This week on the podcast, we’re exploring a game-changing frontier in the indie publishing world: cinematic, dramatized audiobooks. In episode 84, hosts Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite sat down with Anat Dayagi, the founder of Midsummerr, to discuss how AI is democratizing high-end audio production.
Before diving into the interview, Steph and Danica shared their recent adventures with AI. Steph has been leveraging Claude to draft marketing copy for the launch of Future Fiction Academy’s membership tiers. Meanwhile, Danica shared a cautionary (yet fascinating) tale about using Google Gemini to plan an upcoming trip for her new travel book. After Gemini accidentally deleted a detailed hour-long chat, it managed to partially redeem itself by pulling missing details directly from Danica’s Google search history, Gmail, and chats—proving that while AI can have its “bad days,” its ability to recover can be surprisingly powerful.
But the real highlight of the episode was their conversation with Anat, whose personal journey led to the creation of a cutting-edge platform designed to bring stories to life.
Meet Anat Dayagi, Founder of Midsummerr
Anat Dayagi is the creator of Midsummerr, a platform designed to produce fully directed, cinematic audiobooks. Anat’s path to becoming a tech founder is deeply personal. Having ADD, she struggled with reading traditional books her entire life, having only finished about ten books. This left her feeling left out of pop culture conversations surrounding books like Harry Potter or Pride and Prejudice.
When she turned to traditional audiobooks, she found the flat, single-narrator formats difficult to focus on, leading her to “did not finish” (DNF) multiple titles. Everything changed when a friend recommended the dramatized, graphic audio adaptation of Fourth Wing. Swept away by the multi-cast performance, music, and sound effects, Anat fell in love with storytelling and even joined a book club.
However, she quickly realized that these immersive “cinematic” adaptations are incredibly rare and expensive to produce. Driven by a desire to make these rich experiences accessible to both readers and authors, Anat set out to build Midsummerr.
How Midsummerr Works: A Movie for Your Ears
Midsummerr is a production tool that allows authors to easily transform their manuscripts into fully dramatized audiobooks complete with distinct character voices, sound effects, and musical leitmotifs (recurring musical themes, such as dark music playing whenever a villain enters a scene).
The platform’s process is incredibly streamlined:
- Upload and Divide: Authors upload their manuscript, which the system automatically segments into chapters.
- Character Profiling: In the background, the AI analyzes the book to identify characters and understand their traits. It even matches voice archetypes to character roles (e.g., giving a villain a characteristically “villainous” tone).
- Voice Selection & Generation: Authors can sample and select voices that match their creative vision, then click “generate” to hear the first chapter.
- The Agentic Director: Midsummerr is launching an AI-driven “agentic director” (powered by Claude behind the scenes). This agent acts as a co-director, helping authors refine pacing, manage trailing silences, add sound effects, and polish intense scenes to sound like a professional production.
For authors who are short on time, Midsummerr also offers a “director-led” tier. This white-glove service pairs authors with professional audio production advisors who handle the quality control and editing on the platform.
The Power of Audio Stems and Personalization
One of the most innovative aspects of Midsummerr is how it handles audio files. Rather than exporting a single, flattened audio track, the platform delivers the project in “stems”—separate audio tracks for the narration, character voices, sound effects, and music.
This structure opens up incredible opportunities for user personalization. Anat shared a story about one of her investors who is visually impaired. While he loves multi-cast narration, he finds background music and sound effects distracting. Because Midsummerr keeps these tracks separate, they were able to build a simple toggle on the site to turn the music and sound effects on or off.
In the future, this technology could allow listeners to fully customize their experience—whether they want a single narrator, a full multicast performance, or a cinematic experience with background music. Anat also noted that this technology is highly compatible with the rising trend of “micro-dramas”—short-form, bite-sized audio dramas that listeners can easily consume on their phones during brief breaks in their day.
Democratizing Premium Audio for Indie Authors
Traditionally, producing a dramatized audiobook has been financially out of reach for most authors. Major publishers like Penguin Random House or Audible spend hundreds of thousands—or even millions—of dollars to produce cinematic audiobooks like the Harry Potter full-cast productions.
Because of these massive budgets, traditional publishers only greenlight dramatizations for guaranteed bestsellers. This leaves indie authors and mid-list writers completely shut out of a highly lucrative market.
Anat views Midsummerr as a tool for financial empowerment. Just as indie authors use special Kickstarter campaigns with sprayed-edge hardbacks to offer premium print editions to their super-fans, they can now use Midsummerr to offer premium, cinematic audio experiences at a fraction of the traditional cost.
Anat’s AI-First Solopreneur Workflow
As a solo founder working with a small team of freelancers, Anat relies heavily on AI to run and scale her business. She has built her own custom Claude-based bot, whom she affectionately calls “Claudio” (a play on Claude and audio).
Anat uses Claudio and a fleet of specialized AI bots to manage:
- Outreach: Crafting personalized messages for LinkedIn and Instagram.
- On-the-Spot Problem Solving: Designing a scannable digital business card on the fly when Anat booked a last-minute trip to a publishing conference in Bologna, Italy.
