side of the Atlantic, and have found success self-publishing.”
It is important to remember that, as a writer, you bring benefits to a publisher in another country. Amanda Hellberg calls it the “immigrant experience”. She believes her experience of living in the UK has made her more confident, more able to spot a gap in the market and then seize the opportunity. “I was inspired by the huge trend in romantic Christmas films and books in the UK and US, which wasn’t a huge thing in Sweden,” she says. “Now the stories I tell in my books are like an international high-production-value costume drama, with a unique twist – that they are set in a gorgeous, wintry Scandinavia.”
Mark Piesing will be talking to his agent Erin Cox about the Path to Publication at a virtual Byte the Book event on March 2nd, 3-4 pm GMT.
March 14, 2023
I am giving a virtual talk for the New York Adventure Club on March 30!
Can’t make it live? Then you can access a recording for 7 days afterwards!
This talk is a refresh of the talk I have given before!
Join me at the virtual New York Adventure Club on Thurs, May 30, at 5.30 pm EST/10.30 pm UK when I will recount the riveting true story of the largest polar rescue mission in history and the desperate race to find the survivors of the glamorous Arctic airship Italia, which crashed near the North Pole in 1928.
Click here to find-out more about my talk and/or book your place!
Click here to learn about my critically acclaimed book N-4 DOWN the hunt for the Arctic airship Italia!
NOW WATCH the trailer for my book!
March 3, 2023
I’m giving a lecture at the Royal Museums Greenwich on June 13!
I still can’t believe this! but I’m giving a lecture at the Royal Museums Greenwich on June 13 in the National Maritime Museum lecture theatre. It is an incredible privilege. As a child, it was one of my favourite museums!
The topic is Amundsen’s Last Expedition, featured in my critically acclaimed book, N-4 DOWN the hunt for the Arctic airship Italia. You can watch it live online if you can’t make it in person.
A book signing will follow it! I can’t wait.
My lecture will be in the National Maritime Museum – what a location!
February 27, 2023
UPDATED NOW INCLUDES VIDEO OF THE EVENT I will be live on Thursday discussing the Path to Publication & the Author-Agent Relationship!
UPDATED – now WATCH the video of the event here!
Join Byte the Book founder Justine Solomans, my literary agent Erin Cox and me on Zoom on Thursday March 2 to discuss the publication process and the author-agent relationship.
I will discuss my experience finding an agent. Then we will talk about how we began working together to publish my critically acclaimed book, N-4 Down: the hunt for the Arctic airship Italia. There will be plenty of time for questions throughout the conversation.
If you are interested in attending and are a Byte the Book member, please sign up here for a free ticket, and Byte the Book will send you a link.
If not then you can join https://bytethebook.com/membership/
Or if you are a fan of N-4 DOWN, email me at mpiesing at gmail.com or DM me on social media, and I should be able to help you!
If you love N-4 DOWN or polar exploration, then sign up for the monthly N-4 DOWN newsletter with oodles of EXCLUSIVE SUBSCRIBER ONLY content.
I will be live on Thursday discussing the Path to Publication & the Author-Agent Relationship!
Join Byte the Book founder Justine Solomans, my literary agent Erin Cox and me on Zoom on Thursday March 2 to discuss the publication process and the author-agent relationship.
I will discuss my experience finding an agent. Then we will talk about how we began working together to publish my critically acclaimed book, N-4 Down: the hunt for the Arctic airship Italia. There will be plenty of time for questions throughout the conversation.
If you are interested in attending and are a Byte the Book member, please sign up here for a free ticket, and Byte the Book will send you a link.
If not then you can join https://bytethebook.com/membership/
Or if you are a fan of N-4 DOWN then email me at mpiesing at gmail.com or DM me on social media, and I should be able to help you!
If you love N-4 DOWN or polar exploration then sign up for the monthly N-4 DOWN newsletter with oodles of EXCLUSIVE SUBSCRIBER ONLY content.
January 24, 2023
Hello Australia! My ABC Radio Nightlife interview on The eerie emptiness of ‘Britain’s Area 51’
Hello Australia!
