Google Play auto-narration: it begins
I love new tech, but for a variety of reasons, I’ve been slow to embrace audiobooks. In the end though, it was something Chuck Litka said about Android phones [see the comments], that finally made the penny drop: I may be an old fuddy duddy when it comes to smartphones, but most of the younger generation have them permanently superglued to their ears!
Young people do everything on their phones, and that includes listening to audiobooks. That was my revelation. For some stupid reason I imagined people listening to audiobooks on their pc’s or laptops. At a real stretch, I assumed they might use their Kindles…-smacks head on keyboard- Boy am I out of touch. 
Anyway, the only cure for stupid is to do something that isn’t stupid, so as of two days ago I’ve started reading Miira out loud. Not for the audio book, I hasten to add! But to change the prose into something more attuned to how people speak and listen.
As a reader/writer, I’ve always hated the over-use of ‘bold’ and ‘italics’ to imply emphasis. I grew up believing that strong words do a better job of getting the message across… but in reality, that only works when the prose is read in silence. Our brains automatically insert the emphasis implied by the words. Or at least they do, if you’re a human being. But as Audrey Driscoll explained in her post about auto-narration, a computer voice needs to be told how to read those words out loud.
So that’s what I’m doing with Miira. I started by creating a copy of the ebook file. This allows me to make small changes – like adding emphasis and … pauses – see what I did there? – before I give it to the AI. I’m hoping that the new version of the book will reflect how I think the narration should sound.
This is the male voice I like the most:
https://www.gstatic.com/play_books_pfe/audiosamples/archie.mp3I’d originally thought I would have a female voice narrating Miira, but none of the female voices I listened to felt ‘right’ to me. They were all too high pitched, too girlie, too…young?
I’d also hoped to use an Australian voice, but there were only four to choose from, and I didn’t like any of them. A couple of the French voices were gorgeous…but they were speaking in French. Ah well, if I ever get around to having my books translated into other languages, I’ll know where to go.
So there you have it. Me, new tech, big job, busy, busy, busy. 
cheers,
Meeks