- Backend Orchestration: Utilizing Claude’s superior tool-calling capabilities to power Midsummerr’s “agentic director” tool, seamlessly calling backend processes to edit and regenerate audio segments.
Favorite Tools & Recommendations
Throughout the episode, the hosts and guest highlighted several essential tools for authors and creators:
- Midsummerr: Anat’s platform for creating cinematic, multi-cast audiobooks with music and sound effects.
- Claude (by Anthropic): Steph’s top choice for marketing copy and Anat’s preferred model for backend tool orchestration and her custom bot, “Claudio.”
Key Takeaways from This Episode
- Cinematic audio increases engagement: For readers with ADD, learning differences, or visual impairments, dramatized audiobooks with distinct voices can make reading accessible and highly engaging.
- Audio stems are the future of personalization: Keeping narration, music, and sound effects on separate tracks allows creators (and eventually listeners) to customize the audio experience to their liking.
- AI democratizes premium products: High-end audio dramas are no longer exclusive to massive publishing houses with million-dollar budgets. Indie authors can now easily create premium audio editions to monetize their backlists.
- Retain your intellectual property rights: Remember that dramatized audio rights are often distinct from standard single-narrator audiobook rights. Authors should strategically explore these separate avenues of revenue.
- Let AI handle the heavy lifting: Whether you are building a business or marketing a book, creating a “fleet” of specialized AI assistants can help solopreneurs scale quickly.
Resources Mentioned
Here are the links and resources discussed in this episode:
- Midsummerr (Use the special promo code found on the Brave New Bookshelf website!)
- Claude.ai
BRAVE20 is live for Brave New Bookshelf Listeners (20% off any production in July 2026.)
Transcript
Speaker: [00:00:00] Welcome to Brave New Bookshelf, a podcast that explores the fascinating intersection of AI and authorship. Join hosts Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite as they dive into thought-provoking discussions, debunk myths, and highlight the transformative role of AI in the publishing industry.
Steph Pajonas: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Brave New Bookshelf. I’m one of your co-hosts, Steph Pajonas, CTO, CMO, I’m not really sure what my title is, still not sure. That’s fine. Future Fiction Academy and Future Fiction Press, where we’re teaching authors how to use AI in any part of their process, and we’re publishing AI forward books on the press.
I’m actually getting ready to launch the new tiers for Future Fiction Academy. I was just working with Claude this morning on all of our marketing lingo, all of our marketing text that we put on the website to promote the new tiers, which will be live, and people will be, um, people will be in the Future Fiction Academy uh, Mega, [00:01:00] Pro.
We have a lot of different names for them um, by this time when this podcast goes out. So it’s gonna be really exciting. I’m working on it here at the very end of April, and by the time this podcast goes live, everybody will know all about it. So, it sometimes feels like I’m keeping a secret that nobody knows about, but that’s okay.
I am really enjoying my process of working with Claude on these things. I usually give it like, lots of information. Here’s what’s currently on the website. This is what we were talking about. Here’s all the new information. Here’s what we’re gonna be having on the different membership tiers, and then it comes up with some ideas, and we go back and forth on it, and then I make a decision and just put it on the website.
And it usually works out pretty well. Thank you, Claude, for that. I actually tried Gemini first, and Gemini crapped out. It was like, “Nope I’m off.” I think it might just be having a bad day. This happens with a lot of AIs, and in fact, I think we talked about this in the last podcast, where sometimes they just have a bad day.
They need to go to the [00:02:00] spa. They need to get a massage and then, you know, have a cocktail and then get back to work.
But-
Danica Favorite: I don’t know. I thought that the reason we had the AI was so we could go to the spa and get a massage. It feels backwards.
Steph Pajonas: It is a little backwards.
Anat Dayagi: But it’s more work, right?
Steph Pajonas: So true. So true. I know. But you know what? I, you know, if you’re having a bad day, you’re just having a bad day. So we’re just gonna let the AI have its bad day, and then we’ll come back to it later. My wonderful co-host is with me, as always, Danica Favorite. How are you today?
Danica Favorite: I am good, thank you. Uh, So for those of you who don’t know me, I’m Danica Favorite.
I am the community manager at Publish Drive, where we help authors at every stage of their journey, from crafting metadata, making AI book covers, to then getting their books distributed to the widest audience possible, whether that’s e-book, audiobook, and print on demand. And then once your book starts selling, we can get your books [00:03:00] with various store promotions, and then finally, we can also help you do some royalty splitting if you’ve got co-authors and things like that.
So a lot of really cool tools. As I mentioned in the last episode doing a lot of great stuff with Publish Drive, so having fun with that a little bit, learning a lot as well. And uh, you know, yes- yesterday. It was yesterday when we recorded it, but actually last week you guys got to hear Melissa Storm, and she had me really convinced that I’m gonna play more with Gemini, even though I do use, like, I call them the trifecta, Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT.
And so I had a brilliant idea last night and, um, as we’ve talked about, I’m doing some travel this summer, and I’m using the LLMs to help me plan my travel. And so [00:04:00] secret that I think will not be so secret by the time this goes out, as Steph says I’m writing a travel book about my different travels and all of the things.
