Amazon vs Google – AI audiobook narrators

 By James M. Jackson

I released Niki Undercover, the first of a new series, using Amazon-only distribution even though my Seamus McCree series has wide distribution. I’d prefer to distribute wide, but to do that well, I would need to spend more time than I had available to market to all channels. Initially distributing only through Amazon allows me to focus my marketing time and, by committing for at least ninety days to stay solely within the Amazon distribution system by joining KDP Select, it compensates me for Kindle Unlimited readers who read the book as part of their subscription without additional cost.

None of my books sell well enough to justify my spending money to pay a human narrator to create audiobooks. Maybe that will be different for the Niki Undercover Thriller series. For now, my choice is to create an AI-narrated audiobook or none. In the past, I used GooglePlay to create audiobooks. KDP (Amazon’s publishing arm for self-publishing) recently expanded availability of its beta version of AI-narrated books. Niki Undercover met their requirements, so I gave it a go.

Having completed that project (the audiobook is available on Amazon), I want to share my thoughts on how Amazon’s AI product and Google’s compare.

Structure and Basic Philosophy

Both providers are in beta, meaning they can and will change their offerings. Google is available worldwide; Amazon only in select countries and for select books.

Both providers start with an eBook and automatically convert it into an audiobook.

Amazon wants the audiobook to comport exactly with the eBook to facilitate those who purchase both and want to switch from one format to another. It converts only the sections it considers the story (ignoring all the other parts of the provided eBook). It does not allow you to add, subtract, or modify text—doing so makes it difficult to sync the eBook and audiobook.

Google converts the entire eBook, including title page, copyright, author’s note, and other works. Google allows you to add or subtract material to create your audiobook as you choose. It also allows you to modify the words of the eBook if you think that improves the listening experience. For example, without using dialog tags, paragraphing alone may allow an eBook reader to know which character speaks each line. The audiobook loses those visual clues. Google allows you to add tags to make dialog attribution clear. Amazon does not allow any changes to the text.

The ability to modify the text gives Google a huge advantage, but one Amazon can only match if it gives up the notion of 100% syncing between the two versions of the book.

Voices

Amazon provides 80 narrator voices covering masculine and feminine traits, age groups 30-40 and 40-50, and American, British, Australian, and Southern U.S. accents.

Google has 50 narrator voices. For English, they have 13 American, 3 Australian, 4 British, and 5 Indian voices. The 25 foreign language voices cover Spanish (Spain and Mexico), French, German, Portuguese, and Hindi. They also provide masculine and feminine voices, but have three age ranges: 18-30, 31-45, 46-60.

Advantage to Amazon unless you don’t want English.

Changing Voices

Amazon allows you to select a different voice for each chapter. Google allows you to change the narrator for the entire chapter, a scene, a paragraph, or even an individual word.

Advantage Google.

Pronunciation

Say this in your head: After I read a piece of fiction, I will have read that piece of fiction. When you read that convoluted sentence, you pronounced the first read as “reed” and the second read as “red.” AI narrators are not that sophisticated . . . yet. And with place names, you never know what you might get. Both Amazon and Google have a mechanism to tell the AI narrator how to pronounce a word.

Amazon lets you choose a word and spell it differently in order to get the narrator to pronounce it correctly. So, if Amazon pronounced both reads as “reed,” I can change the second one by changing its pronounced spelling to “red.” That’s easy, but when I had an organization known by its initials AHI, its attempt was something like “ah-hee.” I’d pronounce each of the letters: A H I. When I tried that, it came out “ah-hi.” My final solution was “eh H eye.” I ran across a couple of words I could not figure out how to trick the narrator into pronouncing them correctly. For those, I got close enough and abandoned the fight.

Once you have corrected a pronunciation, it asks if you always want to use the new version. That’s great for people or place names, but not good for read vs. read.

This ability to change pronunciation solved another problem. I used military time in my chapter subheadings. It pronounced something like Day 6, 2130 EDT as Day six, two thousand, one hundred thirty Ee Dee Tee. I could change 2130 to “twenty-one thirty hours” and EDT to “Eastern Daylight Time.”

