AuthorVoices FAQ

Yes — AuthorVoices users get audiobook distribution at no upfront cost. There are no submission fees, no annual fees, and no payment required to publish. You only share royalties when the book actually sells.

Your audiobook goes to over 50 of the leading audiobook retailers worldwide, including Apple Books, Google Play, Kobo, Spotify, Storytel, BookBeat, Scribd, and many more. Audible and Amazon are not included because their terms of service prohibit AI-narrated audiobooks — they require human narration only. That's why our distribution channel is described as "All except Audible and Amazon."

For an audiobook built inside AuthorVoices, distribution is done directly from the project page after you have created the MP3 ZIP and M4B exports. The "Distribute Audiobook Globally" button then activates; click it, complete the book details, and submit. Finished audio created outside AuthorVoices cannot be uploaded into a project or submitted through that button today; this is an expected current product boundary, not a fault. Use the Distribution Ready tools and contact support about SelfPublishing.pro's separate audiobook-distribution service. The author name comes from the name on your account. There is no page to change that name yourself yet, so if it is wrong or incomplete (for example initials instead of your full pen name), contact support at hello@authorvoices.ai with the exact name you publish under and we will correct it before you submit.

Distribution is operated through SelfPublishing.pro, our sister company. They manage the upload to retailers, monitor sales reporting, and handle royalty payments to you. You do not need to sign up at SelfPublishing.pro first: when you submit, the book is added to the SelfPublishing.pro account that uses the same email address as your AuthorVoices account, and one is created for you if you do not have one yet.

On average, authors keep about 50% of the retail price. SelfPublishing.pro's share is 15% of the net royalties (the amount paid out by retailers after their cut). The author keeps the remaining 85% of net royalties — that typically works out to around half of every retail dollar.

Royalty payments are made by PayPal or bank transfer. Payouts are sent once your account balance reaches $25. Below that threshold, royalties accrue and roll forward to the next payout cycle.

No — distribution is non-exclusive. You can continue selling your audiobook on your own website, as a direct download, or through any other channels you choose. You're never locked into one platform.

Refund requests are handled case-by-case. If you believe you qualify for a refund (for example, a duplicate or accidental purchase), please email hello@authorvoices.ai with your order/transaction ID, the email used for the purchase, and a short explanation. We'll review your transaction and whether any credits were used; approved refunds are processed via Stripe and typically appear on your statement within 5–7 business days. For complex disputes or suspected fraud, we may follow up for additional verification.

Your Dashboard shows your credit balance at the top, split into the allowance included with your subscription this period and any credits you have purchased separately, which never expire. An Economy One-Book Pass is not counted as credits; it is shown in its own notice on the Dashboard. The Billing page lists every transaction — purchases, monthly grants, narration charges and refunds — with the date and the amount, so you can see exactly where credits went.

AuthorVoices.ai is an AI-powered audiobook narration platform that helps independent authors create professional-quality audiobooks using curated AI voices.

You can sign in with your email and password, or use "Sign in with Google" if you registered that way. Forgot your password? Use the "Forgot password" link on the sign-in page to get a reset email. If you originally signed up on our older site, your legacy password still works — no need to create a new account.

Upload your EPUB, DOCX, or paste text directly, select a narrator voice, and our system will generate your audiobook chapter by chapter. You can edit individual sections with Quick Fix and re-narrate just the parts that need changes — no need to rebuild the whole book.

Yes — when creating a new project, choose the 'Pull a book from SelfPublishing.pro' option and search by title or author. If your SelfPublishing.pro and AuthorVoices accounts share the same email address, your SPP books will appear in the list and can be imported with one click. The EPUB is fetched and the project is created automatically, ready for narration. If no books appear, make sure both accounts use the same email address. You can also start a project the usual way by uploading an EPUB or DOCX directly, or by pasting text.

Yes — when you finish a book in BookBud.ai, pick a narrator in its audiobook handoff step and confirm. AuthorVoices automatically creates your project (and your account, with a welcome email, if you don't already have one) using the same manuscript and cover, ready for narration. If you submit the same BookBud book twice, we reuse the existing project instead of making a duplicate.

Yes — if your press uses the Archieboy Publisher Platform, it can ask to link to your account. Sign in to AuthorVoices and approve the link; the press can then create, narrate, check and export audiobooks for its own books using your credits and your plan's monthly audiobooks, and those projects appear in your account too. It cannot change your plan, buy credits or open your other projects, and you can remove the link at any time from the Linked presses page (/press-links).

