Over the last couple of months, Amazon KDP had been making offers to let them use their virtual voices to create an audio version of one of my novels. Additionally, I have been incentivized by several of my friends who have repeatedly told me that if I would do an audio version of them, they would purchase it and listen to it. I want to clarify that I possess a displeasing voice, so reading it was never a choice for me.

To be honest, I have been collaborating with one of my editors to create an audio version of my latest manuscript, Project Echo. I had published it, but after having the editor read it and receiving comments from several members of my local writer’s group, in Chapin, it needed some work.

My point on that segue is that I have been interested in doing an audiobook since writing Ring of Freedom. The person working on the audio version of Project Echo was supposed to do that book, but they were concerned about pronouncing the Vietnamese names and locations mentioned in the memoir. I even introduced him to one individual I wrote about in the memoir, but we seemed to lose momentum on that project.

So finally this week, I listened to some of the same virtual voices that Amazon offered and took the plunge. So my most recent novel, Chop Stix, Chinese Spies Among Us, was my choice. It is a long historical novel covering several true story events involving the FBI and real Chinese spies working in the United States and the world. I was curious how AI/virtual voice would do with my Chinese names and places. I thought considering China was an enormous market for Amazon, it could accurately pronounce the names of my characters and real places, perhaps better than the Vietnamese names and places.

For the most part, Amazon’s AI/virtual voice handled the Chinese names and places to my satisfaction. However, a word to those considering using the Amazon’s AI/virtual voice, what I found out was some acronyms don’t get their just treatment. An example, I used the police term “MO” for modus operandi. Well, it ended up pronounced MO. I should have been more clever and written it as “M O” so that it would be pronounced correctly. And maybe it was a mistake in my book that I should have edited from the start. But since I have filed a copy with the Library of Congress, I can’t edit it without assigning a new ISBN and calling it a revised version. With MO appearing in only a few spots, I believed I had no choice but to tolerate it.

I wrote this so that other writers considering using Amazon would have a review of their AI/Virtual voice. I look forward to hearing from any other writers about their thoughts.