Questions and answers

Book2Speech turns the books and documents you own into audiobooks. Drop a file, choose one of 265 narrators, and listen in seconds, with chapters, read-along text and your place synced across devices.

Drop an EPUB, PDF or Word file. Book2Speech finds the chapters and where the book really starts, you pick a narrator, and narration begins in seconds and keeps ahead of you while you listen.

Anyone with more to read than time to read it: commuters, students, researchers, authors hearing their manuscript, language learners, and readers who take in a book better by ear, including people with dyslexia, ADHD or low vision.

You can drop a book and see its chapters straight away. To listen, create a free account in a few seconds; it keeps your library and your place in sync on every device.

Read-aloud reads whatever is on the screen. Book2Speech reads the book: it keeps the chapters, skips the title pages and contents, leaves out page numbers and running headers in PDFs, and lets you choose the narrator.

Fewer than 1 in 100 books ever gets one. Studio narration costs thousands per title, so publishers record the bestsellers, while textbooks, academic and older books, indie titles and books in smaller languages wait forever. With Book2Speech, any DRM-free book you own becomes an audiobook in seconds.

EPUB and KEPUB, PDF, Word (DOCX and DOC), RTF, TXT, HTML, Kindle MOBI and AZW3 without DRM, FB2 and several older ebook formats. You can also paste a link to a web article or an arXiv paper.

Up to 10 MB, which fits a long novel many times over. For a large illustrated PDF, saving a copy without images usually brings it under the limit.

Yes, if the file is DRM-free. Many publishers and shops sell DRM-free ebooks, and 70,000 classics are free in the app. Copy-protected purchases can’t be opened.

It reads PDFs that contain text, including scans that have been through OCR. A scan that is only page images has no text to read; run it through your scanner app’s OCR first.

Yes. Chapters come from the book’s own contents, and Book2Speech suggests starting at the first real chapter rather than the copyright page. You can jump to any chapter in the player.

Yes. 70,000 public-domain classics are ready to play in the app, from Jane Austen to Kafka.

265 narrators in 42 languages, with every accent, age and style you would expect from a good audiobook shelf. Each one has a sample.

Standard voices are clear, natural narrators for English, free and unlimited on every plan. Premium voices are our most expressive narrators, in 42 languages; every plan includes some, starting with 10 free minutes.

Yes. The book’s language is detected automatically and narrators for it are listed first. Books in other languages are read by Premium voices.

Any time. Pick another narrator in the player and the book continues in the new voice from where you are.

In any browser, in the iPhone and iPad app, and in the Mac app; a Windows app is coming. In the apps, playback continues in the background with the screen off.

Yes. Start a chapter on your laptop and carry on from the same sentence on your phone.

Yes. The sentence being read is highlighted as you listen, and for PDFs you can follow along on the original page.

Both, plus bookmarks and chapter skipping, in the browser and in the apps.

It’s coming soon. Until then, Book2Speech works in Chrome and other browsers on Android, with your library and place synced.

Yes. Open the book in the Editor and press Download audiobook: you get one file with chapters, the cover and the book’s details, ready for Apple Books or any audiobook app, also offline.

M4B (in three sizes), MP3, Opus and WAV. M4B is the audiobook standard and keeps chapters and the cover.

Any of your books, in all 42 languages. English books can be narrated with Standard voices, free, or with Premium voices; books in other languages with Premium voices. Premium narration uses your plan’s Premium hours.

Free includes one, Listener three, Premium fifteen and Ultra as many as you like, counted as finished audiobooks you keep at once.

Yes. Free includes unlimited listening with Standard voices in English, 10 minutes of Premium voices, one book of your own and one audiobook download, plus 70,000 free classics.

Listener is $4.99 a month with 3 hours of Premium voices, Premium $14.99 with 15 hours, and Ultra $49.99 with unlimited listening. Paying yearly saves about two months.

Yes, in a couple of clicks in Settings, or in your App Store account if you subscribed on iPhone. Your plan runs until the end of the period you paid for.

Yes. Upgrades apply straight away, and you can move to a smaller plan or to yearly billing whenever you like.

Yes. Your books are visible only to you. We don’t publish or share them and don’t use them to train voices.

Delete any book from your library whenever you like. Deleting your account in Settings removes your books with it.