Cloned voices created from your sample are private to your account. Until you make a purchase, the clone is a trial: once your free characters are used up, it is deleted about 24 hours after you made it. Buying an Economy pass, a credit pack or a Studio plan keeps it, even after those credits are spent. Deleting a clone is permanent, but you can upload a new authorized sample to create another.

Subscriptions are flat monthly or annual plans that let you narrate without paying per character. Starter is $49 a month and includes 440,000 credits and up to 2 audiobooks; Basic is $99 with 1,100,000 credits and up to 5 audiobooks; Pro is $149 with 2,200,000 credits and up to 10 audiobooks. Annual billing saves 17%. Credits cover both whole-book narration and individual edits from a single pool, and you can start one new book a day. Every narrator in the catalogue is available on every plan.

No. Credits used to be split into Studio Credits for whole books and Instant Credits for edits; since September 2026 there is one pool that covers everything. Your subscription grants a credit allowance each period, and unused subscription credits do not carry over. Credits you buy in a one-time pack are separate: they never expire, and they are spent only after your monthly allowance runs out. Your Dashboard shows both figures.

No. Your plan's credit allowance is granted fresh each billing period and unused credits do not carry over. Credits bought in a one-time pack behave differently — those never expire and stay on your account whether or not you keep a subscription. Your monthly allowance is always spent first, so purchased credits are only touched once it is gone. The Credits or Billing page shows both balances and your reset date.

Credits are sold in three one-time, book-sized packages so you need not guess: Short Book $59 for up to 300,000 characters, about 55,800 words; Standard Book $89 for 500,000 characters, about 93,000 words, which is the most common size; and Long Book $129 for 750,000 characters, about 139,500 words. Choose the one closest to your manuscript on the Pricing page. Anything left over never expires and carries forward to your next book.

Yes — you can try voice previews without purchasing credits. Use the "Try a Voice" box at the top of the homepage: pick a narrator from the list, paste a paragraph of your own text into the "Your text" box, and click "Generate Preview". There is a limited number of free previews, shown on the box. The Narrators page plays each voice's ready-made sample but has no box for your own text. If you run into the limit or need more previews for testing, contact support.

All of them. Every narrator in the catalogue works on every plan and with one-time credit packs alike, and so does your own cloned voice if you have made one. There is no longer a separate eligibility list.

Some older/imported projects are preserved as "Download Only" — this means the project files and final audio remain available for download, but the project is not editable in the new editor. Editable projects can be updated and re-narrated as usual.

A completed Distribution Ready Fix download is guaranteed for approximately six hours after processing. Download it promptly; availability after that window is not guaranteed.

The live chat launcher on every page is Riley, our AI support agent; it is not a live-human chat queue. For a human reply, use the Contact page at /contact or email hello@authorvoices.ai. Riley can also collect your email address and hand your question to the team. Include your account email, any relevant project or section IDs, and screenshots or error messages so the team can investigate quickly.

The Distribution Ready Fix is our paid audiobook mastering service. It re-masters your complete audiobook to common retailer delivery specs across every chapter at once: average loudness between -23 and -18 dB RMS, peaks under -3 dB, 44.1 kHz mono 192 kbps MP3, and clean room tone at the start and end of each chapter. Upload your full audiobook as a ZIP of MP3 chapters, or select all your MP3 files at once, and we show your exact price up front based on total run-time: $19 up to 1 hour, $39 for 1–3 hours, $59 for 3–6 hours, $79 for 6–10 hours, $89 for 10–15 hours and $99 for 15–20 hours. Audiobooks over 20 hours can email for a custom quote. Optional AI-narrated opening and closing credits are included at no extra charge, and this is separate from the free single-file Spec Checker at /distribution-ready.

No — the Distribution Ready Fix (/distribution-ready/fix) is charged as a separate one-time card payment at the time of your order; it does not draw from your narration credit balance or your Studio subscription. Your purchased credit packs and Studio plan are completely unaffected. The price is shown up front before you pay, based on your total audiobook run-time.

