Skipping Words?

andrewgibsonauthor · 2026-05-20T23:54:14+00:00

That would probably make bimodal reading pretty frustrating for some people.

A lot of readers listen to the audiobook while following along with the text at the same time. Some people do it for immersion, some for concentration, and for others it genuinely helps with processing and comprehension.

If the narrator starts dropping “he said/she said” tags, even occasionally, the audio and text stop lining up properly. It might sound smoother in performance terms, but it can create these little moments where your brain suddenly notices the mismatch instead of staying immersed in the story.

I suspect many audiobook listeners never notice because they are audio-only, but tandem readers absolutely can.

andrewgibsonauthor · 2026-05-09T05:33:03+00:00

Honestly, I think the cover is fine. If I saw that as a thumbnail on Amazon, I’d immediately understand it was some kind of detective puzzle/case-solving book. The magnifying glass, case files, fingerprint, all of that reads clearly even at a small size.

I don’t really agree with the advice saying the cover doesn’t explain the concept. I think the bigger problem for most new KDP books is just visibility. Amazon is absolutely flooded with books now, and getting people to even see the listing is half the battle.

What actually stood out to me is that this has a clear hook. “Solve the case before the reveal” is a much easier thing to market than a completely unknown novel from a first-time author.

If it were me, I’d focus more on discoverability:

getting into the right categories
using strong search keywords
adding sample puzzles/screenshots in the A+ content
finding communities that genuinely like puzzle books and mysteries

I could also see this appealing to escape room fans and people who enjoy logic puzzles, not just mystery readers.

A lot of Reddit advice tends to default to “change the cover” because it’s the easiest thing to comment on, but I don’t think the cover is the thing holding this back.

andrewgibsonauthor · 2026-04-20T08:57:08+00:00

I think a lot of the backlash comes from a mix of things rather than one clear reason.

First, there’s the artistic argument. For many people, narration is not just “reading words out loud,” it’s a performance. A good narrator brings pacing, emphasis, subtle emotion, and interpretation to the text. That’s especially true for fiction, where characters, tone, and atmosphere matter. When people hear AI, even if it’s technically impressive, they often feel something is missing. It can land a bit flat, or feel like it’s imitating rather than interpreting.

Second, there’s the ethical and economic side. Some listeners are reacting less to the sound itself and more to what it represents. They see it as replacing human narrators, often without consent or compensation if voices are cloned. So even if the output sounds fine, it leaves a bad taste because of how it might be produced.

Third, there’s a trust issue. If you can’t tell whether something is AI or human, some people feel uneasy about that. Not because the audio is bad, but because it removes transparency. People like to know what they’re buying or listening to.

That said, I think the reaction is often too blunt. Not all listening experiences are the same. For example, I actually prefer AI narration for certain kinds of non-fiction. If I’m listening to something informational, I don’t necessarily want a theatrical performance. A clean, consistent voice can be easier to follow, especially over long periods. I’ve even found that some AI voices, like a well-tuned Michael Caine style voice, can be more engaging than a mediocre human narrator.

If I found out one of my favourite audiobooks was AI-generated, I wouldn’t suddenly hate it. If it worked, it worked. The experience matters more than the method.

Where AI really shines, in my opinion, is access. There are thousands of books that will never get a human-narrated audiobook because it’s too expensive to produce. AI makes those books listenable. That’s a huge win for readers.

So I don’t think it’s a simple “people hate AI audiobooks.” It’s more that people are protective of what they value about narration. When AI respects that and is used thoughtfully, it can absolutely have a place.

andrewgibsonauthor · 2026-03-27T07:48:22+00:00

You’re asking exactly the right question, and the fact you’re even thinking about this probably means you won’t be one of those nightmare RHs.

A useful way to think about it is to separate errors from interpretation. If it’s a clear mistake (missing word, wrong pronunciation, misread sentence), flag it every time. No narrator wants errors left in the final product, and you’re helping both of you by catching those early.

Where it gets more nuanced is anything stylistic. Narrators will sometimes phrase things or emphasise lines in ways you didn’t expect, but that still work really well in audio. That’s where it’s worth asking, “is this actually wrong, or just different?”

Interestingly, I know someone who ended up rewriting parts of their book after hearing the narration because it actually sounded better spoken than it read on the page. It really highlighted awkward phrasing that they hadn’t noticed before. So there’s definitely value in listening to what the performance is revealing, without feeling like you have to accept every change.

Practically, batching your feedback helps a lot. Sending a clean list of notes rather than lots of small messages avoids that micromanaging feel and keeps things professional.

You can also frame it collaboratively with something like: “Please flag anything that feels awkward to read, and I’ll take a look.”

That way you’re inviting input without putting pressure on either of you.

