You must be listening to some reaaaaly bad readings.

As a long-time Audible subscriber, I’d estimate that I skip 1 in 3 books because of the narrator’s voice or bad recording setup.

My main reason of returning or not listening to audiobooks, be it with Audible or competitors, has been either a) a whiny or nasal voice, or, b) a strong accent that i dislike (e.g. strong British or Australian accent).

I have found myself finding more new books by checking which other books a specific narrator has voiced, rather than finding a book I want to listen to and hoping for a good narrator.

/rant i guess

Ah - I have probably listened to maybe 8-10 audiobooks and all ones that have been recommended to me as excellent. I guess I just assumed that that’s what audiobooks are like, which I guess doesn’t make sense.

I believe Audible is already using non human speakers as well and just making up names for the narrators. I can tell since sometimes pronunciations are wrong and sound similar to TTS mistakes.

Death is a bit extreme. I think acquisition is much more likely.

> If 11labs app get to the main service quality and start accepting ePubs, it will be the death of Audible.

The app from this announcement does accept epubs. Just tested a couple and had no issues. Haven't used 11labs before, but the quality was good and didn't have any major issues with an English voice even with some spot checked fantasy names/terms or chemical names.