Done-for-You Audiobook Production (/done-for-you) is a $299 one-time concierge service where our team handles manuscript and chapter setup, narrator configuration, full-book narration, one quality cleanup pass, and delivers your final chapter MP3s plus a combined M4B. It covers one project up to 550,000 characters (about 102,000 words), with typical turnaround of 7–10 business days after your manuscript and narrator choice are ready; longer or multi-narrator books can request a custom quote. This is different from the Distribution Ready Fix, which re-masters audio you already narrated to meet retailer delivery specs — Done-for-You starts from your manuscript and produces the narration for you.

Cloned voices are private to your account and appear at the top of your narrator list when you create a project or edit a section. Choose your clone as the narrator when you create a project, or pick it for individual sections in the section editor. A clone made before any purchase is a trial and is deleted about 24 hours after creation once your free characters are used; any purchase keeps it.

Open Voice Cloning from your Dashboard and upload a clear audio or video recording; about 30 seconds of clean speech is enough, and longer files are automatically reduced to the usable sample window. You must confirm that the voice is yours or that you have written consent from its owner. We create one private clone that appears in your narrator list. Uploading a new sample replaces the previous clone.

Yes. The optional "Clean up my sample before cloning" setting reduces background noise, low rumble, and uneven volume, which is most useful for phone or laptop recordings. Whether or not you choose cleanup, AuthorVoices automatically uses a focused portion of about 30 seconds from longer recordings; clear speech with little echo works best. Studio-quality recordings usually do not need cleanup.

Yes. Each section can override the project's default narrator and narration speed before you regenerate it. Sections without an override continue to use the project default, so you can give selected chapters a different voice or pace without changing the rest of the book.

Yes — new accounts receive 5,000 characters, roughly 5–6 minutes of finished audio, so you can test narration quality. You can also preview narrator voices without using account credits. For a full chapter or book, buy a one-time credit pack or Economy pass, or subscribe to a Studio plan.

Yes. When you sign in to a new account with no books yet, we take you to a "Hear your own book" page: upload your EPUB or Word (.docx) file, keep the narrator you previewed or pick another, and we narrate the opening pages of your first chapter (up to 4,000 characters) from your free welcome characters, with no card needed. Your project then opens with the audio ready to play, and you can buy credits for the whole book when you are happy. You can skip this step and go straight to your dashboard if you prefer.

Yes — use Quick Fix in the section editor. Highlight the passage in the Full Section Text box (it is read-only, so you select there rather than type), type your new wording in the Replacement Text box on the right, then press "Re-narrate Selection". AuthorVoices re-narrates only that selection and keeps the surrounding audio, using the preceding narration to help the new delivery blend in. Quick Fix replaces words; it cannot delete them, so if you empty the Replacement Text box it stops and points you to Edit Full Section, which is the way to remove a word or add text. On some imported sections the "Use Quick Fix" button is greyed out with an "Imported section note": those sections need one Edit Full Section pass before Quick Fix becomes available.

Yes — open the section from your project page and use the section editor to update any or all of the source text, then re-narrate the section. The previous audio is replaced; the rest of your project stays untouched. For smaller targeted changes — fixing a word, a sentence, or a passage — Quick Fix is faster and uses fewer credits because it only re-synthesises the selected range and stitches it back into the existing audio.

Open the section with its pencil icon and choose Edit Full Section. Delete the word (or the chapter number) from the section text, then press "Re-narrate Entire Section". That re-narrates the whole section and uses about one credit per character, so make every change to that section in one pass. Quick Fix cannot delete words. The Section Title box at the top of the editor, with its "Save Section Title" button, only renames the section's label in your project and exports. It does not change what the narrator says, and it cannot be saved blank. If "Chapter 5" is being read aloud, it is in the section text, so remove it there with Edit Full Section.

An active AuthorPass membership through SelfPublishing.pro qualifies for a 10% discount on eligible one-time purchases; having a basic SelfPublishing.pro account alone is not enough. The discount is applied automatically when both accounts use the same email address. AuthorPass and coupon discounts cannot be combined.

Clicking a section's title on your project page opens that section's own page, which shows its text and, once narrated, its audio. "Build Chunks & Edit" opens the section editor. AuthorVoices splits that section's text into smaller narration pieces for you, so there is nothing to divide yourself; it does not split your book into chapters or new sections. "Create Snippet" narrates the first 1,000 characters of the section as a sample, uses about one credit per character, and becomes that section's audio, replacing any audio it already had. Narrate Whole Book still narrates the full section later. To hear a narrator read your words for free first, use the "Try a Voice" box on the homepage. If you have only uploaded your book, there is nothing to listen to yet: look over the sections on the Narrate tab, delete any you don't want read aloud, then narrate.