Last Saturday, I was chuffed to be interviewed live on ABC Radio Australia Nightlife programme about my recent BBC Future article on Orford Ness The eerie emptiness of ‘Britain’s Area 51’
You can listen to my 18-minute interview here
You can listen to the whole 3-hour radio show here
Catch my first interview by clicking here Airships return to the skies and a serious problem that could cripple long-range space travel
January 19, 2023
My latest for BBC Future: The Eerie emptiness of ‘Britain’s Area 51’
Orford Ness is now one of Britain’s most protected natural landscapes. For decades, however, it was the hidden nerve centre of secret military research.
Read my latest piece for BBC Future below in full, or read the original by clicking this link.
I will talk about The Eerie emptiness of ‘Britain’s Area 51’ LIVE on ABC Radio (Australia) Nightlife programme at 11 pm Saturday evening (Sydney time)!
Orford Ness is Britain’s answer to Area 51. It may now be abandoned, some of its research still secret, and much of its land too dangerous to walk over, but its past continues to ripple through the country’s present and future…….
The former top-secret site of Orford Ness is situated on a spit of land about 100 miles (160km) north-east of London on the Suffolk coast. The twisting country roads that take you there make it seem much further, however. When I arrive after a long car journey, it is impossible to tear my eyes away from the triangular rooftops of the disused nuclear weapon laboratories lining the horizon. The need to funnel any explosion upwards gave two of the laboratories their unique pagoda-like shape. All but their roofs are hidden behind a huge earthen wall, which blocks the view of curious onlookers as well as protecting the site from the sea.
The laboratories are separated from the mainland by the river Orford, and for over 100 years visitors have taken the ferry across. Now it’s my turn and I join the 150 or so other ticket holders who troop past the easily overlooked, and rather vague, memorial stone to those men and women who crossed the river to “serve their country”.
When I clamber off the boat, I quickly lose my sense of space and time. Apart from the wind, it is silent. There are no cars, tea shops or trees. There is little shelter from the sun.
I don’t see the ruins of laboratories as I expect, but big sky country: an epic landscape seemingly impossible to fit into this narrow shingle peninsula.
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The Cold War bunkers that cover a countryThe mistakes that could have caused WWIIIThe secret factories of WWIIIn one direction, marshland stretches to a huge shingle bank where nuclear weapons casings were whirled round in a huge laboratory centrifuge to test their safety. In another, it stretches to a vast bunker-like building with 12 tall transmission masts towering over it. This is all that’s left of the huge £500m-£600m ($604m-$725m) – in 2022 money – Cobra Mist over-the-horizon radar system, and that in turn is lost under the wide blue sky. The white dome of Sizewell nuclear power station is visible in the distance.
As my eyes get used to the landscape, I notice the marshland is criss-crossed by lines of concrete supports for security fences that have been taken down. Gates hanging off their hinges. Petrol pumps spilling wires. Electricity power transformers drowning in vegetation.
Further on, I stumble across the Island of Secrets exhibition in the former WW1 officers mess that tells the story of Orford Ness.
The whole of this coastline is awash with history and mystery; there are stories of a failed German invasion, and even of an infamous UFO “encounter” in the nearby Rendlesham Forest in 1985.
Orford Ness’s importance to Britain’s war effort has been compared to the code-breaking centre at Bletchley Park (Credit: Geography Photos/Getty Images)
“There was always something about this coast that was mysterious,” says William Walters, a professor of politics in the Department of Political Science at Carleton University, Ottawa, who also studies state secrecy.
Out here, caught up in the landscape of the imagination, it is easy to forget that for much of the 20th Century the area was a hive of activity. The pristine salt marsh contained two hangars whose concrete aprons were once covered in the remnants of Luftwaffe planes that had been captured or shot down before being brought to the Ness for testing. The prize exhibit was a complete Japanese “Zero” fighter. Out on the shingle stood a huge radio aerial that looked like a ray gun.
And men died here. There is no memorial I can see to the Orford Ness test pilots and scientists who gave up their lives in desperate attempts to create war-winning new technologies. The site now may be guarding some new secrets.
Having helped develop technologies used to win two world wars and deter the Soviet Union in the Cold War, Orford Ness’s legacy is still shaping our world today
Orford Ness is a prehistoric landscape. The largest vegetated shingle spit in Europe stretches for about 10 miles (16km) along the Suffolk coast, and is home to many rare plants and invertebrates. The fragile environment is shaped and reshaped by the power of the sea. The marshes are younger. They date back to the 12th Century and were rarely visited, used for little more than grazing sheep and hunting.
