Has anyone self-produced an audiobook with AI voices?

The audiobook market is growing fast — something like 25% year-over-year — but production costs are still a major barrier for independent authors.

Professional narration typically runs $200-400 per finished hour. A 10-hour audiobook? That's $2,000-4,000 before editing and mastering. For self-published authors who might sell 100-500 copies, the math is brutal.

AI narration is the obvious alternative, and platforms like Google Play Books and some ACX distributors now accept AI-narrated audiobooks (with disclosure). But the workflow is surprisingly clunky:

• Cloud TTS services charge per character. A full-length book (80,000 words) burns through a lot of credits — especially when you need to regenerate chapters after editing

• Most TTS tools aren't designed for long-form content. They handle single paragraphs well but struggle with maintaining consistent voice quality over hours of audio

• Mastering to ACX standards (RMS levels, noise floor, peak levels) requires separate tools

• Multi-voice books (dialogue between characters) need manual stitching in most tools

I'm curious about real experiences:

• Has anyone here actually published an AI-narrated audiobook? What was the production workflow?

• What platform did you distribute through? Any rejection issues?

• How did readers/listeners respond?

• What was the total cost and time compared to hiring a narrator?

• For fiction with multiple characters, how did you handle different voices for dialogue?

I've been building production tools for this exact workflow — script to mastered audio with proper loudness standards — and I'm trying to understand where the real friction points are beyond just "generate audio from text."