Having been born in 1963, the advent of the mini-skirt in the late 1960s pretty much passed me by. However, look at this spanking pic, that mini-dress is simply dying to be pulled up, eh? Is she trying to protect her bottom, or is she trying to keep her dress from coming up higher? The picture is from the play Rock-A-Bye Sailor.
This week I received an email from Kindle offering me the opportunity to convert my spanking books into Virtual Voice books. This is something that I am torn over being that I also record my own stories.
Here is the issue that I have. While I have no problem recording my best selling stories, my audio quality would almost certainly be rejected because I do my audios from my home pc. The second issue is one of finances.
Obviously there are professional voice artists out there, but let me lay out the bare bones of that. If I were to hire a professional voice artist for a single book, it would likely be more than I would earn for all of my books for two years. It’s just not financially viable.
The moral issue of course is using a virtual voice for these stories. Now these aren’t your normal artificial voices, they are quite a step up from that, but let’s be honest, they are still a manufactured voice.
This is the issue, though. If I don’t use the virtual voice then these books will never be released as an audio book. Also take into account that my best selling book would realistically be about an 8 hour audio book, and for me to record that would likely take me a month to do. That would also mean recording every day for a couple of hours each day.
What I might do is select my lowest selling book and put that up as a virtual voice audio as a test. People talk about the downside being that audio purists will leave negative ratings and reviews simply because someone used virtual voice. That isn’t as much of a concern for me because I don’t get any reviews and only a smattering of ratings.
I will let you know how it goes.
I think your voice is outstanding and think it would be great,but I also have to say I gave up my Audible for the cost and I agree that the cost would not be worth the expenses of doing it. I can offer another idea . the library of spanking fiction does have audio books and I am sure that many of flopsy’s voice actors would love to read your books I know you did publish one in BOTTOM LINES and that way you could see what you think about an audio book would sound like and see what the response would say in terms of comments,price,etc. As you also stated the time involved may be an issue and it may not produce the revenue or the enjoyment you found in a new project. Thanks for sharing and enjoy your day.
Jim
Jimc,
The biggest issue with Audible is that they require professional level sound, and that is something that I don’t have. So even if I could record it, the audio would likely be rejected. Hiring a pro would cost thousands for a single book, which isn’t feasible for an independent author.
In regards to the Library of Spanking Fiction, as of now I don’t think that they have delved into the audiobook market, though I could be wrong. I know on their site they have narrated stories from years past, but I don’t think that they have audiobooks as of yet. Right now I am halfway through configuring my lowest selling book into a virtual voice audio, and what I might actually do is run a little test with it and who knows, maybe I will contact LSF and let them know how it works out for me. For all I know, though, they may shun the mere thought of virtual voice, many people do.
To be really honest, the audio isn’t drastically bad by any means. It isn’t perfect, of course, but if I was driving in my car or taking a train, I would listen to it. I’m probably going to clip a minute of the book and share it with my spanking friends to see what they think. Basically you can press one button and it will transfer the lot into an audio, but, if you want a decent product, you have to listen to every page and edit it as you go along to make sure that the words are pronounced correctly, and the pacing is even.
This may make you laugh, but I couldn’t trick the audio into pronouncing pizzeria correctly for the life of me, lol. The machine pronounces it ‘Pizziria’, lol.
Rich
Rich,
As I have no tech background or experience, I will stay in my lane and offer no help other than the best of luck.
As to the true gem you posted, what fun! Great pic and thanks for sharing.
Jim
Jim,
It is a tricky scenario. I know that I shouldn’t really do it, but the temptation is just to good to pass up 🙂 I spent the day going back and forth to editing the book ‘Spanking in Sunset Creek. It is the lowest selling and also the shortest book, so it won’t kill me if I get negative review bombed on it, lol. I’ve got to be really honest, though, I’m genuinely happy with how it turned out.
Tomorrow I will listen to it in full to see how I feel about it, but I’m really not that bothered by the virtual voice. There are issues with inflection at times, but if you take the time to edit the entire book then you can workaround some of those. Many times this means rephrasing a whole paragraph to get it to do what you want. It’s certainly not an easy process if you want a polished product. This was a good book to practice with because I learnt a lot of tricks as I went along.
Worst of all, because I had to go through every paragraph in the book, I found two spelling errors in my uploaded story, that really annoyed me. Like I said, though, if I knew of a good spanking story that had an audio version, I would definitely consider buying it, even with virtual voice.
Rich