Google has a similar ability to change word pronunciation. Rather than using just letters, they introduce their own version of phonetic spelling. Usually, I could type in another word that incorporated the phonetic syllable I wanted to reproduce and splice something that worked. Then, in an improvement, Google added the ability to speak the word as you want it said. It usually reproduced my vocalizations correctly. Sometimes my accent and the AI narrator’s did NOT work, and I was left to figure out the phonetic equivalent or try enunciating more clearly.

Google allows you to apply the new pronunciation universally.

Advantage: Mixed. My impression was Amazon’s AI had fewer words I needed to fix. And Amazon’s English letters were easier to figure out than Google’s phonetic approach. That said, the overall advantage still goes to Google because it allows the voice-recording approach.

Pauses and Dramatic Interpretation

Both AI narrators attempt to interpret the text and read punctuation clues to add pauses. Periods work well, commas are a mixed bag, and question marks and exclamation points can lead to wonky and inconsistent inflections. You can’t fix those, but you can do something about pauses.

Amazon allows you to shorten or lengthen pauses by 25% or 50%. Google does not allow you to shorten pauses (I didn’t find any instances where I wanted to with Amazon). For additional pauses, it offers choices in tenths of seconds from .5 seconds to 2.0.

My sense was Amazon’s narrator interpreted text better than Google. However, I have not listened to Google’s narration in the last year, and it may have improved.

Advantage: Amazon—maybe.

Cover Art

Amazon takes your eBook cover and converts it to a rounded square cover for Audible, by placing the eBook cover in the square and filling in the sides with a contrasting color. No changes allowed. (See left for Niki Undercover example.) If you look for the audiobook through the standard Amazon store, you get the same cover as the eBook. Google asks you to upload a square cover, which you can design.

Advantage: Draw – Amazon makes it easy, Google gives choice.

Where else you can publish the audiobook

Google allows you to take the files they create and publish them anywhere.

Although I’ve read people saying you can publish the Amazon AI-narrated audiobook on places that distribute to libraries, I cannot find that in the Terms of Service. On a help topic it says, “Customers can find and listen to audiobooks with virtual voice wherever Audible audiobooks are available today. This includes the opportunity to reach millions of listeners on Amazon, Audible, Alexa, and through Amazon Music Unlimited.”

Advantage: Google

Pricing and Royalties

In typical Amazon fashion, they require you to price your AI-narrated audiobook between $3.99 and $14.99. They pay 40% royalties. Google allows you complete pricing freedom on GooglePlay, provided you do not offer it at a lower cost elsewhere. They pay 52% royalties.

Advantage: Google

Overall Assessment

Google provides significantly more flexibility than Amazon except for the number of available English-speaking voices. I would choose Google unless (as is my current situation) I wanted to stay within the Amazon environment.

I look forward to your questions and comments.

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This blog originally posted on Writers Who Kill on October 7, 2025.

James M. Jackson writes justice-driven thrillers with brains and bite, including the Niki Undercover Thriller series and the Seamus McCree series. To learn more information about Jim and his books, check out his website, https://jamesmjackson.com. You can sign up for his newsletter (and get to read two free short stories, one featuring Niki and Seamus and the other taking place at Seamus’s camp in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula).

Improving by Leaps and Bounds

I recently had an operation to stabilize abdominal aortic and iliac artery aneurysms. Part of the solution to that problem resulted in blocking the artery that provides much of the blood flow to my right buttock and hip. Fortunately, blood also flows to these areas from other places. The result is activity that uses those muscles (like walking—don’t even think about running) leaves those muscles screaming for more oxygen. Pain is what we call that screaming for O2.

Over the years, many people have told me I was a pain in the butt. Turns out they were prescient.

While researching how to improve my situation, I realized there are many similarities between revascularization (the process of bringing new blood vessels to supply the oxygen-deprived muscles) and learning new skills.

The purported “10,000-hour rule” for mastering a skill suggests that to excel, we must spend 10,000 hours working on that skill. That makes for great headlines but is too simplistic to benefit us in practice. First, the 10,000 hours was an average. Some people became extraordinary with many fewer hours, and others took considerably longer.