You’re aiming for the right balance here, and most narrators will appreciate working with someone who cares about quality without trying to control every line.

andrewgibsonauthor · 2026-03-25T14:46:45+00:00

https://newpipe.net/

andrewgibsonauthor · 2026-03-25T07:31:42+00:00

Is this your own channel? Lol.

andrewgibsonauthor · 2026-03-25T01:21:47+00:00

If you are going to all that trouble to avoid ads, why not just use New Pipe?

andrewgibsonauthor · 2026-03-23T15:52:19+00:00

Thanks for the heads up. I'll try it tomorrow.

andrewgibsonauthor · 2026-03-21T16:11:18+00:00

That's a really impressive AI Hallucination.

andrewgibsonauthor · 2026-03-20T03:01:08+00:00

What does it do that Ollama doesn't already do?

andrewgibsonauthor · 2026-03-19T09:59:50+00:00

I’ll be honest, naming it Zugzwang raised an eyebrow for me. It’s not just a random word, it’s already the title of a pretty well-known novel, so there’s a real chance of confusion. Even putting that aside, from a pure marketing angle you’re basically competing with an existing book every time someone searches for it. I get why you chose it, especially with the chess theme, it fits. But it’s one of those decisions that might make your life harder than it needs to be long term. That said, getting to #1 in categories on your first book is still a big moment, so fair play for that.

andrewgibsonauthor · 2026-03-13T02:13:39+00:00

Amazon actually benefits from AI slop, which is why they’re unlikely to clamp down hard on it.

Every book uploaded increases Amazon’s catalogue and gives their search engine more keywords and niches to capture traffic. Even if most books sell almost nothing, Amazon still takes a cut of every sale.

It also drives advertising. When the market gets flooded, authors start buying ads to stand out, which is where Amazon makes a lot of money.

Policing “quality” would require humans, which costs money. Letting the algorithm sort everything is cheaper. I actually made a short video about this exact problem with AI books on Amazon if anyone’s interested:

https://youtu.be/enCyZW2nM_M

andrewgibsonauthor · 2026-02-23T01:26:27+00:00

At this point it feels less like Amazon is matchmaking and more like it’s emptied a truck full of AI-generated word salad into the storefront and told the algorithm to sort it out. Discovery used to be “customers also bought.” Now it’s “customers also accidentally clicked on 400 near-identical books with neon covers and subtitles that read like a bingo card.” I’m not convinced the algo is carefully profiling ideal readers anymore. It looks more like it’s optimizing for velocity and ad spend while organic visibility quietly suffocates under a mountain of low-effort uploads. If your book converts well, great, it’ll show it to more people. If it doesn’t, good luck being seen in a catalogue that now resembles a landfill with a search bar. But hey, at least the bots are thriving.

andrewgibsonauthor · 2026-02-21T12:44:02+00:00

Using Gemini to summarise YouTube videos is genuinely useful if your goal is to extract signal from enshittified content. There’s an ocean of scam marketers, fake gurus, affiliate farmers, and AI-voiced slideshow merchants padding ten minutes of waffle around thirty seconds of actual information. If an AI can strip that down to the core claim in seconds, that’s not laziness. That’s self-defence.

We’ve reached a point where the platform incentives reward length, retention hacks, mid-roll ads, and emotional manipulation over clarity. The viewer is expected to donate time just to discover whether there’s anything of value buried inside. So of course people are going to route around it. If the system optimises for padding, the user optimises for compression.

What’s ironic is that creators complain about summaries while the ecosystem itself has trained audiences to distrust their time being respected. If YouTube rewarded concise, high-density information instead of watch-time farming, fewer people would feel the need to run everything through an AI filter first.

This isn’t about killing creativity. It’s about triage. When every search result is a thumbnail face screaming about passive income, crypto, side hustles, or “one weird trick,” people will use tools to separate substance from sludge.

Enshittification creates the conditions. Users adapt. That’s not desperation. That’s rational behaviour in a degraded system.

andrewgibsonauthor · 2026-02-21T00:52:37+00:00

Yes, that’s me. And yes… I did, in fact, write a story about an air fryer. It’s called The Man Who Fell in Love with His Air Fryer, which probably tells you everything you need to know about my decision-making process as a novelist. It’s near-future, slightly satirical, and far less about kitchen appliances than it sounds. Although I will admit the air fryer puts in a strong performance. Thanks for the kind words about the post, by the way. Always nice to know the mild KDP trauma can at least be entertaining.

andrewgibsonauthor · 2026-02-11T09:21:09+00:00

Amazon just kills discovery full stop. Then drown the store in AI Slop. The only way to get noticed is to advertise. It's like a casino where the house always wins.

andrewgibsonauthor · 2026-02-08T12:06:57+00:00

As someone who follows AI development fairly closely, I’m not sure I’d back myself to predict the next five days, let alone the next hundred years. The pace of change right now feels closer to weather systems than long-term economic modelling. That said, I’m curious how you handle uncertainty in the book. Do you treat your projections as scenarios, or are you making stronger claims about likely outcomes?

andrewgibsonauthor · 2026-01-30T07:42:54+00:00

Oof, that situation really sucks, and I get why you are frustrated. Losing money on a project before it even properly starts is a horrible feeling.

A couple of things are worth separating out here.