Yes. Open your project from the dashboard. At the top left of the project page is your cover picture (a book icon if you have not added one yet). Click the round camera button on the bottom-right corner of that picture to open Update Cover Image, then upload a square image (JPG or PNG). The cover is embedded in the M4B export so it appears as album art in audiobook players, and is used as chapter art in the ZIP export. For distribution submission, your cover must be square and at least 2400x2400 pixels — the project page will show a warning inline if your image does not meet this spec. If your cover is close but not quite right, you can use the one-click 'Convert to Distribution-Ready' option on the project page, which uses AI to resize and remaster the image to spec. For personal listening exports that are not being distributed, 1400x1400 is fine. You can replace the cover at any time; re-export the project to apply the updated art.

Distribution requires a square cover image at least 2400x2400 pixels. If your cover does not meet this, the project page will show a warning banner above the book title with an 'Update Cover Image' button. From the cover upload modal you can upload a replacement file, or use the one-click 'Convert Current Cover to Distribution-Ready' option, which automatically resizes and reprocesses your existing cover to meet the spec. Once your cover passes the check the warning disappears and the Distribute button becomes available.

You do not need any special prompt or marker. When you upload, each chapter becomes a section of your project. In a Word (.docx) file, a new section starts at every paragraph that uses one of Word's Heading styles, and at any short line that reads like a chapter heading, such as "Chapter 5", "Prologue", "Epilogue" or "Part Two"; that heading becomes the section's title. In an EPUB, each chapter file in the book's reading order becomes a section, titled by its first heading; if one file holds several chapters, it is also split at short lines that read like chapter headings, such as "Chapter 5", so a whole book saved as a single file still arrives chapter by chapter. Very short pieces (under about 80 characters) are skipped. If your book arrives as one long section, apply Word's Heading 1 style to each chapter title and upload the file again. Each section becomes one chapter of the finished audiobook: the M4B export carries a chapter marker for every section, titled with the section's title, so listeners can skip straight to any chapter in their audiobook player, and the ZIP export contains one MP3 per section. You can drag sections into a different order on the project page before exporting.

Yes. On any project page you'll see a "Narrate Whole Book" button. Click it and AuthorVoices shows a pre-flight summary — how many sections will be narrated, exactly how many credits it will cost, and your current balance — then kicks off the whole book in the background. You can leave the page and come back; narration keeps running. When you return, each section will show its live status and the top card will show overall progress.

The Quality Control report analyses your finished audiobook sections by transcribing the audio and comparing it to your original text. It flags passages where the narration diverges from the script, long silent gaps, and gives each section a match score. Minor transcription quirks — homophones, number formatting, compound-word splits — are hidden by default so the report focuses on genuine problems; use the "Show quirks" toggle to reveal them. You can also dismiss individual flagged items to keep the report tidy as you work through it. To run a QC report, open your project and go to the Quality Control tab. From the report, "Fix this" or "Quick Fix" opens the Text Editor page to correct a flagged passage without re-narrating the whole section (see the question on fixing a passage from the QC report). Checking a single section is always free: on the Quality Control tab, pick a section under "Check one section", or press "Re-check (free)" on any section in a report after fixing it. One section is checked at a time, and each takes about a minute. A full-book report is free for Studio subscribers and costs a flat 50,000 credits otherwise.

The Quality Control report's "Fix this" and "Quick Fix" buttons open the Text Editor page, which has its own controls (it is not the pop-up section editor with "Re-narrate Selection"). After "Fix this" the flagged words are already highlighted in the Full Section Text box; otherwise highlight the passage there yourself (the box is read-only). To change the wording, set Mode to "Replace selected text and narrate replacement" and type the new words in Replacement Text. To keep the words but have them read again, leave Mode on "Re-narrate selection with same text". "Preview Selection Plan" only shows which part will be redone and costs nothing. Click "Apply Advanced Edit" once: the page reopens with the new wording in the text box and a note that the change is saved, and that passage is re-narrated in the background, using about one credit per character of the replacement. Apply once per change; if you are unsure whether it saved, reload the page, which always shows the latest saved text, before making another edit. Afterwards, press "Re-check (free)" on that section in the report.

Yes — on the project page, drag and drop sections into the order you want. The new order is saved immediately. Reordering does not affect the audio files already generated; it only changes how sections are sequenced when you export.