And so one of the things I wanted to include was how I’m using the LLMs to plan my travel, and so I decided, and again, we were talking about this with Melissa, about using the exact same prompt. I used the exact same prompt in ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini to get an itinerary for a weekend that I’m gonna be spending at Lake Balaton in Hungary.
This afternoon as we were getting ready to record the podcast, I decided, “Oh, I should probably start organizing my notes instead of the hot mess it always is.” So I went into Gemini and I said, “Gemini And my entire chat that I spent an hour on last night is gone. It’s totally gone. And so of course I said, “Gemini, what the heck?”
And Gemini’s like, “Oh, sorry about that.” As [00:05:00] Steph was saying, sometimes we have bad days. We must have been going through an upgrade or blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, “No, this is unacceptable. I was considering moving all of my work to you, and now I don’t trust you.” And Gemini was like, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” And I’m like, “How do I prevent this in the future if I decide to ever use you again?”
And Gemini was like you just asked me to save it to a doc in your Google Drive.” And I said, “No. Wrong answer, because last night that is exactly what I asked you to do, and you said that you couldn’t do it.” And chat was like, “Oh, I’m so sorry. We must have been going through a programming thing.” And I’m like you better act better in the future or else this is done.”
Steph Pajonas: Oh my. I can’t believe Gemini lost your chat. That is big. I would be super upset about that.
Danica Favorite: Yeah.
Steph Pajonas: Yeah.
Anat Dayagi: It lost a doc? How do they lose a doc?
Danica Favorite: That’s just it. It lost the chat, and it said it couldn’t make a doc. And I’m like, and I’m like, “And now [00:06:00] what?” And so it’s I can recreate based on things.
And I will say, here is the impressive thing about Gemini. It recreated some of our chat inter… It didn’t go through my prompt and everything, but it read through my Google Search history. It read through I didn’t tell it to, but it did, it had to have read my Gmail because it actually provided concert tickets I’ve booked, and lodging I’ve booked, and stuff from, like, Google chats that I did several days ago asking about specifics about the trip.
And good for Google that it kind of recovered, but it didn’t recover everything from that prompt. And I was like, “All right. You’re on probation, Mr. Google Gemini.”
Steph Pajonas: You’re lucky you weren’t fired.
Danica Favorite: It’s always an adventure, and that’s why, we have to have this playful attitude.
Maybe Steph is right. Maybe it went to the spa. Little bitter that it went to the spa without me. I think that is rude. Or maybe it just got inspired because I was asking about spa-like experiences. So [00:07:00] apparently it got the memo in the wrong way. So, uh, yeah. Like, no good segue again, sorry. But I just thought that was funny that we just got inspired from Melissa’s episode and- Google let me down.
But today I don’t think we’re gonna be let down. We have a really great, delightful guest recommended by another guest. For those of you who heard Yoav on another episode talking about Reddit and AI, uh, he recommended Anat to us and was basically like, “Hey, she’s doing something really cool with audiobooks and things like that.
You really need to talk to her because it’s super cool.” And so we did. We talked, and I was like, “Oh my goodness, this is super cool. Please come on the show.” And so, uh, without further ado, we have Anat DeYagi from Midsummerr, and can’t wait to hear about it. Anat, tell us about [00:08:00] yourself. Tell us about Midsummerr.
Anat Dayagi: So hi. First, um, really thank you for having me. I really appreciate the very nice introduction, and I love that you find it cool. I find it cool as well because that’s the product I wanted for myself. Um, so I’ll talk a little, a little bit about the backstory of how Midsummerr became. Midsummerr is a platform for creating cinematic audiobooks, and we’re launching really soon.
By the time this episode airs, it’s gonna be live, and it’s the agentic director that will direct the audiobooks. It currently already works automatically, but the agent is gonna guess, go and hear you out on, “I don’t think that scene is strong enough.” And you’re gonna storm- brainstorm together and find what works and sounds like exactly how you imagined the story.
So [00:09:00] I will tell my backstory a little bit. I have ADD, and unfortunately I can’t really read. I can read, but it’s so slow that I think my entire life, and this is embarrassing, I think I read only about 10 books. Yes, it’s very embarrassing. Um, and I always get conversations over my head talking about Harry Potter, talking about Pride and Prejudice, like the classics, and I’m like, “Hey, I know nothing about it.”
And it’s embarrassing. I tried multiple times.
Danica Favorite: I don’t think you should be embarrassed. I think a lot of people have had this problem. And I love that you’re talking about it because hopefully some of our listeners who are listening who, who have had this problem are going to be able to relate to you.
And so I love that you created this out of that space. But yeah, please continue. I just, I wanted to reassure you that, uh, you’re among friends here, and-
Anat Dayagi: Then …
Danica Favorite: we [00:10:00] all feel that way sometimes.
Anat Dayagi: Nobody’s gonna laugh. Yeah. So for me, I tried listening to audiobook. That was, like, the most reasonable thing to do.
