How to turn books into

audiobooks
July 4, 2017

by Matthew Adams

Author

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An audiobook is an audio narrative version of a book that you can

play on your desktop, mobile or tablet. You can listen to the books
on your mobile much the same as any other audio file whilst jogging
in the park, washing dishes, etc. These aren’t really something new,
but the audiobook industry has expanded considerably since the
rise of ebooks. There are now myriad audiobooks retailing on
Amazon. However, you can also convert your e-book collection into
audiobooks with text-to-speech software.

Text-to-speech software converts e-book file formats into audio

files that you can playback in media players. There are also freeware
TTS programs that turn ebooks into audiobooks. Balabolka is a
freeware text-to-speech tool that supports numerous e-book
formats, which include EPUB, AZW, AZW3, HTML and LIT. This is
how you can turn e-books into MP3 audiobooks with Balabolka.

First, press the Download button on this Softpedia page to

save the Balabolka Zip.
Open the Zip in File Explorer, and press the Extract all button
to decompress the Zip folder.
Then open the Balabolka setup wizard from the extracted
folder.
When you’ve installed Balabolka, open the software’s window.

Click File > Open and then select to open the e-book file you
need to convert to audiobook.
You can now play the e-book file in Balabolka by clicking the
SAPI 5 tab and selecting Microsoft Hazel Desktop from the
drop-down menu. Then press the Read Aloud button on the
toolbar to play the narrative.
You can further configure the audio narrative by adjusting the
Rate, Pitch and Volume bars.
To configure the audio file output, click Options > Audio Files
 to open the window directly below. There you can adjust the
bitrate settings for various audio formats.

Click File > Save Audio File to convert the e-book to an

audiobook. Select the MP3 format for the audiobook from the
Save as type drop-down menu.
Select a folder to save the audiobook to and press Save.
Now you can play your new audiobook in a media player.

Create Your Own Audiobooks With Audacity

Balabolka is fine if you only need to convert ebooks to audiobooks
for your own playback. However, authors will need recording
software to set up an audiobook for distribution on Amazon or
Audible. You can submit your own audiobooks (that you hold rights
to) for distribution on Amazon or Audible to the Audiobook Creation
Exchange (ACX). ACX only accepts audiobooks with recorded
narratives.

Audacity is among the best audio-recording software for Windows

that has plenty of post production options to edit recorded output
with. So you can record a narrative for your audiobook from the
original text manuscript with that software and a PC microphone.
Some laptops have built-in microphones that you can record with.
Click Audacity 2.1.3 installer on this website page to add the
software to Windows.

Then you can record your narrative for the audiobook with
Audacity’s recording tools and microphone. Record each of the
chapters separately and save them as MP3s. Each file should be no
larger than 170 MB. This web page provides further ACX audio
submission details.

When you’ve recorded the book, click Sign Up Now on the ACX
website to set up an account. However, note that ACX is only open
to audiobook submissions from Americans. If the audiobook meets
required specifications, you can accept a distribution agreement
and upload each chapter.

So that’s how you can transform e-books into audiobooks with text-
to-speech and recording programs. Now you can playback the e-
books with media players or audiobook player software.
Alternatively, you can submit your own recorded audiobook to ACX.