“It’s a unique environment that survived because it was inaccessible, barren and dry, and so like other unproductive sites, it wasn’t worth exploiting,” says Emma Hay, nature conservation adviser at the National Trust, which is a heritage trust with more than five million members.
Ten years after the Wright Brothers first flew in 1903, the British government decided that the Ness would be the site for a new top-secret facility whose job was to work out how best to use aircraft in warfare. Chinese labourersdrained the marshes and built the sea wall, and 70 years of top-secret research followed the arrival of the Royal Flying Corps’ Armament and Experimental Flying Section in 1915. Its secret history largely ended with departure of the Atomic Weapons Laboratory in 1971 and the sudden closure of Cobra Mist in 1973.
Having helped develop technologies used to win two world wars and deter the Soviet Union in the Cold War, Orford Ness’s legacy is still shaping our world today. Its importance is comparable to that of Area 51, the highly classified USAF (United States Air Force) facility in the Nevada desert used to develop and test experimental aircraft.
For much of the 20th Century, Orford Ness was a hive of activity (Credit: Geography Photos/Getty Images)
It has also been compared to Bletchley Park, the centre of Allied codebreaking during WW2.
“We sometimes get people on tours who feel that this site glorifies war and weapons, but we are presenting what happened not whether it was right or wrong,” says Glen Pearce, the National Trust’s operations manager at Orford Ness. “I often say to them the mobile phone in their hands or the smartwatch on their wrist may have been developed from the work carried out here.”
“It is important that people understand what happened at sites like Orford Ness and Bletchley Park and how important they were,” says Sue Black, a British computer scientist who was awarded an OBE for her successful Saving Bletchley Park campaign. “So they can celebrate the dedication, hard work and sacrifice of the people who worked there, and their contribution to peace. It helps to keep us grounded and realise what is important in our own lives.”
Orford Ness was part of a network of institutions that stretched as far as Australia, including the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough near London and the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment.
“Orford Ness was rather like a modern-day science park,” says David Warren, a member of the Independent Research Group Orford Ness (Irgon), a small group of volunteers who are interested in the military trials that took place at the site. “One government department came in, built something for some trials, and then went home. Then a new department would come in, and either reuse the same buildings, or build something new.”
Some of the work undertaken at Orford Ness was truly ground-breaking
But it was a science park with a difference. It operated on a need-to-know basis. “I would get a basic drawing of a piece of a missile,” says a veteran who asked not to be identified. “I obviously knew it was for testing, and I could guess that it was going to hold high explosive, but I didn’t know anything else, like its mission. I was never even told if it worked.”
Some of the work undertaken at Orford Ness was truly ground-breaking. In the early hours of 17 June 1917, three planes from Orford Ness took off, at least one of which was equipped with some of the first night flying instruments. Their mission was to shoot down the first of a new type of German Zeppelin designed to fly too high for Britain’s anti-aircraft guns to hit – and they succeeded. The huge craft crashed in flames on the edge of the Ness.
The scientists at Orford Ness had to answer questions that had rarely been asked before, such as how to avoid stalling and spinning (which claimed the lives of many inexperienced pilots), fly at night, jump out of a plane and live to tell the tale, take-off and land from a ship and shoot down a Zeppelin. Led by talented leaders like Henry Tizard, one of those who helped develop radar and would later become the Ministry of Defence’s chief scientific adviser, their answers still define aerial warfare.
In World War Two, Orford Ness came under attack from German and Italian aircraft (Credit: George W Hales/Getty Images)
These pilots who pushed primitive planes to their limits, and in some cases, died doing so, helped to forge our modern idea of the test pilot.
“These test pilots were incredibly brave, imaginative and resilient,” says Pearce. “They were really starting from scratch, inventing new ways to test things and willing to take their chances.”
This line of work continued in the next war. In 1939 the German Luftwaffe (air force) seemed to be technologically superior to the Britain’s RAF. So, British weapons were tested on captured enemy aircraft and captured weapons on British aircraft to close this gap.
