Audiobooks

The Audiobook format reads your book aloud and saves it as an M4B file, with a chapter for each part and chapter.

  1. In the Publish room, choose Audiobook. The tracks are listed with how long each will run.
  2. Choose Voice and pronunciations… to choose who reads it and the voice, and add a Narrator for the credits if you like. Choose the play button above the tracks to hear a sample in that voice.
  3. Choose Record audiobook. You can keep writing while it renders.

The audiobook starts with opening credits, then the dedication and epigraph, the book and the closing credits. Running heads, page numbers and the contents are left out, and scene breaks become pauses. Each chapter is mastered to ACX's loudness requirements. Choose Version ▸ Script (text) to see exactly what will be read.

Voices

  • A voice on this device: free and private: your text never leaves your device. For the best results, download a Premium or Enhanced voice in your device's Accessibility settings, or use your Personal Voice.
  • ElevenLabs: more natural voices, for a fee. Your text is sent to ElevenLabs. Enter your API key in Settings > Audiobook and choose Save Key; it's stored only on this device. The Publish room estimates how many characters will be sent. Passages that have already been read are reused, so compiling again only sends the text you've changed.

Pronunciations

Choose Pronunciations… (in Voice and pronunciations…) to teach the narrator names and invented words. Before it's built lists characters and places the book names that don't have one yet. Enter the word as written and a respelling of how it's said, such as "Siobhan → Shivawn", and press play to hear it. Suggestions come from the names in your story. A capitalised word only changes where it's written with a capital. The glossary's Say as sets the same thing (see Glossary).

Listen and revise

When the audiobook is ready, play it in the Publish room. Show in Editor opens the scene being read, so you can fix a line and compile again. The Checks list reports loudness, peaks and chapters over ACX's 120-minute limit.