Yes, one section at a time. The narrator you choose when you create a project is used for every section, and there is no setting that switches the whole book to a new voice afterwards. To change the voice, open a section with its pencil icon, pick the new narrator in the section editor and regenerate that section; regenerating uses narration credits in the usual way. Sections you have not regenerated keep their existing audio, so repeat this for each section you want in the new voice.

Marking a section as Proofed is a personal quality-review flag — it simply means you have listened to that section and are happy with it. It does not affect generation, downloads, or billing. The project page shows how many sections are proofed so you can track your review progress across a long book.

When you enable Autoplay next section on a project page, the audio player will automatically start the next narrated section as soon as the current one finishes — useful for listening through your audiobook straight through without clicking between sections. The toggle is visible on your project page next to the section list and only affects your current listening session.

Our Terms and Conditions are at /terms (also linked in the footer and the homepage voice preview widget). They cover voice-cloning consent requirements, manuscript ownership, your responsibility to comply with each retailer's AI-narration policy, and how credits work. If you have questions about a specific section, email hello@authorvoices.ai.

No. As of the current Terms, Audible and ACX do not accept AI-narrated audiobooks produced by third-party tools such as AuthorVoices — they permit only their own in-house AI narration tools where offered. Submitting AuthorVoices audio to ACX or Audible violates their content policy and may result in your retailer account being closed. AuthorVoices audio is compatible with most other retailers and distributors; see /terms for the full policy details.

Visit the Billing page from your Dashboard (or go directly to /account/billing) and click "Manage subscription." This opens a secure Stripe portal where you can update your payment method, switch between monthly and annual billing, change your plan tier, or cancel. Cancellations take effect at the end of your current billing period — you keep full Studio access until then. Upgrades are applied immediately; downgrades take effect at the next renewal.

Not through the project-page Distribute button today. That button works only with an audiobook built and exported inside an AuthorVoices project; there is no upload path for finished third-party MP3s. This is an expected current product boundary, not a broken upload. Use the free Spec Checker at /distribution-ready to check one file or the paid Distribution Ready Fix at /distribution-ready/fix to re-master the full audiobook, then contact support about SelfPublishing.pro's separate audiobook-distribution service.

Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period, so you keep full Studio access until then; after that your account moves to the free tier. Your projects and completed exports stay in your account for playback and download. Credits you bought in one-time packs remain on your account and never expire, whether or not you keep a subscription.

If a renewal payment fails, your Studio access continues uninterrupted during a 7-day grace period while Stripe retries the charge — you'll see a payment-failed notice on your Dashboard with a link to update your payment method. If the payment is not fixed within 7 days, your account automatically reverts to the Free plan; any Instant Credit packs you purchased separately are unaffected and never expire. Update your card any time from the Billing page (/account/billing) via the Manage Subscription link.

Yes, one section at a time. Open the section with its pencil icon and enter a new Speed in the section editor (0.5 to 2 in steps of 0.05, where 1.0 is normal and 0.5 is half speed, so for a slightly slower read try 0.9 or 0.95), then re-narrate the section. The new speed is applied when the audio is narrated again, so changing it uses narration credits in the usual way, about one credit per character of the section; it does not affect the rest of your project. If you only want to listen faster or slower, the speed menu under the player on your project page changes playback for you and costs nothing, but it does not change the audiobook file. For delivery, the narrator you choose matters most; the section editor's Expressive version switch gives a livelier read, and turning it off gives a steadier one.

Open the section with its pencil icon. The blue "Insert a pause at cursor" link puts a [pause] tag wherever your cursor is in the text you are editing: the Replacement Text box in Quick Fix, or the section's full text when you edit the whole section. You can also type [pause] yourself. The tag takes effect when that passage or section is narrated again, which uses credits in the usual way. If you use the link beside the read-only Full Section Text box, it switches you to whole-section editing and adds the tag there. A real paragraph break already gets a natural pause on its own.

Yes. Your private cloned voice works for whole-book narration and for individual section edits, exactly like any narrator in the catalogue, and it stays visible only to you. It appears at the top of your narrator list wherever a narrator can be chosen.

Click Narrate Whole Book on the project page and the entire manuscript is narrated in one job. There is one narration engine, so there is nothing to choose, and a book sounds the same from the first section to the last. You do not need a subscription: an Economy One-Book Pass covers its book automatically, and otherwise credits come from any monthly allowance first and from purchased credit packs after that. Subscribers can start one new book a day, up to the number of books their plan includes.