Some tests involved the Incendiary Tower, built to evaluate the impact of bullets into petrol tanks. The data was used to improve the designs of planes and weapons, and to tell RAF fighter pilots which parts of enemy aircraft to target. One engineer joked that he knew so much about German aircraft that he could have applied for a job in the Luftwaffe.
It was dangerous work, and in war time, doubly so. A civilian technician was killed during one such test.
The isolation of Orford Ness was vital to keeping secret the use of another revolutionary new technology
From the 1920s to the 1960s, when the weather was good enough, Orford Ness played host to some of the most important tests in its history, when bombs of all sizes were dropped over the shingle and sea range. The casing of some of the biggest weapons in the British arsenal were tested, including the 12,000lb (5,400kg) Tallboy, or earthquake bomb, developed by famous British engineer Barnes Wallis, and the casing of Blue Danube, Britain’s first nuclear bomb. Young women were employed as human computers to calculate the results. A photograph survives of four such women: the self-styled “Gang of Four” of Janet Robinson, Joyce Benynon, Maggie Downer, and Maggie Driver laughing and posing like film stars. At least one of them went on to become a bombing range controller at Orford Ness.
The improvements to bomb ballistics gained by the research at Orford Ness arguably helped the Allies’ strategic bombing campaign shorten World War Two. The science of bomb ballistics pioneered at the Ness led indirectly to the smart weapons used today.
The coastline is awash with mysteries and legends about the facility’s secret past (Credit: Geography Photos/Getty Images)
The isolation of Orford Ness was vital to keeping secret the use of another revolutionary new technology. Radar wasn’t new – by 1934 the Germans were using it to improve the accuracy of their artillery – but the British had an entirely new way to use it.
Robert Alexander Watson Watt was a British radar pioneer. On 26 February 1935, near Daventry in England’s Midlands, his team had shown that aircraft could be detected by bouncing radio waves off them. It was his work at Orford Ness that would turn principle into practice.
Full-scale trials began in June 1935 and their success led to Chain Home, the chain of early warning radar stations built by the RAF that proved vital in the defeat of the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain.
Irgon’s research suggests Orford Ness played host to at least three different over-the-horizon radar systems (OTHR), which can detect targets far beyond the range of ordinary radar. The first two were used to detect nuclear tests.
In 1953, the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE) chose Orford Ness for its location
The third such system, the joint US-UK Cobra Mist, was the first such truly operational system in the world, and work began on constructing the huge shell shape site with all its aerials in the late 1960s. This time, its job was to pick up Soviet aircraft and missile activity as far away as Russia’s Far North. In 1972, when it began operating, it attracted the attention of more than its fair share of Soviet spy trawlers. Just one year later it was suddenly closed down due to noise interference.
Tests at the site to failed identify the source of the interference. Further experiments provided some evidence that the noise source was on land, and that the possibility it was Soviet countermeasures couldn’t be ruled out. The cause of the noise remains unknown to this day. Despite this setback, Western interest in this radar technology has been renewed because of increased tensions with both Russia and China.
There was also much nuclear research carried out on the site.
Orford Ness is a prehistoric landscape.; the largest vegetated shingle spit in Europe (Credit: Education Images/Getty Images)
In 1953, the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE) chose Orford Ness for its location, and over the next 10 years six unique laboratories were built on the shingle to evaluate the safety of Britain’s Blue Danube bomb, and then of further bombs and warheads. Environmental factors like high vibrations, high temperatures and high g-forces were tested on them to ensure they were safe.
This work was vital for the creation of Britain’s nuclear deterrence, but defence cuts and the decision to rely on American nuclear technology forced AWRE scientists to turn their skills to commercial projects, including work on Concorde. Then in 1973 the laboratories closed.
Ad hoc tests appear to have continued for another 10 years while unexploded bombs were cleared from the site, and Cobra Mist was converted into a transmission station for the BBC World Service.
Sites don’t come more designated than this when it comes to nature conservation – Emma Hay
In 1993, Orford Ness began a new stage in its life when the National Trust bought the majority of the site. Its main objective was to maintain this internationally significant environment in as natural and wild a state as practicable, which meant the managed ruination of many of its unique buildings. Controversially several buildings were knocked down because they were beyond “authentic repair”, and the airfields were cleared of metal and concrete and returned to marshland.
