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In this episode Mark interviews Phil Marshall, the author of the recently released science fiction novel Taming the Perilous Skies and the founder of Spoken, a platform that removes numerous audiobook production barriers for indie authors and small publishers.
Prior to the interview, Mark shares comments, a personal update, and a word about this episode’s sponsor.
This episode is sponsored by ScribeCount (affiliate link). Spend less time logging in to multiple platforms and crunching numbers, and more time writing and marketing your books thanks to ScribeCount’s handy all-in-one interface.
In the interview, Mark and Phil talk about:
- Phil’s background with Conversa
- Being trained as a surgeon and then switching to product development and technology
- The novel (TAMING THE PERILOUS SKIES) that was baking in his head since 2021
- Distributing 130 copies of his novel to early readers at a recent WorldCon
- The market info of “Dan Brown meets Andy Weir”
- How the novel and Spoken itself were both inspired by the same thing
- An explanation of what Spoken is and how it addresses Phil’s desire for multi-cast narration
- Multi-voice narration being a speciality of Spoken
- Why Phil is releasing the novel in multi-cast narration via Spoken for free in chapter by chapter installments
- Spoken having just completed a full year of beta release and is now available as a fully available product
- A bit of a walk-thru of how Spoken breaks out different character voices in an automated manner
- How ElevenLabs and Hume are the two partners Spoken uses for their character and narrator voices
- The costs involved in producing these audio books
- How there is no cost for listeners who want to check out how things sound on Spoken
- Phil’s message to authors who are nervous/anxious about A.I.
- And more…
After the interview Mark reflects on a couple of things related to the conversation.
Links of Interest:
- Spoken
- Phil Marshall’s Website
- Phil’s Book: Taming the Perilous Skies
- EP 432 – Creativity, Connection, and Community with Police Officer and Author A.L. Wahdel
- EP 056 – Balance and Counterbalance with Katie Cross
- Kobo Writing Life Podcast EP 78 (March 2017) – Katie Cross: From Full-Time Author to Full-Time Mom
- SPA Girls Podcast Episode 517 (with Mark)
- Manuscript Report (Mark’s affiliate link)
- Buy Mark a Coffee
- Patreon for Stark Reflections
- Mark’s YouTube channel
- Mark’s Stark Reflections on Writing & Publishing Newsletter (Signup)
- An Author’s Guide to Working With Bookstores and Libraries
- The Relaxed Author
- Publishing Pitfalls for Authors
- An Author’s Guide to Working with Libraries & Bookstores
- Wide for the Win
- Mark’s Canadian Werewolf Books
- The Canadian Mounted: A Trivia Guide to Planes, Trains and Automobiles
- Yippee Ki-Yay Motherf*cker: A Trivia Guide to Die Hard
- Merry Christmas! Shitter Was Full!: A Trivia Guide to National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
Phil Marshall Bio:
I build technologies, organizations, and stories that imagine a fantastic future. From my theory of persistence, which sits at the heart of my sci-fi writing, to pioneering conversational AI that transformed the relationships between doctors and patients, to creating groundbreaking tools that are transforming the relationship between authors and their readers, I thrive at the intersection of imagination and execution.
My current project is Spoken, bringing authors and readers together around great audio stories that are made possible by technology. Before Spoken, I co-founded Conversa, a platform that connected patients and care teams using conversational AI. Along the way, I’ve built technologies that span personalization (WebMD), collaborative movie-making (JumperCut), ontology-driven knowledge graphs (OntoLogic.ai), and concept-based health record threading (WellMed).
The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
About your bumpers. I like the music you’ve been using but will admit that they did come in on the loud side. Conversely, I think you’ve mastered them down a little too much in this episode. Too loud bumpers are one of the things that annoy me across some of the audiocasts I listen to over the week.
I am glad your guest brought up the fact the Voice Actors used in his service are compensated for their contribution. This was the big question I had throughout most of the interview.
On the AI front I must admit to still being on the fence. For myself, I refuse to give those portions of the writing journey that give me the most joy away. On a more pragmatic level, I believe the bigger question about how AI will impact our industry is up to the reader. If they decide AI generated stories are fine in large enough numbers no amount of grumbling on the part of creators is going to change things.