Behind the page: Joseph Nassise author profile

Joseph Nassise's writing career began with a bet. A silly college bet over a case of beer, that he couldn't write a book, has resulted in a career spanning a quarter of a century. The book itself languished in a shoebox for 12 years until his wife suggested he submit it for publishing. Renowned publishers Simon & Schuster picked it up in 2000, and Joseph was off to the races.

As with so many of these stories, the path to full-time writing was more random than deliberate. The first book was well received by the public, at which point it seemed possible that he might make it as a full-time writer. So the couple decided he would take a year off and 'give it a go' to see what happened. 

"My wife said, why not take a year off work and see how it goes,"  Joseph explains, "That first year led to two years, led to three years, and on we went." His eclectic background includes a degree in Soviet politics, time spent at law college and a job in software sales. As is often the case, his journey to success was non-linear.

His first novel was about a reptilian creature who terrorized a small Vermont town. His interest in horror stemmed from a youth spent watching creature feature movies on Saturday evenings in Boston, where he grew up. Joseph now lives in Phoenix, Arizona, and has published almost 70 novels, mostly centered around fantasy and horror. He’s best known for his Templar Chronicles series of novels, which combine elements from horror, fantasy and adventure, based around a group of medieval knights operating in the present day.

Having spent time working in the IT industry, it’s not surprising that Joseph has followed a first-adopter approach when it comes to embracing new technologies.

"When self-publishing came around, I jumped on that. When eBooks came around, I jumped on those, and I've even done NFT editions of my books. So being able to self-produce audio is just another piece of the puzzle. I like to be on the front edge of things, you know?"

His published catalog is split almost equally between traditional publishing and independently published works. This is partly because the more quirky and off the beaten track his subject matter is, the more appropriate it is for self-publishing rather than a traditional route. His pragmatic approach is to look for traditional publishing support if the book is something that he feels can be easily marketed and has a clear audience. The advantage of going the traditional route is he gets paid to write the book, instead of writing it at his own risk.

Why Joseph turned to ElevenLabs

Joseph has always been keen to keep as much control over his product as he can, which explains his use of self-publishing tools. 

"To be blunt, for me it's a function of control and money. This is what I do for a living and how I put food on the table for the family," he explains. "I want to have full control of a particular work:, how it's presented, cover art, where it's available, you know, those kinds of things."

The rise of the new AI tools for writers clearly feeds into that desire. Joseph is a member of several AI groups on Facebook and other online services, and again takes a very pragmatic view of the impact and benefits of the new technologies available for his craft.

"There's always this outcry against something new. 'Oh, this thing is terrible and it'll ruin the world.' And I just don't happen to think that. My take has always been that AI, and software in general for that matter, they're just tools to be used. It doesn't matter to the end-user."

Joseph's matter-of-fact approach towards technology also spreads over to state-of-the-art AI tools like the ElevenReader platform, which helps authors produce and distribute their audiobooks to the public. Rather than seeing AI narration as taking work away from human narrators, he believes the equation is not as simple as it seems.

"I'm not going to pay a human narrator to do the work for certain things, because often it's just not financially viable," he says, "AI narration lets me do short stories and novellas and things that don't make sense from a financial standpoint if I'm paying a human narrator. So I'm not really taking work away from those people — I never would have hired them in the first place."

Like many other authors, Joseph's first encounter with AI-produced audiobooks was back in the day of robotic voices. He was initially unimpressed. Since then, however, the technology has moved on in leaps and bounds — and it was ElevenLabs’ arrival that truly got Joseph excited about AI's potential. 

Suddenly, he found a tool which gives him so much more control than before over the finished product. Instead of relying on an intractable, mechanistic AI output, Joseph can now tailor the results to suit his exact requirements.

"ElevenLabs came out and changed the face of AI audio. It now sounds human. You can change how things are pronounced, as well as emphasising certain words and sentences. Part of the reason why I'm a creator in the first place is to deliver a story that entertains, and is available in the way the consumer wants to enjoy it."

This revolution goes beyond the transition from print to audio. Joseph has recently been invited by Graphic Audio to create an audio-only trilogy. The book will never come out in print as an ebook — it will only ever be available as audio. For this project, he's had to completely change his approach to the creative process, always considering how to deliver the best result for the audio listener. It's a subtle change in how he writes, but extremely important for the quality of the final product.

This shift in thinking is now permeating through his general creative process. When writing, he now thinks beyond just print, and takes more time to consider alternative formats. "It's made me stop and consider whether what I'm doing is the best way of creating a story for audio”. 

A lot of his early experiences with AI narration with ElevenLabs revolved around learning to trust the technology. He admits that in the beginning he had to grow into the idea that the system was capable of doing a good job, so he could relax. As a result, instead of obsessing over smaller details, he now has more time to focus on polishing the end result. Things like tweaking inflection and intonation, and making sure the language delivers the kind of emotive response he feels his words need.

How Joseph uses ElevenReader

Joseph first started out with the ElevenLabs master program early on, having subscribed after reading about it on Facebook. The arrival of the ElevenReader platform marked a serious inflection point. Being able to select the voice that he finds most suitable has been transformative, giving him far more control than anything else currently on the market.

The brand new Actor Mode in ElevenLabs Studio — where the author can guide the AI narration using their own voice to instill a more natural sounding experience — is also a huge hit. "It's absolutely fabulous. The fact that I can also have it narrate in the voice that I've chosen, is kind of amazing to a guy who started out writing on a Brother word-processor. It's incredible where we've come in the last 30 or so years."

What the future holds in store

Where does Joseph see audiobooks and AI-narrated audiobooks going in the future? He’s understandably excited about the full range of technology that authors will be able to take advantage of over the coming years.

"I'm not a good narrator. I don't read aloud well. Now, however, I can clone a voice to sound like me, and have the book read by me, technically speaking. Advances in Text-to-Speech, text-to-image, and so on, give creators an entirely new toolset to do things that they could have never done before. Say I want to make a short movie trailer about my book. Now I can, and it will take me just a couple of hours."

In true technology evangelist style, Joseph is enthusiastically bullish about the benefits of adopting new technology. He strongly believes that for every old technology or system that we lose through progress, better things will arrive to replace them. He mentions the horror that erupted when ebooks arrived on the market, which traditionalists felt would destroy the legacy print publishing business completely. Of course, this didn't happen.

"I think as creators, the more we adopt and utilize these kinds of tools, the more pieces of work we can create. And for our fans, for the people who appreciate our stories or our movies or our audio or whatever, they don't really care where it comes from. They just want to be entertained. If these tools allow me to entertain my fans in an easier, better, or more simple way, I see it as nothing less than beneficial."

Looking to transform your novels into audio like Joseph? Sign up today to get started with the ElevenReader App.