The uniqueness of Orford Ness is now recognised at a UK, European and global level. “Sites don’t come more designated than this when it comes to nature conservation,” says the National Trust’s Emma Hay. “So, it’s very special.”
The National Trust allows the public limited access to the site, which has huge biological importance (Credit: Geography Photos/Getty Images)
Cobra Mist is now owned by locally born corporate lawyer Nicholas Gold, who has been critical of the National Trust’s handling of the site, and the radio array, with its 12 transmission masts up to 340ft (100m), is used for telecoms activities by several users.
He hopes to build a solar farm on the site.
In the end, Orford Ness keeps its secrets, large and small, including when the last tests occurred on the site. “We think the last tests were carried out in the early 80s on the Trident missiles in the Pagodas, but information is very scare,” says Pearce.
A great deal of the research carried out at Orford Ness is still classified. Many documents were destroyed in a flood in 1947 and the great North Sea flood of 1953. On the evening of 31 January, a terrific gale combined with a spring tide caused massive flooding along the East Coast. Around 300 people were killed, 32,000 people were evacuated from their homes and 1,000 miles (1,609km) of coastline were flooded. The storm destroyed the sea wall on Orford Ness, which had been built by the Chinese labourers, and flood waters inundated the site. As at other top-secret sites, the veterans of Orford Ness are often reluctant to talk about their work even years afterwards.
“There is a sense of foreboding and fear that comes with any thought of breaking the culture of secrecy, or just a strong sense of loyalty and duty,” says Walters. “There’s also a lot of purposeful ambiguity as well. It’s not as though someone’s been given a piece of paper that says, after this date you are free to talk about what you did.”
“You can just imagine if you kept something secret since you were 18, it’s going to be pretty hard to talk about now,” says Sue Black.
January 2, 2023
AI narration for audiobooks is inevitable
Publishers need to embrace the exciting potential of AI narration for audiobooks.
Check out my first comment piece for The Bookseller in full below, or the original by following this link. It is great to be back writing about publishing.
If you want to listen to the excellent Matt Jamie reading my book N-4 DOWN the hunt for the Arctic airship Italia, then click on this link.
Since my comment piece was published
Apple announced they were launching a suite of AI-narrated audiobooks (The Guardian)
The Guardian published this comment piece Why AI audiobook narrators could win over some authors and readers, despite the vocal bumps
My piece was picked up by prestigious politico.com Digital Future Daily newsletter Washington goes to the CES
The first review last year of my non-fiction book’s audiobook complimented narrator Matt Jamie on his confident British accent and engaging delivery. Will an AI ever be as good as Jamie is?
While panels at FutureBook discussed the future of audiobooks, with the occasional polite mention of “artificial voice”, at lunchtime, Google Play Books demonstrated to a half-empty auditorium its text-to-speech (TTS) technology, which allows publishers to create high-quality audiobooks at little cost.
From TikTok to the New Scientist, text to ever-more-convincing speech is everywhere – except publishing. This silence says to me that, despite five years of conversations with AI start-ups, publishing isn’t an industry ready to grapple with the inevitable – the way artificial voice will revolutionise audiobooks – nor to face the ethical dilemmas it will present, such as using the voice of a beloved deceased actor to narrate an audiobook.
Of course, publishers will talk about consumer demand for human narrators. Yet, despite the caution of publishers, the arguments for using AI to produce audiobooks are indisputable and will only become stronger. I click play and am astonished by the quality of the artificial speech samples I am listening to. My 12-year-old son listens with me and says simply, audiobooks are going to be free.
The argument that a human narrator is intrinsically better is flawed and subjective – I have pressed stop many times because I thought an AI could do a better job.
For over 200 years scientists have attempted to generate human speech through mechanical means by mimicking various organs used by humans to produce speech, such as bellows for the lungs and a tube for the vocal tract. Now computer models such as WaveNet, DeepMind and Tacotron have achieved that virtually using technologies like neural networks that mimic the way the human brain works to continuously improve speed and accuracy.
Startups use these models as the base on which to build their own applications, each with its own unique selling point. For UK-based DeepZen this is to capture emotion, and it is credited with producing the world’s first AI-generated audiobook in 2021, the 350-page psychological thriller She Chose Me by Tracey Emerson.