Second, it obscures the factors that determine how and at what rate we improve. What you do matters as much or more than how long you do it. Consider practicing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on the piano for 10,000 hours. Assuming you are still sane, that practice may make you a master of that piece, but it doesn’t make you a concert pianist.

For tasks that require pure muscle memory (shooting basketball free throws, carving perfect figures in Olympic skating competitions (in olden days), or keyboarding without looking), repeating the same task over and over again can develop it—provided we receive periodic feedback to spot problems with our form. We need to practice the correct move, not master a flawed technique.

The most efficient way to natural revascularization of my butt muscles is to exercise hard enough to be quite painful, but not so much that the muscles cramp. Then allow the muscles a brief rest and subject them to another period of stress. Repeat for at least 30 minutes, preferably more. After each session, allow the muscles to rest and recover. If there are no residual problems the next day, do it all again. If the exercise  becomes “too easy” to elicit the pain response, increase the interval stressors.

While that process results in gradual progress, from time-to-time the training results make a significant improvement jump. In revascularization, the steady process is evidence of the muscles becoming more efficient at dealing with their decreased oxygen supplies. The leaps and bounds occur when new and improved artery systems deliver more blood to the muscles.

If my butt muscles were a city, the steady improvement would result from the civil engineers figuring out better traffic light timing, replacing some traffic lights with roundabouts, thereby allowing cars to more easily move from A to B. The leap occurs when a new interstate comes online, replacing clogged two-lane roads with four lanes and higher speed limits.

A similar process occurs while we master a complex skill, like writing novels. Continuing to write the same types of stories may incrementally improve our skills. To make significant leaps, however, we must purposefully stress ourselves with new challenges and give ourselves recuperation time to allow our bodies and brains to recover. Then one day, we realize we have grown to a new level of expertise.

Has that been your experience when learning new complex skills?

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James M. Jackson authors the Niki Undercover Thriller and Seamus McCree series. Full of mystery and suspense, these thrillers explore financial crimes, family relationships, and what happens when they mix. To learn more information about Jim and his books, check out his website, https://jamesmjackson.com. You can sign up for his newsletter (and get to read a free Seamus McCree short story).

September 16 is the release date for Niki Undercover.

This blog originally appeared on the Writers Who Kill Blog on 9/2/2025.

President Trump’s Tariffs are now the Republican Congress’s Tariffs

That President Trump likes tariffs should come as no surprise. He implemented them during his first term and, during his candidacy for his current term, he promised to implement more. Two things have surprised most people: the size of his proposed tariffs and the policy flip-flops in implementing the tariffs.

When it comes to tariffs, I am neither a hawk nor a dove. They can be a legitimate component of any country’s trade and strategic policies. Because they increase the cost of goods imported into a country, the immediate effect is a direct tax on the company that imports the goods. In the short term, a company may swallow some of the tariff cost, but after time, they will increase prices to cover their added costs. Thus, consumers bear the final cost of tariffs, not corporations, and certainly not the countries where the goods first came from.

Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution says, “Congress shall have the Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, . . .but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States. The constitution clearly states that Congress has this power, not the Judicial or Executive branches of government. How, then, can President Trump (or any president) unilaterally make tariff decisions?

Congress delegated that power to the President under certain circumstances. One of those circumstances is a national emergency, as set forth in the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA). A Democratic Congress passed the legislation, and Jimmy Carter signed it into law. Its intent was to clarify and restrict presidential power during times of national emergency.

President Trump, in his first term, used IEEPA eleven times to invoke national emergency declarations. In 2019, President Trump used for the first time a national emergency declaration to invoke tariffs. President Biden invoked IEEPA after Russia invaded Ukraine in order to impose sanctions on Russian individuals and entities. President Trump has again invoked IEEPA to justify tariffs on almost all imports.

I cannot imagine what a business that imports goods has been going through these last few weeks as President Trump announces tariffs, changes what goods they apply to, pauses them, brings them back on, develops an additional set of tariffs that seem almost random in their country specifics, lets those go into effect, and thirteen hours later pauses them for ninety days. No manager can make rational long-term decisions with so much chaos, and so they must make short-term decisions they hope will limit their financial exposure. We will never know how much damage President Trump’s feckless yo-yoing tariffs have already done to our economy. The net decline in stock values suggests it has been large.