We send occasional helpful reminders — for example, if a project is sitting without any audio after a few days, or if you have narrated sections but haven't yet exported your audiobook. After you export, we may also ask for a quick review. Each email includes an unsubscribe link.

The current catalogue has 165 active voices across 10 languages: English, Spanish, Russian, German, Portuguese, French, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, and Polish. Use the language and accent filters on the Narrators page to compare samples. Every catalogue voice is available with any plan or one-time credit pack.

Yes — on your project page, use the section menu (the three-dot or action button next to any section) to insert a new section immediately after it or delete an existing one. You can also create a new blank section from the project page and paste in text directly. Deleting a section removes its audio permanently, so download anything you want to keep first.

Yes. Uploading a manuscript and creating a project does not use credits; credits are used only when audio is narrated. To start again, create a new project from your revised EPUB or DOCX. To remove the old one, open it and use Delete Project at the bottom of the project page. That permanently removes the project and all of its audio, exports and cover files, and cannot be undone, so download anything you want to keep first. Credits already spent narrating the old project are not returned. If only a few sections changed, you can instead edit those sections in the existing project and re-narrate just them.

In September 2026 AuthorVoices moved new narration to one voice system; the current Narrators page has 165 active voices across 10 languages. The earlier catalogue is retired for new projects, while audio you already finished remains unchanged. Search for a retired narrator's name to find its current match, shown with a “Previously …” label.

Imported manuscripts, especially EPUBs, sometimes break a line partway through a sentence, for example around an italic title or a stray apostrophe. Narration now reads those lines as one continuous sentence, while real paragraph breaks and headings still get their natural pause. If a section was narrated before this improvement and has an odd pause, re-narrate that section, or use Quick Fix on just that passage.

It carries on. A retired narrator keeps the same name on your book, and a matching voice on the new engine reads any sections you narrate from now on: the same gender, a similar age and the same accent, but not the identical voice. Sections you had already narrated are unchanged. If you would like the whole book in one voice, contact support and we will add enough credits to re-narrate the finished sections at no cost to you.

Often, yes. If a retired narrator was one of our own designed voices, we can usually recreate it privately for your book on request: contact support with the narrator's name and the book title. A few retired voices belonged to professional voice actors and cannot be recreated on the new engine; for those we will suggest the closest match and cover any re-narration.

Most existing private clones were recreated from their original authorized recording and continue to appear in the narrator list. Open Voice Cloning from your Dashboard and play the preview; if the clone is missing or does not sound right, upload a fresh recording with about 30 seconds of clear speech. A third-party or professional voice still requires written permission and an authorized sample.

No. Credits you purchased never expire, subscription allowances are unchanged, and the price per character is the same on the new engine as it was before.

AuthorVoices narrates with Inworld's TTS-2 engine. We completed the move to it in September 2026 and no longer use ElevenLabs. The audio you create is yours to keep and to sell; the engine's licence permits commercial use, including audiobooks.

No. We never alter finished audio. An engine change only affects sections narrated after it, and only when you choose to narrate them.

Yes — you can sign up for free and explore the platform with no credit card required. New accounts receive a one-time registration bonus of 5,000 characters (roughly 5–6 minutes of finished audio) so you can test narration quality before purchasing, and you can preview any narrator voice on the homepage at no cost. When you're ready to produce a full chapter or book, purchase a one-time Instant Credit pack from the Pricing page, or subscribe to a Studio plan.

AuthorVoices offers one-time Instant Credit packs and Studio subscriptions. On the Pricing page the one-time packs are listed under "Choose the Size of Your Book" as Short Book, Standard Book and Long Book; the smallest, Short Book, covers up to 300,000 characters, and there is no smaller top-up pack. Purchased credits never expire; Studio plans provide a recurring allowance that covers whole-book narration and individual edits, with unused subscription credits resetting each period. Choose either option on the Pricing page, and review your balances and transactions from the Dashboard, Credits, or Billing page.

We use a character-based credit model. One hour of finished audiobook audio corresponds to about 9,300 words or roughly 50,000 characters, and credit packs are sized accordingly. Use the Pricing/Credits page to estimate how many credits your manuscript will need.