The argument that a human narrator is intrinsically better is flawed and subjective – I have pressed stop many times because I thought an AI could do a better job. Artificial voice applications use human voices to learn from, and use cloned human voice replicas to deliver realistic tone and emotion.
The production of a traditional audiobook is an expensive and time-consuming business. Each needs roles including actor, editor and proofer; a ten-hour audiobook can take 60 hours to complete, over a couple of months. The use of artificial voice can cut the cost of production down from roughly $2,500 for a standard-length piece of fiction to $400, and reduce the time required to a matter of days.
“It is a no-brainer,” DeepZen co-founder and c.e.o. Taylan Kamis says. There are, he tells me, over 100 million print books in the world and 20–25 million e-books, but only half a million audiobooks, 90% of which are in English and half of which were produced in the last four to five years. The cost and time it can take to produce an audiobook is the “main bottleneck”, particularly when it comes to non-English markets. For a publisher, the opportunity is vast.
Then there is the democratisation that artificial voice can deliver. The small, independent publishers whose books might not usually be turned into audiobooks can now consider it using artificial voice. Similarly, the publishers of books in minority languages will be able to create new audiobooks for their communities. TTS can give a chance to all those new books that aren’t licensed for audio due to the cost of production, overlooked backlists, dry academic tomes and books in minority languages to find a voice, literally.
Audiobooks have gone from an afterthought in a contract negotiation to a format that is considered on acquisition.
Yes, artificial voices many never be good enough in every language, but they are getting better and better in their accents, pacing and intonation. “Every now and then there is one that blows my mind,” says Nathan Hull, chief strategy officer, Beat Technology AS.
There may be a clash between publishers, who can be as dedicated to the production of an audiobook and the human voice as they are to a print book, and the “tech bros” who want to solve the “problem” of all those unrecorded books. However, there will be room for both. The market in the future is likely to resemble a pyramid, with the mass of texts produced cheaply by TTS, and the rest by high-quality human-voice productions.
For now, artificial voice might work better in business or academic texts, with the buyers of those books tending to buy them for information rather than storytelling. That doesn’t mean that artificial voice won’t work well for fiction in the end.
One issue will be distribution. The world’s largest distributor and creator of audiobooks, Audible, currently only distributes audiobooks narrated by humans, but this will change. “As publishers, we have a responsibility to our authors,” Jon Watt, audio director, Bonnier Books UK, tells me – and for now that means human narrators.
The market for audiobooks – and publishers’ attitudes to them – has changed radically over the past five years. Audiobooks have gone from an afterthought in a contract negotiation to a format that is considered on acquisition, and Spotify is now distributing audiobooks to millions of users who haven’t listened to them before.
Publishers’ attitudes will continue to evolve as the technology does and Generation Z grows up, and over the next five years the growing demand for audio content, the cost of production of artificially voiced audiobooks and the demand for democratisation will break the dam. TTS may even create a completely new art form.
I tracked down Matt Jamie, the human narrator of my book, to ask what he thinks about artificial voice. He tells me that he has considered licensing his voice, and that at least one agency has considered creating a separate section for artificial voice, but for now he is not losing any sleep. Perhaps he should.
COMMENT AI narration for audiobooks is inevitable
Publishers need to embrace the exciting potential of AI narration for audiobooks.
Check out my first comment piece for the prestigious The Bookseller in full below, or the original by following this link. It is great to be back writing about publishing.
If you want to listen to Matt Jamie reading my book N-4 DOWN the hunt for the Arctic airship Italia, then click on this link.
The first review last year of my non-fiction book’s audiobook complimented narrator Matt Jamie on his confident British accent and engaging delivery, and I wanted to shout, “I wrote the words!” Will I be considering an AI for my next one?
While panels at FutureBook discussed the future of audiobooks, with the occasional polite mention of “artificial voice”, at lunchtime Google Play Books demonstrated to a half-empty auditorium its text-to-speech (TTS) technology, which allows publishers to create high-quality audiobooks at little cost.
From TikTok to the New Scientist, text to ever-more-convincing speech is everywhere – except publishing. This silence says to me that, despite five years of conversations with AI start-ups, publishing isn’t an industry ready to grapple with the inevitable – the way artificial voice will revolutionise audiobooks – nor to face the ethical dilemmas it will present, such as using the voice of a beloved deceased actor to narrate an audiobook.