Congress has a remedy available that can monitor and modify any president’s use of IEEPA to justify tariffs. They can change the law. They can restrict what this president and any future president can do when they claim a national emergency. Congress can require any tariff enacted under IEEPA becomes void if not approved by Congress within (say) sixty days. They can require that Congress must approve ahead of implementation any tariff enacted under IEEPA in order for it to go into effect.

One such approach is the bipartisan “Trade Review Act of 2025” introduced in both the House and Senate. It does not go as far as I would like in limiting presidential power, but it does require Congressional approval of unilateral tariffs (or increases) proposed by the executive branch. The president must notify Congress within 48 hours of any proposed tariffs or increases, explain why they are necessary, and assess the tariff’s impact on consumers and businesses. Congress has sixty days to approve the tariff or it must end. Congress can also vote to end the tariff early.

This proposed law is a reasonable first step in clawing back power from the presidency that was intended to belong to Congress. While it made sense to give presidents flexibility to respond to genuine emergencies, the executive branch has abused emergency declarations to unilaterally impose actions without Congressional approval.

Over the last month, we have seen the chaos and costs of allowing national-emergency declarations to justify the whims of one person. What President Trump is doing now will only be expanded upon by future presidents, regardless of party. The time to stop these practices is now.

President Trump will surely veto the bill, which means it will require a two-thirds vote from each house of Congress to override the veto. Democrats and a few Republicans cannot do this on their own. It requires the Republican leadership to push the bill through.

And because this bipartisan bill is now offered, and Republican leadership combined with Democrats can put a stop to the madness, Republicans now own all of President Trump’s tariff decisions. Because they can curtail President Trump's tariff powers, a decision to not rein him in is a tacit approval of his tariffs. We need to remind every representative and senator, Republican and Democrat, that not making a change means approving of the current situation.

April Fools’ Day

Early morning March 31, 2025, I crawled into bed at home after a forty-eight-hour return trip from Leh, India, which is in the Indian Himalayan mountains region of Ladakh and ten and a half hours ahead of my home’s Central Daylight Time Zone (CDT). My flights were from Leh to Delhi to Dubai to Chicago to Madison. I caught some sleep on the Delhi to Dubai four-hour flight. I grabbed a few hours more on the fifteen-hour Dubai to Chicago leg, and that’s where I set my clock and tried to convince my body everything was now happening in CDT.

The Chicago to Madison flight was delayed an hour and a half because the crew was arriving on a plane from Raleigh-Durham, and that flight was diverted south to avoid massive thunderstorms curving from Michigan down to below St. Louis. I fought to stay awake on that flight so when I got home, I could sleep instead of being invigorated by a “nap.”

That worked. After I emptied my suitcase and took a shower, my Oura watch says I was asleep one minute after I climbed into bed. I arose at 8:00 am to keep adjusting to the CDT and after breakfast looked at my to-do list, which I had not done while on vacation.

That’s when I discovered that my first Tuesday of the month blog for Writers Who Kill was due to go live at midnight the next day, and I hadn’t paid attention to that and written this blog before I left for India. Normally, I would write about my trip and illustrate it with several of my photos—but I purposefully did not take a computer with me so I would be mindful of the special place I was visiting and not spend lots of time going through my thousands of images to find the best ones.

What to write then? Well, it is April Fools’ Day, so I thought I would share an April Fools’ joke created by George Plimpton, a wonderful sports writer who is best known for his realistic accounts of competing against professional athletes of various sports.

For the April 1, 1985 edition of Sports Illustrated, he wrote a story “The Curious Case of Sidd Finch.”[i] Sidd was a reclusive 28-year-old Harvard dropout, trained by Buddhist monks. He was fluent in Sanskrit, played the French horn, and impressively could hurl a baseball at 168 miles per hour. (To understand how ludicrous this is, Aroldis Chapman threw the fastest recorded pitch on September 24, 2010, a blazing 105.8 mph.)

Back to the story, in which Plimpton reported the Mets had given Sidd a secret tryout. The Mets went along with the prank and allowed players and coaches to be photographed with a middle school art teacher who posed as Sidd.

