My ElevenLabs Audiobook Experience—and Why My Audiobook Is Delayed

I Really Wanted You to Have the Audiobook by Now

Unfortunately, creating The Morality of Money in my own voice has turned out to be far more difficult than I ever expected.

I owe my readers an update—and an apology.

I had hoped to have the audiobook edition of The Morality of Money available by now. I chose ElevenLabs because its voice-cloning technology gave me the opportunity to narrate the book using a version of my own voice.

But after more than 100 hours of working on the audiobook, I have reached a point where I need to ask the people who matter most—you, my readers and future listeners.

How important is it to you that The Morality of Money is narrated in my voice?

Would you rather wait while I continue working to create the audiobook in my own voice—or would you be just as happy to have it sooner using a different professional-quality narrator?

If you’d like to know more about my experience with ElevenLabs—and why the audiobook has been delayed—keep reading.

My Experience Using ElevenLabs for an Audiobook

After more than 100 hours working with the platform, I didn’t expect to be writing an ElevenLabs review like this. When the technology works, it can be remarkably good. I have generated passages that sound natural, warm, and surprisingly close to my own voice.

The problem is consistency.

Even with the voice stability set extremely high, the narration can change noticeably from one paragraph to the next. The pitch changes. The tone changes. The energy changes. The cadence and speed change.

One paragraph may sound calm, warm, and conversational. The very next can suddenly sound much higher, faster, or overly enthusiastic—as though it came from a different recording session.

Regenerating the paragraph doesn’t necessarily solve it. Sometimes I get essentially the same result. Other times I get an entirely different performance that doesn’t match what comes before or after it.

I have contacted ElevenLabs and provided an actual audio sample demonstrating these problems. I hope their technical team can help find a solution.

What ElevenLabs Does Well

I want to be fair: there is a reason I have continued working with ElevenLabs. When the voice is right, it can be remarkably convincing. Some passages sound natural, expressive, and very much like me.

That potential is exactly what has kept me trying. My frustration isn’t that the technology cannot produce excellent narration. It is that I have not been able to produce that quality consistently across a full-length audiobook without an extraordinary amount of editing and regeneration.

My ElevenLabs Review for Other Authors

If you’re an independent author considering ElevenLabs or another AI narration platform, I would strongly recommend testing much more than a few impressive samples before committing to producing an entire audiobook.

Generating a beautiful paragraph is one thing. Producing hours of narration that sounds like the same person, in the same recording session, throughout an entire book is something very different.

AI audiobook narration has tremendous potential. I still believe that. But my experience with ElevenLabs has required vastly more time, editing, and regeneration than I anticipated. Authors considering this route should know that before making the same commitment.

Click the book to view The Morality of Money on Amazon.

— Renée