The Future of Storytelling: Democratizing Self-Published Audio for Indie Authors

The world of storytelling is changing. In our recent webinar with Author Nation, we explored how self-published authors can finally break into the booming audiobook industry—without the barriers that have long kept them out.

For too long, creating an audiobook required a massive investment in time and money. It was a process built for traditional publishers, leaving indie authors without an easy, affordable way to share their stories in audio.

That’s where Spoken comes in.

Key Takeaways from the Webinar

Breaking the Barriers to Self-Published Audio: We discussed how Spoken is making audiobook creation as simple as publishing an eBook. Instead of thousands of dollars in production costs, authors can now create high-quality, multi-cast, custom-voiced audiobooks in minutes—for 1% of the traditional cost.

Before Spoken: Audiobooks cost $3,750+ to produce.

After Spoken: High-quality narration can be created for as little as $40-$100.

This is more than just about lowering costs—it’s about giving authors full control over their audio journey.

A New Way to Monetize Audio: Many indie authors struggle with the restrictive royalties of platforms like Audible or Kindle Unlimited. With Spoken’s Affinity Subscription model, listeners directly fund the authors they love — earning more per minute listened than traditional platforms allow.

75% of direct sales revenue goes to authors.

50% of subscription revenue is distributed proportionally based on listening time.

This new model puts power back into the hands of authors, allowing them to build sustainable income streams from their work.

Audio Is the Future of Storytelling: The global audiobook market is expected to reach $30-$60 billion by 2030, driven by a younger generation that prefers audio content. Our discussion highlighted how self-published writers now have the tools to tap into this massive shift.

Indie novels, serialized fiction, blogs, fan fiction, and short-form stories—everything can now be easily transformed into immersive audio.

AI-powered narration and multi-voice casting make it possible to create engaging audiobooks without the hassle.

The key message? Listening is the new reading—and indie authors need to be part of the movement.

Final Thoughts: The Next Era of Storytelling is Spoken

The response from the Author Nation audience was incredible. Authors are ready to take ownership of their stories in audio, and Spoken is here to help them do just that.

If you missed the webinar, don’t worry—this is just the beginning. Stay tuned for more insights, tools, and strategies to help bring your words to life in audio.

Your Story. Your Audience.
The future of storytelling is Spoken.

Breaking Barriers in Audiobook Publishing: Cody Sisco’s Broken Mirror and the Future of Self-Published Audio

Cody Sisco just made history.

His sci-fi novel Broken Mirror is the first full-length book to be fully produced and published using Spoken’s purpose-built studio workflow. In a publishing landscape where audiobooks are expensive and time-consuming to produce, Cody has proved that there’s another way—one that dramatically reduces cost, effort, and time, while expanding creative possibilities for indie authors.

Spoken is revolutionizing self-published audio, and Broken Mirror is the proof. With a stunning 53-chapter production featuring multi-character narration, Cody has unlocked a new kind of immersive storytelling—one that feels less like a traditional audiobook and more like a radio play for the modern era.

From Beta to Breakthrough

Cody first started experimenting with Spoken’s platform last fall. “It was a previous version,” he recalls, “and I could upload a few chapters, but the ability to create a full-length audiobook in chapters—working with it like a real book—hadn’t been implemented yet.” When the full functionality arrived, he knew it was time. “I thought, ‘This is really cool. I can actually do this.’”

The project quickly became more than just an audio adaptation; it became an artistic experiment in casting, performance, and adaptation. Rather than using a single narrator—the standard format for most self-published audiobooks—Cody tapped into Spoken’s library of voice actors to cast his characters, carefully selecting the right voices to bring them to life.

“What Spoken has created with multi-character narration is almost closer to a radio play,” Cody explains. “If the writing and the performance come together in the right way, the characters really come alive. It’s something completely new that indie authors wouldn’t have been able to do before.”

The scale of the project was unprecedented: 54 different character voices. Even Cody didn’t realize just how vast his cast was until one of Spoken’s co-founders, Phil Marshall, pointed it out.

“Phil Marshall did a shoutout today and said there were 54 characters in the book, and I was like, ‘I didn’t even realize that.’”

Building an Audio Cast: The Creative Challenge

Beyond just the number of characters, Cody faced the challenge of choosing the right voices for each role—an experience he describes as an unexpectedly engaging creative exercise.

“It was almost like a casting call,” he says. “I had to match what was possible with what my vision for each character was. Some voices were perfect right away, others I had to tweak. But overall, it was an exciting way to see the story come to life.”