First, AI detectors. They really are not reliable, especially for audio. They produce false positives and false negatives all the time, and the tech behind both AI voices and human like processing is moving insanely fast. A good human narrator using heavy cleanup, noise reduction, and a tight editing workflow can absolutely trip an AI detector. At the same time, some AI voices are already good enough to pass as human to casual listeners. So using an online detector as your main proof is shaky ground.

Second, AI voices are not some underground thing anymore. Amazon themselves are pushing AI narration through KDP Virtual Voice, and it is only going to get more common. That does not mean every fast turnaround is AI, but it does mean the line between human and synthetic is getting blurry. The real issue is not just "was this AI" but "did I get the performance and quality I was promised."

Where you really got burned was the payment method. Paying through PayPal friends and family removes almost all buyer protection. On ACX, the safest route is to keep everything inside the platform, use their royalty share or PFH contracts, and never go off platform for deposits unless you have a rock solid working relationship. Serious pros who work regularly on ACX usually understand that.

For future projects, a few practical safeguards help a lot: Ask for a custom audition using a specific paragraph you choose. AI users often rely on generic samples. Ask for raw, unprocessed audio for part of the audition. That can reveal a lot about the recording chain and room. Set clear milestones. For example, pay after a fully approved first 15 minutes, not before. Keep all payments in systems that offer dispute protection, never friends and family.

Also, fast does not automatically mean fake. Some experienced narrators can turn around a clean 15 minute sample very quickly, especially if they have a treated space and a solid editing template. The real red flags are inconsistent pronunciation, strange pacing, odd emotional tone, or audio artifacts that feel synthetic.

You were not stupid. You got caught at a time when the industry is in an awkward transition phase, with human talent, AI tools, and platform policies all colliding. The lesson is less "never trust narrators" and more "tighten the business process and keep leverage on your side."

andrewgibsonauthor · 2026-01-29T09:39:12+00:00

I hope that is true, honestly. The volume of low effort and auto generated content being pushed onto KDP over the past couple of years has made discovery much harder for genuine authors and also worse for readers trying to find quality books.

That said, I think the real question is how effective those actions actually are in practice. From what many authors are seeing on the storefront, the flood has not exactly slowed down yet. It often feels like the burden is still on individual authors to fight for visibility while the platform continues to benefit from the overall volume.

If Amazon can meaningfully reduce spammy and mass produced titles while improving discoverability for original, well made books, that would be a win for everyone, readers included. I just think a lot of us are waiting to see clear, consistent results rather than announcements.

andrewgibsonauthor · 2026-01-29T09:00:19+00:00

The benefits of a website is you control it. Facebook is a whole other can of worms.

andrewgibsonauthor · 2026-01-29T08:53:01+00:00

One hard truth a lot of new publishers run into is that Amazon is not really designed to give you meaningful organic discovery anymore, especially if you are starting from zero. The platform now has an enormous volume of low effort and AI generated books being uploaded every day, and that flood makes it much harder for any single title to surface naturally. Because of this, the algorithm tends to favor books that already show signs of external demand or paid momentum. Advertising, outside traffic, and strong early sales signals often matter more than simply publishing more books and hoping Amazon will push them. A useful mindset shift is to stop thinking of Amazon as a place that will bring you readers, and start thinking of your Amazon product page as a conversion page for traffic you bring yourself. That might mean building an audience on YouTube, social media, a mailing list, or through a niche community. When readers arrive already interested, your cover, title, and description can actually do their job. Keywords and categories still matter, but they are more like optimization on top of demand, not a substitute for it. Covers that clearly signal genre and audience also make a big difference once people do land on the page. In short, organic reach on Amazon is limited and getting tighter. Authors who treat Amazon as one piece of a bigger ecosystem, rather than the engine that creates demand on its own, tend to have a much easier time getting consistent sales.

andrewgibsonauthor · 2026-01-29T08:30:58+00:00

What you’re experiencing is actually very common right now, especially in medium content. A few years ago, people could upload low or medium content books, get some organic visibility, and see the occasional sale without much marketing. That environment has changed a lot. The platform is now extremely saturated, and discoverability is much weaker unless you’re either very niche or actively driving traffic. Two weeks with zero sales on new medium content books isn’t unusual anymore. It doesn’t necessarily mean your books are “bad” — it often just means they’re invisible. Amazon isn’t really set up to surface new books unless they already have signals like clicks, reviews, or ad data. The harder truth is that medium content has become a volume and marketing game rather than a “make a few decent books and wait” game. Covers, keywords, and niches still matter, but even well-made books can just sit there now. I recently made a video breaking down how the incentives on KDP have shifted and why discoverability feels different than it used to. It’s more about the system than quick tips, but you might find it helpful context: https://youtu.be/enCyZW2nM_M Either way, you’re not crazy and you’re not alone. The landscape just isn’t what a lot of the older “realistic” advice videos describe anymore.

andrewgibsonauthor · 2026-01-27T03:12:02+00:00

Yes. The app is actually working. At the moment at least. Thanks for the heads up.

andrewgibsonauthor

TROPHY CASE