If you wanna read a book but you can’t really read it, so you wanna listen. And that went really bad. I think that the first audiobooks I listened to was one narrator and was flat. I don’t know, something just didn’t click. I- it, it was exactly like the book thing. I started off and I was like, “I really wanna listen,” and the story’s so good but- But I don’t know, something went on and I couldn’t keep on listening to it.
So eventually, again, I DNF’d it, which I assume the listeners here know what that means. And suddenly, a few years ago, like a year and a half ago, a friend of mine told me, “No, you have to listen to this audiobook. It’s really good.” It was Fourth Wing, the dramatized adaptation. I loved it. It [00:11:00] was in a difficult time in my life, and it was like I got swept away to a totally different realm of creatures and people, and was just such a good, like, a way to escape, um, a really tough and difficult time.
So I fall- I fell in love, and I even joined a book club. This is, for me, it was a highlight. I’m actually a part of a book club. It still exists, and we’re still very engaged. And it’s just, it was very cool. But the only thing is that dramatized adaptations, which I love calling cinematic adaptations they are really scarce.
There’s, like, almost no cinematic audiobooks. So while the rest of the gang read through and listened to one narrator mainly read, um, some, some of the series and and continued on, I was like, “But when is the [00:12:00] dramatized adaptations coming out?” I think the highlight was when I won’t name names, but one of the series that we were listening to and launched a new, um, a new, um, book in the series, and the narrator was nasally, but because it’s such a huge- huge book and very successful.
They wanted to get it out, and she was nasally and one narrator doing all the characters, and I was like, “I can’t listen to this. This really ruins the effect.” Um, so basically that’s how Midsummerr became to be. That’s a very long story, not short. So I decided to do it for myself. It was my like, I wished that you can do cinematic adaptations more easily, and that I can listen to more books in a way that helps me keep engaged.
Steph Pajonas: I was just [00:13:00] complaining about audiobooks the other day on Facebook. I Danica’s over there nodding because I, yes, I just did. I really love listening to audiobooks as well although I’m fine with a … I’m fine with just, like, a one narrator. I also love the dramatic ones as well, so I’m a a full spectrum, audiobook listener.
But if the narrator has a nasally voice or they don’t … They say words just so weirdly, I just, I can’t do it. I can’t do it. And I’m … everybody who knows me knows that I’m a big Japan fan. I’m a huge Japanophile. I speak the language, been there a million times, and I love the books as well. And one of my favorite books is, and I’ll just go ahead and say it, it’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle from Haruki Murakami.
I love that book so much. I’ve read it millions of times, and this time I decided I’m gonna listen to it, and I couldn’t because the narrator kept saying all of the Japanese names, like, very [00:14:00] nasally.
Anat Dayagi: Oh.
Steph Pajonas: Like a Midwestern US person would say. Not the Miyawakis, the Miyawackies. And I was like, “I can’t do it.
I can’t do it.” After two chapters I was like, “No, not at all.” So, you know, there are these trip-ups along the way, you know, where things … if it’s a human sometimes it’s really awesome, and I just, I love that narrator. They sweep me away, right? Same with the dramatizations. It’s like you get the music and some special effects, and everybody’s doing all the acting, and you’ve got plenty of voices, and boom, all of a sudden I’m there, right?
But then you get somebody who is just not cut out for doing audiobooks, and really shouldn’t be doing them, and you are, you’re listening and you’re like, “Oh man, this, I can’t do this.” So-
Anat Dayagi: Yeah.
Steph Pajonas: … don’t feel bad. It does happen, and it happens to traditional publishers. It happens to self-published authors.
Sometimes they pick the right one, sometimes they pick the wrong one. And this is why I keep telling [00:15:00] people You know what? Sometimes an AI voice is actually going to be better than a human . The AI voice-
Anat Dayagi: Oh, yeah.
Steph Pajonas: … you can pick them out.
I do.
You can dial them in. You can make sure that they say the words correctly, all of that kind of stuff.
And I’m sure that you’ve come across this as well in your work with that.
Anat Dayagi: Yeah. Also, again, as a an avid listener, I sometimes… I so agree with you. Sometimes the narrator, like human narrators can take it, like do the best work, and they sometimes even do the multi-voices amazingly. But that’s like a really tiny percent of like very talented narrators.
And sometimes I listen to bestsellers and I’m like, “Really? Couldn’t they do that with like at least multi-voice? Because it sounds off.” Like, and those are, like, bestsellers. I’m, I’m, I’m really, um… I think [00:16:00] one of the missions for me, uh, in Midsummerr is helping to create really great audiobooks.
And for us, it doesn’t matter if it’s human narration or, um, or AI voices. It’s just getting great audiobooks, and every story should be told in a manner that like, gives it respect and like, put it on a stage and it was how it was imagined to be. Like, when you, you know, when you read it, when you read this book, and you’re like, “Ah.”
Y- you have, you imagine it in a certain way. And then having an audio that does that gives you the same experience of, like, as if you were reading it. It’s really hard to do. And I think for us it’s a mission. Because again, some of the production, we do work with a few companies that do um, regular um, human narration uh, com- um, narration for uh, audiobooks.