The subhead of the piece should have given the joke away with its absurdity and initial letters spelling out April Fools’ Day (He’s a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd’s deciding about yoga.)

How could anyone fall for that? Well, the article purportedly led other teams to contact the Mets to learn more about this mysterious new phenom.

What’s your favorite April Fools’ Joke?

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[i] Sidd Finch: A pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. - Sports Illustrated https://www.si.com/mlb/2014/10/15/curious-case-sidd-finch 

This post originally appeared on the Writers Who Kill Blog (4/1/25)

James M. Jackson authors the Seamus McCree series. Full of mystery and suspense, these thrillers explore financial crimes, family relationships, and what happens when they mix. To learn more information about Jim and his books, check out his website, https://jamesmjackson.com. You can sign up for his newsletter (and get to read a free Seamus McCree short story).

Advice to Democrats on Trump’s March 4 speech to Congress

 Be the adults in the room. To do that, I suggest following four simple suggestions:

1. Be present and attentive. You don’t like it, but under our cherished system of government, Trump is the elected president. You would have appeared for Harris; show up for Trump. You would have been attentive to Harris; be respectful of the Office of the President, even if you despise its current occupant. When Trump is introduced to the joint gathering of Congress, stand, showing your respect for the Office and its traditions.

2. When Trump says something you disagree with, meet it with stony silence. Clasp your hands together on your lap and leave them there unless a situation covered by suggestion 3 occurs. Keep your focus on Trump. Don’t roll your eyes at your friends. Feel free to look daggers at Trump, but keep your mouth shut and quiet. Showing no more response than this will drive Trump bonkers. He feeds on negative reactions to his statements and stunts—do not fall for it. Let him fail or succeed entirely on his own words, not your reaction to it.

3. Should Trump happen (and yes, I know this is unlikely) to say anything you agree with, show your agreement by clapping, just as you would have for Harris. If you really agree, stand up and cheer. Despite everything news and social media feed us, there are many things Republicans, Democrats, and Independents agree on. It is not impossible that Trump will mention at least one of these. Should that occur, respond positively to show you can recognize common ground and will work across the aisle to solve issues.

4. You showed unity in voting against the recent House Budget Resolution. Allow whomever the party designates as its spokesperson to respond for the entire party. Refer all requests for comments, interviews, etc. to that person’s response. There will be plenty of time for each of you to let your individual responses be known, but for this news cycle, let the contrast be between whatever Trump says in his speech and the single response.

Thank you for your attention.

The House Budget Resolution won’t solve the debt problem

When the House Republicans passed their 2025 Budget Resolution[i], only one Republican voted against it, Thomas Massie (R-KY). His post on X stated: The GOP budget extends the 5 yr. tax holiday we’ve been enjoying, but because it doesn’t cut spending much, it increases the deficit by over $300 billion/yr. compared to letting tax cuts expire. Over 10 years, this budget will add $20 trillion to US debt.[ii]

I might choose to argue whether the cuts in spending are “much” or not, but the House Budget Resolution, if implemented, will indeed add an estimated $20 trillion to the US debt. The policy statement included with the budget resolution includes as its first and third findings:

(1) The United States faces a significant debt crisis, with the national debt currently exceeding $36 trillion, or 123% of GDP (Ed. note: Gross Domestic Product, the total market value of all goods and services produced during the year)

(3) This debt poses a significant risk to the country’s long-term fiscal sustainability, with implications for future generations.

I agree that we are in a crisis of our own making and using the ratio of national debt to GDP is a fair approach of viewing the situation. Not solving this issue will have not only severe consequences for future generations, but it will have severe consequences for current generations, as well.

And yet, the budget resolution increases the accumulated debt to $56 trillion by 2034. That is an increase of over 50% in ten years’ time, about 4.4% compounded each year.

During the 21^st century, GDP grew faster than 4.4% in only one year[iii]. In 2021, it grew 5.8%; however, that followed the 2.21% decline in 2020. Combined, those two years averaged just 1.7% (compounded) growth.

