Introduction

Rationale

The Publishing Industry is in Decline

With the rise of the Internet and online media, the publishing industry is in decline. The cost of publishing is substantial, as is the cost of translation rights and hard copy distribution, which is over half the cost of the book. Even in the world of e-books, there is a fee to pay for payment provider (e.g., Apple) which costs around 15-30% of the cost of the book, as well as revenue sharing to e-book portal which costs around 20-30% of the cost of the book.

Reading's New Alternative Competitor

In today's world, the rate of "reading" information is rising exponentially. This is due to the increasing volume of content available on social media. We live in an era of information overload.

Furthermore, with the growth of streaming media and video like YouTube, Netflix, and Disney+, which seizes consumer's time more and more every day, "Watching" has become a new popular activity in recent years.

Furthermore, audio media such as Podcasts adds "Listening" as a new rival to steal consumers' time away from "Reading" activity.

The more competitors there are, the less time the consumer has to read the book.

Audio Book Production Costs and Time to Market

Audio books have gained popularity in recent years; they are ideal for today's consumers who have less time to read. Traditional audio book development, on the other hand, is prohibitively expensive and time-consuming due to the manual process of human voice recording.

One constraint of human voice recording for audio books is the voice's quality and stability. And t here are many limitations to the audio book application, such as information searching in the audio book, which is expensive and technical complexity.

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