[00:17:00] And for us, it’s like helping them sort through a little bit of stuff that’s, that’s easy for us, but for them it takes months, um, to process. So again, it’s really not about AI for me. For me, just getting really good audiobooks out.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. And I was listening to, when you and I spoke before, I was listening to some of your samples that you had provided for me, and it was really compelling just drawing you into the story.
And that’s something that I think we’ve talked a lot about on the show, is this idea of people don’t need to know how it’s made. They just want a good story. They want to be drawn in. And all of the noise around, ooh, is it AI? Is it not AI? Ultimately, we just want a good story. And so I think that’s the [00:18:00] truth about where you’re at with your audiobooks, is you have created a good listening experience.
And so you’ve brought the audience into something that is really interactive, and they can really be part of the story and immersed in it, which is what we want as creators. So if someone was to put something onto Midsummerr, what kind of process does that look like of creating an audio drama on the platform?
Anat Dayagi: So currently it’s uh, kind of simple, but it’s gonna be even more simple by the time this um, airs. Um, so for now, you upload the project, it gets divided into chapters, and you just click generate. You listen to the audio. You can basically pick your voices before and see that it matches your vision.
But I think for us, we recommend to [00:19:00] just generate the first chapter and listen to the voices as you go. You can change them later. It’s easy, and it doesn’t cost more. Just … But like, listen to them in the story. See how it fits the voices. Basically, what we do in the background is we process the book, um, learn how, what, what are the characters.
I learned a lot, by the way, from uh, graphic audio, ’cause I listen a lot to graphic audio and dramatized adaptations that they do. And it’s funny how sometimes you listen, you know that the character is gonna be a villain just by the by the voice. It has a voice of a villain. So even if it’s a nice character in, at the beginning, you know it’s gonna be a villain.
So we learned a lot from them, trying to imitate, like, how that sound and how that works, not because they are, like, the best, because I think that’s really a good experience and, and something that is reachable with [00:20:00] uh, with AI. Um, so basically, again, you just upload, hit the generate. Again um, this is AI, so not everything is perfect.
You have to listen and check. We do have a director-led tier where I know a lot of authors are really busy, and, and busy in scaling. And this came from the um, bottom up. They just asked can somebody do that for me?” I was like, “Yeah, yeah.” Because we have a lot of advisors high, high-skill advisors, um, that do audio productions for, like, the biggest companies.
And I, I do ask them a lot of questions, “How do you do that?” And, “How do you …” I want it to be perfect. So they also do the productions for us, and, uh, and actually QC for authors, and it’s really cool. So you get a really white glove treatment.
Steph Pajonas: That’s great. I love the fact that you’ve got people on the back end who can help out for somebody [00:21:00] who maybe this is their first time making an audiobook, or maybe they don’t have a lot of extra time to be working on it.
That’s … It’s a great way to get people onto your platform, and also still give jobs to other people as well. It’s like other humans helping other humans with AI. Yeah. It’s a roundabout way to do things, right? But I … So part of the dramatization, is it just the voices, or are we also doing special effects and everything?
Anat Dayagi: Everything. Everything. It’s like, with the music, the leitmotifs. So, like, the villain comes and it’s like doom, doom, doom, doom. And it’s gonna be throughout the mo- the movie. It’s like a movie to your ears, but it’s throughout the, the audio. Um, so I think there’s a really world building here, um, where also when the director, like the AI director, adds new music, it always keeps in mind the world that it’s in, and the scene, and the context of, like, [00:22:00] where it’s at, and keep coherency within that world.
And again, we’re gonna launch soon, by the w- by the way. By the time this airs again it’s gonna be live. Um, the agentic director, which is going to be very cool. Um, and I think that’s actually gonna add even more intricacy on how you edit like a professional, and how you make, like, scenes that are very intense, so they’re faster.
And small intricate things that audio producers do automatically, and now we’ll be able to make them more accessible to everyone.
Danica Favorite: I love that accessibility piece and just how you’re really trying to make the stories something that people can really get immersed in. And, going back to what you were saying about, oh, you know, I, I struggled with reading is I had a daughter who struggled with that as well. And the way that we got [00:23:00] her through school was audiobooks because she couldn’t work with the text.
And, to pass school you have a lot of books you have to read for your English classes and things like that. And it was so funny because once she discovered audiobooks, she just fell in love. And very similar to you, like I, I was listening to you tell your story.
Anat Dayagi: Yeah.
Danica Favorite: And I was like, yeah. And there were times when she’d be walking around the house and I would talk to her, and she’s “Eh-eh.”
I’m like, “What?” And she’d point to her ear, and she’s got her earbud in listening to her audiobooks. And, and, And that’s the experience that, for me in particular, I want people to have. I want them to access books in a way that they had never been able to do before. So one of the things I didn’t ask you when we were talking initially is, how do listeners access the book?
So is this a platform where people go and listen to it, or do the authors download it [00:24:00] and upload it to stores? How is that readers are going to get access to your books?
Anat Dayagi: So currently we’re just a production tool. We don’t do the distribution, and we basically just hand off the product to the author, and they upload it to wherever they like.
