ElevenLabs’ text-to-speech technology, HarperCollins says, can bolster its work in non-English-language audiobooks.

From London today, HarperCollins has announced today (April 18) an agreement with the United States-based ElevenLabs to create audiobooks for the publisher’s non-English-language business using the text-to-speech technology that has moved ElevenLabs into a position of prominence in the field. The deal, we’re told, is international, “so it will be rolled out across different markets,” a HarperCollins spokesperson tells us, “including the UK.”

Understanding, as all in the publishing industry do, the sensitivity of the use of automated voicing for audiobook production—instead, of course, using human readers, called “narrators” in the business—HarperCollins is quick in its announcement to write, “The agreement will lead to the production of audio versions of select deep-backlist series books that would not otherwise have been created.”

By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson