Making an audiobook with TTS
More and more people want a book they can listen to on the commute or at the gym. Turning your own novel, essays or serialised blog posts into an audiobook is a new way to reach readers. This guide covers preparing the manuscript and the settings that stay comfortable over a long listen.
1. Check the rights first
Broadly, two kinds of writing can become an audiobook.
- Your own writing — the safest. A novel in progress, essays, blog posts: all can have a listening version.
- Works out of copyright — in Korea, protection generally runs for 70 years after the author's death. Originals by long-dead authors are often free to use, but a modernised edition or a translation carries separate editorial and translator rights, so check against the original text.
Reading out a book currently on sale and publishing it without permission is copyright infringement. Even for personal listening, take care not to share the files.
2. Tidy the manuscript
Paste a page from a printed book or a website unchanged and parts that should not be spoken get read out. Clean these up first.
- Remove footnote markers, page numbers, headers and footers.
- Cut parenthetical Chinese characters or English glosses, or keep them only once. For example "효율(效率, efficiency)" → "효율".
- Put a blank line at scene changes. The pause lands naturally and the subtitles break cleanly.
- Tidying it in a text editor and using Open .txt is the easiest route. Korean encodings are handled automatically.
3. Work chapter by chapter
Voice Factory converts up to 10,000 characters at a time. A novel chapter usually runs 5,000–15,000, so one chapter, or half of one, per file is about right. Sensibly sized files also help the listener remember where they left off.
The daily allowance is 50,000 characters, so plan a long book across several days.
4. Settings that stay comfortable
| Setting | Suggested | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Tone | Gentle or Calm | Less tiring over a long listen |
| Speed | 5–10% slower than default | Literary writing suits an unhurried pace |
| Effects | None | Effects grate when heard for a long time |
| Background music | None, or calm music under 10% | Loud music breaks concentration |
| File type | mp3 or m4a | Plays straight on a phone, and small |
Keep the same voice and settings all the way through one book. If the voice changes between chapters it stops sounding like the same book.
5. Use Script mode for dialogue-heavy scenes
Reading a conversation scene in a single voice makes it hard to follow who is speaking. Move the scenes that turn on dialogue into Script mode: lines written without a name are read by the Narrator, and lines written as "Name: line" get a voice each.
6. Keep the subtitle file too
The subtitle file behind the CC button is aligned to the text. It is useful if you publish the audiobook as a video, or build material where people read along while listening.
7. A routine for each chapter
With many chapters it is easy to lose track. Repeating this sequence per chapter keeps mistakes down.
- Paste the manuscript, and end the title line with a full stop — "Chapter 3. A Rainy Afternoon." — so it takes a beat.
- Start the file name with the number: "03_rainy-afternoon". Two-digit numbers keep folder sorting correct.
- Put in just the first two or three paragraphs and preview to settle the speed and voice, then run the whole chapter.
- Listen to the finished file once, note any word read wrongly, add it to Pronunciation fixes and render again.
- Download the audio and the subtitles (CC) together and keep them in the same folder.
Load your first chapter as a .txt and try it in a few voices.
Make an audiobook