And so that’s currently. Not sure it’s gonna stay that way, because, uh, things are really going interesting into the world of short form micro drama audio, which is a format that I think really goes well and nice with cinematic um, adaptations. Um, as you probably heard, there is like a huge buzz and trend around micro dramas, which are short videos that you can watch for a few minutes, and not like just sit down uh, in your uh, living room and TV.
You watch them usually on your phone. It’s very short. And I think [00:25:00] audio also will go really well with that format, because I’ve … And personally also, I find myself a lot of times I don’t have time, like, for a full listening experience. I have only a few minutes between things, and I’m like, “Oh, I would so want something that it’s not a podcast.”
Just because it’s just … I want something to escape to. So I do want that audiobook experience, but a little bit shorter. So I think one of the features that we might go into is helping, um, writers transform their, um, their books into more bite size audio, just to make it, like, easier. And again, I think what you said about everybody has their different knick-knacks.
Like Steph said that she she’s fine with one narrator, and I’m like, “No.” And like everybody are a little bit different. One finds [00:26:00] an narr- a narrator okay, one says, “Ehn- non.” And I think- AI can unlock so much of the accessibility in it. Like being able to switch a narrator like that. And maybe no, I don’t want the dramatization.
One of our uh, investors is, um, vision impaired. That’s why he invested in Midsummerr. And although he loves the multicast, he hates the the sound effects and music. It interrupts him.
Danica Favorite: Oh, that’s interesting. So- I was just thinking that the sound effects and music, at least on the sample that you had sent me, I was like, “Wow, this is really cool. This must really pull people into a story.” So it’s funny that you said that.
Anat Dayagi: Yes. So for him I added to the site, just for the samples, I added to the site a toggle. It’s such a small thing that’s so easy. When we deliver the audio to the, um, authors or the [00:27:00] producers, for us, we delivered it in stems.
That’s how audio works. There is the narration stem, and there is the sound effects and music stem. And it’s such a simple thing to do a platform that toggles off the sound effects or the music, or changes the narrator. It’s so easy making it more accessible, that sometimes I wonder maybe that’s something that we’ll go into.
Um, but currently that’s not on our radar. Hands full with whatever’s going on now.
Steph Pajonas: I’m glad you brought up the whole having it all into different pieces. Uh, This … If anybody out there is into music they know about this, right? So when a track is produced for, like, a, a music, a piece of music, a song, there’s a stem for the guitar.
There’s a stem for the piano. There’s a, there’s one for the vocals, all of that. And then you can bring it into a DAW, which is a digital audio workstation, and you can [00:28:00] change all of those things. You can, you can use your equalizer. You can make them uh, you know, louder, softer, change pitch, change tempo, all that kind of stuff, right?
So this is the same kind of stuff applied to an audiobook presentation, and I think that’s really smart because there might be people who are not really into those sound effects, and they just wanna turn them off. Or they want to change, um, they wanna change the narrator, like you said. And I think it’s really smart to, to have that.
And it would be really cool for people to have that option too in a player someday. So that’s a little thing to think about for the future, if you ever go that way.
Danica Favorite: And it’s cool with the future, and this is what I love about AI, is that we really are coming upon a time where there is this ultimate personalization possibility of experiences that are so important that we don’t even think about.
Like we’re just talking with the difference between having the music and sound effects and not. I can [00:29:00] see both sides of that. And now you don’t have to choose. You can say, “Okay, what works for me? What’s important to me? What do my readers want? What do, what does my audience need?” I know I keep saying readers.
We’re talking about listeners but it’s still, it’s that same audience. And I know I’ve shared this before where, like audiobooks? Yes. But if it’s a good audiobook, I’m gonna go buy the print copy because that’s just how I’m wired. ‘Cause I prefer print actually. Um, for, for me, it’s like, yeah, I prefer the print.
But I do listen to audiobooks, and I love that we live in a world now where people have choices. And with AI and with what you’re doing at Midsummerr, people really have even more control over what their creative expression is gonna be.
Anat Dayagi: Yeah, I think that’s something that the current platforms, the listening platforms is really missing.
Something is very [00:30:00] stiff. There is the experience that you have, and that’s it. And it’s also really expensive, like the dramatized adaptations are really expensive. And sometimes, like for us, for the book club, I’m speaking now as the, in the hat of the book club. Um, but like we listen to a lot of audio, so sometimes we listen to the one narrator and then comes out the dramatized adaptation.
It’s more money, and it’s a lot of money, and we pay it because we love dramatized. The book club really loves, uh, cinematic audio. So again, for on, on the consumer perspective, it’s a lot of money. On the offer perspective I think that’s a potential revenue. I think like we see big companies like the largest producers, Penguin Random House, Audible are investing so many dollars in producing those high quality cinematic [00:31:00] audio.
And they’re doing it because it’s worthwhile, because people will pay for a premium experience that you can immerse yourself and enjoy. And I think like the Harry Potter production cost like around the millions That’s crazy. And-
Danica Favorite: It is crazy.
Anat Dayagi: … it’s just like one place.
Danica Favorite: Yeah, and I was thinking about this because I used to work for a traditional publishing company, and we would talk about audiobooks and whether or not certain books could be made into audiobooks and things like that.
And it really did come down to, okay, how much do we expect we’re going to make on this book? And it was never a decision about whether or not it was a good book. It was always a decision about whether or not they could afford to turn a certain book into an audiobook. And authors who are operating at a smaller scale have to also make that decision of, can I afford [00:32:00] to do an audiobook?
Now we’ve got all these great AI tools that say, yes, you can. And then going even a step further, can I afford to make this a dramatization? The answer is now yes, and I was just thinking about how we don’t have to choose anymore because I think about people who have their book in e-book and print, and maybe their print book, they have a normal print book, but then they’re gonna do a Kickstarter with sprayed edges and making it super fancy.
And people pay a lot of money for the premium editions. I really was shocked at how for a true fan, that premium edition is something that they treasure. And so with this option for you and Midsummerr, it’s that same kind of experience where authors can dial in and give their fans either the basic experience or a premium experience, and they’re willing to pay [00:33:00] for it.
But as authors, we can access the ability to create it at something we can afford to do, which I’m super excited about.
Anat Dayagi: Yeah.
Steph Pajonas: Me too. Me too. I really wanna see more of these stories out there. I wanna see the full dramatizations. I think this is a great path to be on. I’m curious about um, your current … I know you’re just launching, right?
So how many people have you- Yeah … been able to bring on board so far to get things going?
Anat Dayagi: Without disclosing numbers and things, um, but, like, yeah, we’ve been working with a few authors, uh, consistently, and also with a few production houses. Small ones, small scale. Still v- very early days and launching.
Um, and it’s exciting. I learn a lot. I have to say that, um, for me, I’m an indie. Like indie authors, I’m like the indie developer. Um, so though it’s a, it’s a solo, uh, venture, I [00:34:00] have people working with me more as a freelance, but still, it’s a, it’s an experience. It’s a very crazy experience. I work with a lot of AI tools, not only for creating Midsummerr, which is obviously these days, but also for my personal use, and how we do marketing, and approach people, email, and everything.
Danica Favorite: Yeah, that’s great. What, what does some of that process look like? How are you using some of the tools and things like that for your marketing and things?
Anat Dayagi: Ooh, that’s a, that’s a hot topic these days.
I have-
Danica Favorite: It, it is. But our listeners love it.
Anat Dayagi: I have my own, um, Claude bot, which is also already transformed into OpenClaw, and I name it Claudio which is like the obvious name for him, right? Clau-audio. Um, So Claudio is my bot, and he does a lot of the work for me. Just few examples, reaching out on Instagram, [00:35:00] LinkedIn, and I went to a conference in, uh, Bologna, Italy, and, and I, because it was very last minute, I was like, “Thursday I’ll order a ticket,” and when… Sunday I was there, no preparation at all. I told him, “Okay, create a business card for me that people can scan.” Boom. So it’s very on-the-spot solutions. But also, there’s um, currently it’s very trendy. You have your own fleet of bots which operate under Midsummerr.
So some of them do marketing, some of them do the content for uh, for Midsummerr. A lot of different things going on. It’s a very AI-first company.
Danica Favorite: I think it’s great because y- you’re creating this company and this business empire that is able to scale very quickly because you’re using all of these really wonderful tools and [00:36:00] connections.
And I, I think that’s something that a few years ago wasn’t going to be possible because the AI wasn’t good enough to do that. And here you are able to create all of these different things. So I think it’s exciting, and I know our listeners really enjoy it. So I’m glad that you were able to share about that as well, ’cause I think that is super, super cool.
So do you have a favorite AI tool? Is it Claude, or are you– do you play around with some other things?
Anat Dayagi: I follow– I really follow closely on whatever is going on, but like, uh, yes, Claude is the obvious choice these days. Um, though I h- I heard the last GPT is really good as well. But Claude is the obvious choice.
Also, I heard for writing that, uh, you probably know better than me. Um, but yeah, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a really good model. I think it gives a lot of extra… Like, the way it uses tools. When we build the agent the [00:37:00] director agent, we also use Claude behind the scenes because it’s really good with um, handling the backend tools.
Like calling, “Now I need to regenerate that one. Now I need to fix the trailing silence between the se- different speech segments. Now I need to generate a sound effect.” So it’s really good in calling those
Danica Favorite: I’m glad you pointed that out because I think, you know, when we talk about what’s the best model or what we use about what we use in different models and things, um, knowing those little pieces and nuances of how it works is really helpful.
Anat Dayagi: Yes. Hey. If I can offer more, uh… Sorry, Steph. Go ahead.
Steph Pajonas: I was just gonna say, I agree. It’s really important to understand the tools and what they can do for you, because not all tools can do everything, right? So one of the great parts about Claude and especially is that it has access to all these tools and M- MCP servers and whatnot, and you can, once you get all that hooked up, which is [00:38:00] sometimes is a little bit of a pain, but it happens, right?
