Support for Indie Authors discussion

Self-publishing sites like KDP, Barnes & Noble Press, and Apple books all offer audiobook services. I haven't seen where any of them are free. Have you? Have any of you indy authors created an audiobook on your own using something like ElevenLabs, etc? If yes, what can you share about licensing that protects your work (and also doesn't infringe on the voice rights of others)?

Technically, you could record yourself reading it, but it would be a ton of work to make it sound well, especially if you don't have access to a perfectly soundproof room. You'd need to do a lot of re-recording, mixing, etc.

I've seen one person with a YouTube channel use his past videos to train AI to read the text in his voice, but no idea what costs would there be to using AI to read your story for you - though this would lead to quite a clean-sounding recording. No idea about the legal aspects of this route, though.

For my first book, I hired a narrator, and the whole process cost me about $400. However, after that, I was invited by KDP to have my succeeding books virtually narrated (by them) at zero cost. And I have to say, they sell pretty well.

So now what I do is I let the virtual narrated one run for a few months, and if I see a runaway winner (a lot of conversions), then I make the investment of having it properly narrated.