How USA Today bestselling author Leeanna Morgan uses ElevenLabs to increase audiobook sales

Meet Leeanna Morgan

Leeanna is a successful writer and online businesswoman based in New Zealand. With a repertoire of over 44 published novels and a regular readership well into the tens of thousands, Leeanna is passionate about sharing stories and making her work accessible to her readers.

Audiobooks were always on her radar when Leeanna started publishing her novels in 2014. As a self-published author, Leeanna always looks for new ways to expand her audience and reach new readers, so selling audiobooks alongside her print works appealed to her. 

Plus, Leeanna is passionate about helping more people understand the power of stories, and audio narration is a fantastic way to make content more accessible.

The power of AI narration

When Leeanna first investigated the cost of publishing an audiobook, she was shocked to find that the going rate for recording was around NZ $7,000 (approximately USD 4,000). 

At such a high cost, Leeanna would need huge sales volumes just to break even. That meant offering audiobooks was not possible, as the initial cost of creating them was just too high. 

On top of the high costs, the average human-read audiobook has a turnaround time of over a month. Longer books can take even longer. In today’s fast-paced world of BookTok and Bookstagram, that wasn’t good enough for Leeanna’s readers.

All that was until Leeanna heard another author talk about how they used ElevenLabs to generate human-sounding, authentic audiobooks in a fraction of the time. Leeanna says:

“I’d tried other AI software, but the dialogue was always substandard and I wasn’t prepared to sell anything less than amazing to my readers. As soon as I tried a sample of dialogue on ElevenLabs, I knew I’d found the perfect solution to creating high-quality AI-narrated audiobooks.”

How ElevenLabs changes the audiobook game

Now, Leeanna has created 21 audiobooks already and, by her own estimates, has saved over NZ $147,000 in recording, editing, and publishing costs! 

She uses ElevenLabs text-to-speech functionality to create her audiobooks and can configure critical elements of the narration to enhance her plot, including accent, gender, and reading speed.

She says: “I can create an entire series of audiobooks when I want them. It’s much faster to edit the AI narration, and I can fine-tune the speech exactly how I want it to sound. I can even use multiple voices and add sound effects if I want to. ElevenLabs is a mini movie set on my desktop!”

Plus, Leeanna finds ElevenLabs so easy to use that she’s even got her mom involved in the editing process, explaining:

“I now pay my mom to edit the audio files. It takes 30-45 minutes to fully edit each chapter, and I usually have about 70 chapters per book. If I were contracting a human narrator to create my audiobooks, I’d still have to listen to the entire book and write down any changes I wanted, so the additional time to edit an AI-narrated audiobook is well worth it. Especially when I know the books sound incredible.” 

Ultimately, without ElevenLabs, Leeanna’s readers would have been unable to listen to her work through their headphones or on the go. The power of the ElevenLabs technology has also meant that Leeanna can benefit from a new income stream, and she has seen her sales increase as a result.

“ElevenLabs has brought my books to life, increased the number of people discovering my stories, and increased my sales! It’s perfect for anyone wanting to create high-quality AI-narrated audiobooks.”

Making AI audiobooks accessible to authors

But that’s not the end of Leeanna’s story with ElevenLabs. 

After her experience, she knew that so many more authors could benefit from AI narration. She surmised that many authors were reluctant to try AI voiceovers out as they didn’t know it was an option, felt intimidated by the creation process, or didn’t know how audiobooks can add to their income stream.

As a result, Leeanna started work on her course, The AI Audiobook Creator Course. 

Her step-by-step course covers her entire process, from formatting and editing your manuscript to creating audio samples for your website. With 13 modules, 3.5 hours of detailed video instruction, and eight downloadable PDFs, Leeanna shares her secrets with authors online.

For more information, check out Leeanna’s audiobooks and her course, which are available for sale on her website or join her Facebook group.