Once you get it all hooked up though, you can be like, ” “Go do this thing, do this thing,” and then it becomes your workforce, which is great. This is one of the things that I love about this time that we’re coming into. Here you are, you are a solopreneur, right? You decided to start up your own business about something that was, that meant something to you, you were passionate about.
But you never probably would’ve been able to do this, like five, even five years ago, right? The technology wasn’t available. It was nascent, and it didn’t really do much at the time except, generate little bits of text, and that was pretty much it, about t-
Anat Dayagi: Yeah.
Steph Pajonas: … about five years ago, right?
But we, I’ve always said that, like, as, as these tools grow and they get better, it is going to open up this whole world for people that, that couldn’t access before. It is democratizing creation. It is democratizing business in general. There are people that are now [00:39:00] able to start the businesses that they’ve always wanted to because they have these AI tools, and I just think that’s great.
And here you are. You’re about to launch a nice big tool that you’re excited about, and I’m excited for you.
Anat Dayagi: Thank you.
Steph Pajonas: You’re welcome.
Anat Dayagi: Thank you. That’s very nice. Yes, I’m very excited about it, and I do agree that, like- I think that, like, the, the rate of technology these days is so crazy, and each day comes and brings new things that we can do.
And also … But I wanna give it another angle. I think there’s a- also something that kind of like, wait, am I using the best tool now? And I think that’s part of, like, what we’re trying to do, and just we’re not committed to any specific tool. It’s like an orchestration level that really helps out in creating the best audiobook, because that’s what we do, and we [00:40:00] have really great advisors, and we, like, consult the, the best of the best in doing audiobooks.
And they they control it. Okay, you’re in good hands, because that’s the best model now. So I think that although technology’s given us a lot, it’s really hard to follow through. It’s really hard for … even for me as a an entrepreneur. Just always checking which one is the best, which one…
Because, and because of that, tools that do it for you are very attractive also for me. But I guess also for authors in looking for them to help writing, marketing. Sometimes it’s better to just get the best tool for it and somebody do it for you.
Steph Pajonas: So very true. So true.
Okay, so we’re coming towards the end of our discussion, and we’re wrapping up. I’ve really loved this discussion because I think that this is a new area that authors can break into. One of the things I wanted [00:41:00] to mention before we sign off here is the fact that there are lots of rights that we hold on our intellectual property as authors, right?
We can … We create the book, and then we can create all of these, these, um, ancillary, uh, products from that IP, and that’s e-books, that’s special editions, that’s paperbacks, hardcovers, audiobooks, and dramatizations. So something for people to think about is the fact that you don’t just have to have an audio, just an audiobook, where it’s, like, one narrator or maybe a dual narrator. You can do that, and you can do a dramatized version as well, and those are considered to be separate rights by most, most people. So something to think about-
Anat Dayagi: Thank you.
Steph Pajonas: … for everybody who’s listening. This could potentially open up other areas of business for you, reach a whole different audience who’s interested in these things.
Um, so definitely consider it. And I wanna make sure that people can come and find you. Um, so could you please give us some [00:42:00] URLs so that people can, who are listening, can come and find you?
Anat Dayagi: So yeah, of course. First of all, just to be clear, it’s Midsummerrr with double R at the end. Just a domain thing, but yes, it’s Midsummerrr with double R.
And I’m gonna have a special, uh, promo code for the listeners of the Brave New Bookshelf. So, uh, it’s gonna be added.
Steph Pajonas: I will make sure that ends up in the show notes when we’re done. I’m going to put all that together for all of the listeners who are listening today. Come by bravenewbookshelf.com, check out the show notes, find the link to Midsummerrr with two Rs at the end, Midsummerrr.com.
And then, um, there will be a promo code as well. Thank you very much for that. Um, Danica, what else do we need to tell people before we leave?
Danica Favorite: Yeah, just again, always make sure that if you aren’t signed up for the newsletter, sign up for our newsletter, and then like and subscribe Brave New Bookshelf on [00:43:00] Facebook and YouTube.
Come watch us on YouTube. And also Future Fiction Academy, Future Fiction Press, go like and follow on all the socials and all the YouTube, as well as for Publish Drive, go like and subscribe on all the socials, and we’re ramping up our YouTube channel as well. So, um, lots of places to access really good information. So, uh, go like, subscribe, and, uh, we will talk to you again next time.
Steph Pajonas: Yeah, do all of that good stuff. We love having you, and we wanna be able to reach you when we got new episodes. And so come by and do that, and then don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter, where we’ll also tell you about new episodes and what we’re up to, and all the show notes, they come to your inbox the day after the episode goes live.
Once again, thank you, Anat, for being here. I really appreciate it and-
Anat Dayagi: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate that.
Steph Pajonas: Thank you. All right, everybody who’s been listening, thank you. We’ll see you guys in the [00:44:00] next episode. Okay, bye.
Danica Favorite: Bye.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us on the Brave New Bookshelf. Be sure to like and subscribe to us on YouTube and your favorite podcast app. You can also visit us at bravenewbookshelf.com, sign up for our newsletter, and get all the show notes.