HarperCollins Publishers and ElevenLabs to Bring More Stories to Life Through Audio

We're working with HarperCollins Publishers to create audiobooks for HarperCollins’s foreign language business using our text to speech technology. The agreement will lead to the production of audio versions of select deep backlist series books that would not otherwise have been created.

Mati Staniszewski, CEO of ElevenLabs, comments:
“We’re thrilled to collaborate with HarperCollins and delighted that our technology is making it possible for more books in their incredible catalogue of works to become an audiobook. Without AI, there simply wouldn’t be the time or resources to make this happen. Now, every author can see their work come to life in audio, readers can be offered more choice, and the linguistic barriers of content can be dissolved.”

Our Projects tool, designed for publishers and independent authors will be utilized. The tool allows for an audiobook to be created in as little as one hour via its intuitive Projects interface. Creators can select or design the voices they want to use, easily assign specific text fragments to particular speakers, and adjust pause lengths between text segments, all while maintaining contextual cohesion.

This technology represents a seismic leap forward in the quality of audio that AI-assisted tools can create. It also significantly reduces the costs and operational challenges associated with full-scale audiobook production.

HarperCollins will continue to devote time and resources to voice actor-led productions which are intrinsic to its current audiobook creation strategy. Text to speech will be leveraged as a complementary tool to enable a broader number of audiobooks for backlist series books in non-English markets, leading to a more diverse selection of titles in the format and driving growth in the audiobook markets.