To assume we will magically find our way (while decreasing immigration) to increase our GDP by more than a compounded 4.4% a year is unrealistic.

Therefore, Republicans identified the number one concern that debt was 123% of GDP, and after ten years, their proposed budgets will leave us with debt significantly greater than 123% of GDP.

How much greater? That depends on how fast GDP actually grows. The average compound growth rate for the 21^st century has been slightly under 2.5%. If we assume that continues, in ten years, the ratio of debt to GDP climbs to 187%. If GDP increased at 3% per year, the ratio is “only” 142%.

With this expected explosion of increased debt, the budget resolution proposed to increase the statutory debt limit by only $4 trillion, covering only two of the ten years. While I think having a debt limit is counterproductive at best and insane at worst, if Republicans want to propose budgets that will increase US debt by $20 trillion, then they should be transparent and raise the debt limit to cover it.

In a future post, I’ll provide my thoughts on how the budget resolution allocates cuts and where it provides for increased spending.

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[i] House Budget Resolution 2025 https://docs.house.gov/meetings/BU/BU00/20250213/117894/BILLS-119NAih.pdf

[ii] Massie X post https://www.newsweek.com/republican-breaks-gop-budget-plan-vote-2036282

[iii] US Annual GDP Growth https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/gdp-growth-rate

 

When (2 + 2) is less than 4

 I am starting the writing year facing two tasks I thoroughly enjoy and two I absolutely despise.

What I am looking forward to

I have been working on and off (actually, more off than on) creating a new series featuring Ashley Pendergast Prescott, who is initially an FBI undercover agent. My plan is to develop a three-book series (and if those do well, then more). In researching this blog, I was shocked to discover I had begun writing the first book, currently titled Niki Undercover, in early 2019. Just before Christmas this year, Jan finished her read through of that WIP, found a few typos and misplaced commas and pronounced it the best novel I have yet written.

My next task is to listen to Niki Undercover one last time because when I listen, I always catch a problem or two that my eyes and Jan’s never found. It’s a fun task. I get to lie on the couch and listen to an AI voice tell me a story and giggle at its mispronunciations. Plus, when I am done, I can call the story complete. Well, almost—see below for the tasks I am not looking forward to.

I wrote the first draft of the second book in the Niki Undercover series (tentatively titled Niki Unleashed) in the spring of 2021 and completed the second draft in January 2022. Jan read it then, made some suggestions. The manuscript sat just shy of three years before I picked it up this past December and gave it a read through. It needs work, but between Jan’s comments and my recent notes, I am cranked to write the third draft—my second enjoyable task. Yes, it will be a formidable task, ripping away the parts that don’t work and creating a tighter, edgier plot. But I know what I want that story to do, and that is exciting.

What I am not looking forward to

After Jan’s read through of Niki Undercover, she said, “You really should try to get an agent for this. It’s the best thing I’ve read recently.” I tend to think whatever book I just finished is my best (even though during its creation, I was sure it sucked, and I should abandon it). Jan has never made a statement like that about anything I’ve written.

I had planned to self-publish the new series. I figured I would wait until later this year when I had the second novel in decent shape and a draft of the third novel complete. That way, I could start pre-orders for the second book at the same time I published the first.

And then Jan damned me with that great praise. As a result, the first dismal task I need to complete is to craft a synopsis for Niki Undercover. Even though I have created synopses that won publishing contracts, I claim zero expertise and one-hundred-percent dread. I’ll get it done; I know I will. But until I do, it’s like rolling Sisyphus’ rock up the hill while the Sword of Damocles dangles by that single thread over my head.

And then, when I get that sucker done as well as I can, I must accomplish my second dread-laden task: researching literary agents to find ones who might be interested in my novels. Sending out the actual emails (or filling in online forms) is drudgery, but I have no fear of rejection. If they all say no, I am back to my original plan of self-publishing. If one signs me on, I know I have another round or two of revisions ahead of me.

To keep sane, each day I will work on both enjoyable and apprehensible tasks. I’ll start with the stuff I abhor and then reward myself with work I want to do.

I hear there is an open betting line in Vegas about whether I can pull this off. What odds do you give me?

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This post was first published on Writers Who Kill on 1/7/25.