My novel Jersey Heat is live and available for purchase in the Apple audiobooks store! This is the fourth book of mine to go live for readers who prefer to consume books that way. It’s also the first of my novels to become an audiobook.

You can check out the book right here, and buy it outright for $4.99. It’s a crime caper not unlike those of Elmore Leonard or Carl Hiaasen.

Apple recently debuted a new program in which they allow books of certain genres to be recorded with AI voices. I am dipping in this field slowly, allowing only a few of my books at a time to be recorded in this fashion. About a week ago, the first one went up. That was a good test of the system. The book, Arm of Darkness, consisted of only six short stories. That means it is short, about 3 hours long.

Jersey Heat is a full-length novel, so it clocks in at 8 hours long.

Using digital voices to record audiobooks is somewhat controversial at the moment. I went into this in some detail in my last audiobook post, so I won’t rehash it here. If you want, you can check out the rationale and economics in that earlier post.

I’ve listened to portions of both books now, and I can say that the so-called “robot voice” sounds exactly like a human. As I understand it, Apple is using voices that were licensed from real living voice actors. And there is a lot of speculation online right now about whether those authors have sold their voices—or their souls—to this brave new technology.

Not my place to argue that. What I can say is that it will be pretty clear to most human listeners that this approach to recording comes with some compromises. Yes, the price is great. A budget way to enjoy audiobooks, you might say. But at times, the AI system gets things wackily wrong.

Here’s just one example: High school students in the U.S. take Standard Aptitude Tests, which are critical for college applications. Colloquially, these are known as SAT tests and SAT scores. For the rest of your life, when someone uses a big word, you will be tempted to joke about it, dubbing it an “SAT vocabulary word.” In all these instances, that acronym is pronounced as S-A-T. But the AI voice doesn’t know that. Instead, it has one of my characters say something like, “Here’s another sat word for you, pal.” Sat, as in past tense of sit.

There are several of those little mispronunciations in the audiobooks. I also noticed that the voice that narrates Jersey Heat speaks a little faster than the one narrating Arm of Darkness. I tried dropping the speed below the 1x rate, but it sounds too slow. Both voices are male, but I don’t think they are the same male voice.

Over time, these minor points will be ironed out. Indeed, I get the feeling that Apple is using books like mine as guinea pigs to perfect their system. But Apple is also not permitting authors to preview these books before they roll out. Once I agree to submit a book, they call the shots. The long-term goal, we are told, is to figure out a way that authors can review books and suggest corrections, but that is a daunting prospect that will no doubt drive up the cost for everyone.

Right now, this is a great way to hear some fun books at a very reasonable cost. Eventually, I hope to retain the services of human narrators. But those books will necessarily carry a much higher retail price. I see that audiobook novels on Apple’s store start at about $22 and go much higher, depending on their length.

That all said, I hope you’ll check out Jersey Heat and Arm of Darkness if you find their content (and price points) attractive. Only available on Apple.