Of course, publishers will talk about consumer demand for human narrators. Yet, despite the caution of publishers, the arguments for using AI to produce audiobooks are indisputable and will only become stronger. I click play and am astonished by the quality of the artificial speech samples I am listening to. My 12-year-old son listens with me and says simply, audiobooks are going to be free.
The argument that a human narrator is intrinsically better is flawed and subjective – I have pressed stop many times because I thought an AI could do a better job.
For over 200 years scientists have attempted to generate human speech through mechanical means by mimicking various organs used by humans to produce speech, such as bellows for the lungs and a tube for the vocal tract. Now computer models such as WaveNet, DeepMind and Tacotron have achieved that virtually using technologies like neural networks that mimic the way the human brain works to continuously improve speed and accuracy.
Startups use these models as the base on which to build their own applications, each with its own unique selling point. For UK-based DeepZen this is to capture emotion, and it is credited with producing the world’s first AI-generated audiobook in 2021, the 350-page psychological thriller She Chose Me by Tracey Emerson.
The argument that a human narrator is intrinsically better is flawed and subjective – I have pressed stop many times because I thought an AI could do a better job. Artificial voice applications use human voices to learn from, and use cloned human voice replicas to deliver realistic tone and emotion.
The production of a traditional audiobook is an expensive and time-consuming business. Each needs roles including actor, editor and proofer; a ten-hour audiobook can take 60 hours to complete, over a couple of months. The use of artificial voice can cut the cost of production down from roughly $2,500 for a standard-length piece of fiction to $400, and reduce the time required to a matter of days.
“It is a no-brainer,” DeepZen co-founder and c.e.o. Taylan Kamis says. There are, he tells me, over 100 million print books in the world and 20–25 million e-books, but only half a million audiobooks, 90% of which are in English and half of which were produced in the last four to five years. The cost and time it can take to produce an audiobook is the “main bottleneck”, particularly when it comes to non-English markets. For a publisher, the opportunity is vast.
Then there is the democratisation that artificial voice can deliver. The small, independent publishers whose books might not usually be turned into audiobooks can now consider it using artificial voice. Similarly, the publishers of books in minority languages will be able to create new audiobooks for their communities. TTS can give a chance to all those new books that aren’t licensed for audio due to the cost of production, overlooked backlists, dry academic tomes and books in minority languages to find a voice, literally.
Audiobooks have gone from an afterthought in a contract negotiation to a format that is considered on acquisition.
Yes, artificial voices many never be good enough in every language, but they are getting better and better in their accents, pacing and intonation. “Every now and then there is one that blows my mind,” says Nathan Hull, chief strategy officer, Beat Technology AS.
There may be a clash between publishers, who can be as dedicated to the production of an audiobook and the human voice as they are to a print book, and the “tech bros” who want to solve the “problem” of all those unrecorded books. However, there will be room for both. The market in the future is likely to resemble a pyramid, with the mass of texts produced cheaply by TTS, and the rest by high-quality human-voice productions.
For now, artificial voice might work better in business or academic texts, with the buyers of those books tending to buy them for information rather than storytelling. That doesn’t mean that artificial voice won’t work well for fiction in the end.
One issue will be distribution. The world’s largest distributor and creator of audiobooks, Audible, currently only distributes audiobooks narrated by humans, but this will change. “As publishers, we have a responsibility to our authors,” Jon Watt, audio director, Bonnier Books UK, tells me – and for now that means human narrators.
The market for audiobooks – and publishers’ attitudes to them – has changed radically over the past five years. Audiobooks have gone from an afterthought in a contract negotiation to a format that is considered on acquisition, and Spotify is now distributing audiobooks to millions of users who haven’t listened to them before.
Publishers’ attitudes will continue to evolve as the technology does and Generation Z grows up, and over the next five years the growing demand for audio content, the cost of production of artificially voiced audiobooks and the demand for democratisation will break the dam. TTS may even create a completely new art form.
I tracked down Matt Jamie, the human narrator of my book, to ask what he thinks about artificial voice. He tells me that he has considered licensing his voice, and that at least one agency has considered creating a separate section for artificial voice, but for now he is not losing any sleep. Perhaps he should.