One of the most compelling aspects of Spoken’s system is that when an actor’s voice clone is used, they get paid. While Spoken supports AI-generated narration, supporting actor’s voice clones ensures that human voice actors still have a stake in the future of audio self-publishing.

The Future of Indie Audiobooks

Cody sees Spoken as more than just a tool for production; he sees it as a new kind of publishing ecosystem. “We’re still figuring out what the new creative economy for audio publishing looks like,” he explains.

The platform offers a low-cost, DIY alternative to expensive studio recordings, democratizing audiobook production in the same way self-publishing revolutionized ebooks. Traditionally, an audiobook can cost thousands of dollars to produce, with uncertain returns for indie authors. With Spoken, the cost is a fraction of that, opening the door for more authors to bring their books to life in audio.

“I often tell authors to read their work aloud—it’s one of the best ways to refine your writing. Spoken takes that idea to the next level. You don’t just read it; you hear it performed. You experience it in a new way.”

And Spoken’s potential doesn’t stop there. Cody envisions a future where authors collaborate with their audiences to make creative choices—perhaps even letting listeners vote on which voices suit their favorite characters.

What’s Next for Cody—and for Spoken?

Cody isn’t done yet. With Broken Mirror now live on Spoken, he’s already thinking about what’s next.

“I know I need to take a break,” he laughs, “but I’m already thinking about uploading the sequel. And a related short story. And maybe something brand new. It’s kind of addictive.”

And with a platform like Spoken, it’s easy to see why. The technology is enabling authors to do what was once impossible, and Cody Sisco’s work is the first—but certainly not the last—full-length novel to prove what’s possible.

If you’re an indie author wondering whether Spoken is worth trying, Cody has some simple advice:

“You never know what will give you new insight into your creative process or spark fresh ideas. For me, Spoken did that. So why not give it a shot?”

Listening Is

Believing Is

Listening Is Believing Is

Spoken Beta V0.8: Introducing Discovery On Spoken, Lexicon, and more!

Since some of our more groundbreaking enhancements of our V0.7 release including single-sitting full audiobook narration and custom-generated character voices, we're settling in to a few important requests, the ones from YOU!

We’ve now added email and password as a way to register for Spoken, but with our V0.8 release today we have added a number of other important enhancements. We're listening (because you're listening)!

Let’s dive in.

“On Spoken” Updates, driven by Playlists, Topics of Interest, and Techie Things

This, no doubt, will be the first thing you'll notice about the release: Our updates to the On Spoken page. The first "carousels" you'll see are curated lists from our content team. This is the new concept of Playlists, and soon (next release) users will be able to create and share their own.

Listeners have asked that we make it easy to find and discover the projects and writers that match the genres and projects they like, and  the writers they already follow. Using our new Topics of Interest list (more information on that below), we now rotate a genre carousel of projects from each of the topics that you follow. This new layer of personalization should help listeners more quickly find the authors, and stories, they’ll love.

We also now rotate through the authors you follow to suggest similar authors.

And we rotate through the projects you like to suggest similar projects.

Topics of interest

Listeners asked that we improve our personalization of content on our On Spoken page, and we're starting by requiring every user choose at least three topics of interest so that we personalized content by genre. This is the beginning of our framework for a unique project discovery experience that will grow significantly over time. If you’re familiar with Spoken already, you know about our channel tag system. This enhancement builds on that foundation (with more expected in the next release).

With every genre in our Explore page, or for any channel tag you click on, you can follow that topic.

Drag to reorder

Users can reorder their projects on their profile page by dragging the corner handle.

Lexicon: 

You (especially you SciFi and Fantasy writers) have asked us for it, and we're listening: The ability to detect, and manually input, a lexicon of words to mass-correct mispronunciations. We now automagically detect the words that might have multiple or difficult pronunciation to seed your Lexicon, found at the top of the Passages tab in Studio. The first step is to select, or add, a lexicon word or phrase. Next, you will go through to identify how many instances of that word or phrase exist in your passages. Then, you will generate and play how it sounds without any change. Finally, you can add a phonetic alias and test how your replacement will sound. Spell out the word or phrase how it sounds, e.g. “T'Challa” might be “TuhChahluh".

Terms of use

We have added a "Key Points" section at the top to summarize important aspects of the agreement, and we have updated our Third Party Website and Third Party Services section with additional information to clarify our relationship with services like the narration technology services. 

Other updates

• Home page background design change

• Spacing between carousels tightened up

• Em dash padding change from 200ms to 500ms

• 2000ms padding between author intro and first chapter

• Review titles can be longer without getting cut off

• Search bug fixes

• Merge character button always visible on page

• Fixes regarding adding new installments