There are two ways to pay. One-time credit packs are billed per character and never expire: Short Book $59 (up to 300,000 characters, about 55,800 words), Standard Book $89 (500,000 characters, about 93,000 words) and Long Book $129 (750,000 characters, about 139,500 words). Roughly 50,000 characters makes one finished hour of audio. Subscriptions are $49, $99 or $149 a month, or 17% less billed annually, and include a monthly credit allowance plus a set number of books. Every narrator in the catalogue is available on either route. There is also a $49 Economy One-Book Pass for a single book with no subscription. See the Pricing page for the current figures.

The Economy One-Book Pass is a one-time $49 purchase that produces a single audiobook of up to 400,000 characters, about 74,000 words, with no subscription. It also includes 20,000 credits for pronunciation and line edits. After purchase the pass appears as its own notice on your Dashboard, separate from your credit balance; open a project and click Narrate Whole Book, and the pass is applied automatically with any narrator in the catalogue. The pass attaches to the first project you use it on, the Dashboard then shows which book it covers, and it cannot be moved to another project afterwards.

Narration stops at the section where the credits ran out and everything already narrated is kept — nothing is lost and nothing is charged twice. Add a credit pack, or wait for your subscription period to reset, then click Narrate Whole Book again; already-finished sections are skipped and it picks up where it stopped. The project page tells you how many credits the remaining sections need.

Yes. Enter an affiliate coupon on the Pricing page for 10% off your first eligible purchase; it can be used once per customer and cannot be combined with an AuthorPass discount. If checkout displays a promotion-code field, you can also enter another valid code there, with eligibility and the discount confirmed at checkout.

You can upload EPUB and Microsoft Word (.docx) files to create a project and auto-detect chapters, or create a project manually by pasting text. Manuscript uploads are limited to 200 MB, though typical book files are much smaller. If an upload fails, confirm the format is valid and contact support with the file size and error message.

Yes. Once your audiobook sections are generated you can download the audio. From the project page you can export a ZIP of individual MP3 files (one per chapter) or a single M4B audiobook file with embedded chapter markers and cover art. Audio generated on AuthorVoices is mastered to common retailer specifications. For MP3s recorded outside AuthorVoices, use the free Distribution Ready Spec Checker to check one file or the paid Distribution Ready Fix to re-master a complete audiobook.

No. Current narration uses one engine and model. Returning users may still see a legacy v2/v3 choice when creating a project, but those retired labels do not change the current narration system; contact support if you are continuing an older series and need help matching it.

Yes. The system is built around section-level narration so you can update specific parts of a project without having to rebuild the entire audiobook every time. That makes revisions faster and more practical.

AuthorVoices has two audio tools. The free Spec Checker at /distribution-ready checks one MP3 against common retailer specs, uses no credits, and requires a free account. Distribution Ready Fix at /distribution-ready/fix re-masters a complete audiobook from a ZIP or selected MP3 files, prices it by running time, and can include opening and closing credits at no extra charge. A completed Fix download is guaranteed for about six hours, so download it promptly. Anyone can read the Fix page and its prices without an account; you sign in when you upload your files to get your exact price.

EPUB and DOCX manuscripts, voice samples, cover images, and other ordinary uploads are limited to 200 MB. The free Spec Checker accepts one MP3 up to 100 MB, while Distribution Ready Fix accepts a ZIP or multiple MP3 files up to 2 GB total. A completed Fix download is guaranteed for about six hours, so download it promptly.

Generation time varies with manuscript length and current demand. Individual chapters usually finish sooner than a whole book; whole-book narration continues in the background if you leave the page. The project page shows progress, and AuthorVoices sends an email when the job finishes.

Credits are charged per section, not up front, and only right before that section actually renders. That means: (1) if a section errors, you are not charged for it; (2) if you run out of credits part-way through, the batch stops cleanly at the section it could not afford — already-narrated sections stay; (3) if you click "Stop After Current Section", AuthorVoices finishes the section in flight and then halts — no half-finished audio files. By default, the batch skips sections that already have audio, so you will not be re-billed for work you have already paid for. If you've edited the source text of an already-narrated section and want it re-rendered, tick the "Also re-narrate sections that are already rendered" checkbox in the pre-flight modal before starting. Those sections are narrated afresh with their current narrator and speed and charged once each, even if the batch is interrupted and resumes. Sections with no text (such as a blank new section) are simply skipped and cost nothing.