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Three ways to skip the hired narrator
- An AI narrator voice. The fastest and cheapest route. You choose a voice, the software reads the book, and you correct any passages it gets wrong.
- A clone of your own voice. The book sounds like you without you reading every page. AuthorVoices creates a private clone from about 30 seconds of clean speech; you must confirm the voice is yours or that you have the owner's written consent.
- Record it yourself. Free in cash, expensive in time: a quiet room, a decent microphone, many hours of reading, then editing and mastering. See how to record an audiobook at home.
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Making the audiobook with AI, step by step
- Create a free account. New accounts get 5,000 characters (about 5–6 minutes of finished audio) to test the quality.
- Start a project. Upload an EPUB or DOCX, or paste text. Books written in BookBud.ai or listed on SelfPublishing.pro can be imported directly. Creating a project uses no credits.
- Choose a narrator. Audition voices with your own paragraph in the "Try a Voice" box on the home page. The catalogue has 165 voices in English, Spanish, Russian, German, Portuguese, French, Hindi, Italian, Japanese and Polish. You can give individual chapters a different voice or speed.
- Narrate Whole Book. One click shows the exact credit cost and then narrates the whole manuscript in the background. There is no queue, most books finish in minutes, and you get an email when it is done.
- Fix the rough spots. Quick Fix re-narrates only a highlighted passage and keeps the audio around it. The Quality Control report transcribes the audio, compares it with your text and flags passages that differ; checking one section is always free.
- Add a cover and export. Export chapter MP3s in a ZIP and a single M4B with chapter markers. For distribution the cover must be square and at least 2400×2400 pixels; a one-click option converts a near-miss.
- Distribute. The "Distribute Audiobook Globally" button sends the book through SelfPublishing.pro to more than 50 retailers, with no submission or annual fees. Distribution is non-exclusive, and authors keep 85% of net royalties.
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What it costs
- Economy One-Book Pass: $49 one time, one book up to about 74,000 words, any narrator, with 20,000 extra credits for edits.
- One-time book packages: $59, $89 or $129 for books up to about 55,800, 93,000 or 139,500 words. Leftover credits never expire.
- Studio plans: $49, $99 or $149 a month for about 2, 5 or 10 audiobooks a month.
- Done for you: $299 one time if you would rather the AuthorVoices team set up, narrate and clean up the book for you (up to 550,000 characters; typically 7–10 business days).
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Where AI-narrated audiobooks can be sold
Audible and ACX do not accept audiobooks narrated with third-party AI tools such as AuthorVoices, and submitting them there can get a retailer account closed. AuthorVoices distribution therefore goes to "all except Audible and Amazon": more than 50 retailers including Apple Books, Google Play, Kobo, Spotify, Storytel, BookBeat and Scribd. You can also sell the files yourself on your own website.
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Tips for a narrator-free audiobook that sounds professional
- Clean the manuscript first. Remove the table of contents, long copyright pages and anything you would not want read aloud.
- Respell tricky names phonetically in the text before narrating them.
- Listen at normal speed on headphones and mark each section Proofed once you have heard all of it.
- Use one main voice. Switching narrators mid-chapter for dialogue usually sounds less professional than one consistent reader.
For the full walkthrough from EPUB to finished files, see how to convert an ebook to an audiobook cheaply.
