Frequently Asked Questions

TomeVox charges a flat per-book fee based on length. Early bird pricing as of March 2026: $49 for short books (up to 60,000 words), $79 for standard books (60,001–100,000 words), and $99 for long books (100,001–150,000 words). Regular prices after the early bird period: $149 / $249 / $349. There is no subscription, no monthly fee, and no per-minute audio charge. You pay only when you produce a book.

Yes. After signing up for a free account, you can upload your book file and receive a fully produced audio version of your first chapter at no cost. The preview uses the same AI voices and production pipeline as the paid output — same audio quality, same ACX compliance settings, same M4B structure. What you hear is exactly what the rest of your book will sound like. There is no credit card required to get your free chapter preview.

TomeVox accepts all major credit and debit cards — Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover — via Stripe. All transactions are processed securely by Stripe. We do not currently accept PayPal or bank transfer. Your card details are never stored on TomeVox's servers.

Yes. Publishers and authors producing 5 or more titles can access bulk pricing. Contact [email protected] with a list of your titles and approximate word counts to receive a custom quote. Volume discounts are also available for series authors who plan to produce a complete backlist.

If a production fails to complete due to a technical error on TomeVox's side, you receive a full refund automatically — no support ticket required. If you are unhappy with the output quality, contact support within 7 days of production completion. We offer a credit toward re-production with a different voice or adjusted settings, or a refund at our discretion. Because the free first-chapter preview gives you an accurate sample of the final output quality before you commit payment, refund requests are uncommon.

TomeVox accepts EPUB, PDF, DOCX (Microsoft Word), and TXT files. EPUB is the recommended format because it preserves chapter structure, heading hierarchy, and metadata natively. PDF and DOCX files are parsed for heading structure and formatting. TXT files are accepted but have no embedded structure, so you'll need to manually set chapter boundaries after upload.

Yes, with caveats. TomeVox runs OCR automatically on image-based PDFs (scans). Quality depends heavily on scan quality — a clean 300 DPI or higher scan typically produces accurate text extraction. Very low-quality scans, handwritten pages, or damaged documents may produce text extraction errors that will appear in the narration. For scanned manuscripts, always review the free first-chapter preview carefully before committing to full production.

For EPUB files, TomeVox reads the book's internal table of contents and heading structure (h1, h2, h3 tags). For PDF and DOCX files, the parser analyzes heading styles, font sizes, and formatting patterns to identify chapter boundaries. Before production begins, you're shown a chapter preview screen listing all detected chapters. You can review, rename, merge, or split chapters before approving production. Each approved chapter becomes a separate audio file.

TomeVox reads footnotes and endnotes as parenthetical content at the point they appear in the text. Running headers — the repeated chapter title or author name that appears at the top of printed pages — are detected from document structure and excluded from narration to avoid interrupting the flow. If a PDF has headers that are being incorrectly included, authors can flag this during the TomeVox chapter preview stage before production begins.

TomeVox narrates tables as a structured list with row and column context. Charts and graphs, being visual content, are represented by any text labels or captions associated with them. Image captions are read as labeled content. For books that are heavily visual — art books, photography books, books with extensive data tables — some content will translate imperfectly to audio by its nature. TomeVox's first-chapter preview shows authors exactly how their specific content is handled before committing to full production.

Books over 150,000 words fall under the Epic Book tier: $99 base + $0.0005 per word above 150,000. For example, a 200,000-word book costs $99 + (50,000 × $0.0005) = $124. There is no upper word limit. Very long works — omnibus editions, multi-volume collections, reference books — are all supported. Contact [email protected] if you have questions about your specific title.

Every completed TomeVox production includes two deliverables: (1) an M4B audiobook file with embedded chapter markers, table of contents, cover art, and author/title metadata; and (2) a ZIP archive of individual per-chapter MP3 files, formatted to professional distribution specifications (44.1 kHz, 192 kbps, ACX loudness range). These distribution-ready files upload directly to Google Play Books and Kobo Writing Life, or go wide to Apple Books, Spotify, and more through an AI-friendly aggregator such as PublishDrive or Author's Republic (Author's Republic also unlocks Chirp). You can also sell direct from your own site (Payhip, Gumroad, BookFunnel). Disclose AI/digital-voice narration wherever a platform asks, and as best practice everywhere.

Yes. TomeVox's audio meets ACX technical specifications (the industry-standard benchmark) without any manual adjustment: 44.1 kHz sample rate, 192 kbps CBR MP3, peak levels at -3 dBFS or lower, integrated loudness at -20 LUFS (within ACX's required -23 to -18 range), noise floor effectively below -90 dBRMS (AI synthesis produces no room noise), and properly timed room tone buffers at the start and end of each chapter file. Note: standard ACX submission requires human narration; Audible is rolling out acceptance of third-party AI-narrated audio but it is not yet open to all independent authors (as of 2026) — contact ACX support to ask. See our ACX specs guide for a full breakdown.

Most TomeVox audiobook productions are ready well within 48 hours, often much sooner. Processing runs asynchronously in the background — authors don't need to keep their browser open. TomeVox sends an email notification when the audiobook is ready to download.

TomeVox supports 13 languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. English voices are available in American and British accents (male and female), each with 2 reading styles: Classic and Expressive. All voices are optimized for long-form narration — consistent character and emotional range across hours of content. Preview any voice on your actual book during the free first-chapter preview. You can also have the whole book narrated in your own voice (voice cloning): upload a short sample and we read it in your voice.

Most AI narration tools read dialogue and narration in exactly the same flat tone — the narrator says "she whispered" and then delivers the whispered line at full pace with no shift at all. TomeVox's AI understands the text well enough to treat quoted speech differently: dialogue gets a warmer, more conversational register that signals to the listener "a character is speaking now," while narration carries the steady authority of a professional narrator. That distinction — which sounds simple — is what makes long-form fiction listenable. The Cheshire Cat passage in our demo is a good test: it's almost entirely dialogue, and you can hear the difference clearly.

Every TomeVox audiobook is automatically checked for technical quality before delivery. Some projects may be paused for manual review where rights, safety, or technical issues are detected.

Yes. TomeVox's voices are trained to handle a wide range of genre fiction. They render emotional intensity in romance without sounding melodramatic, maintain tension in thriller pacing without mechanical monotony, and handle fantasy proper nouns and invented names with consistent pronunciation across the full manuscript. The AI interprets punctuation — em dashes, ellipses, question marks — to guide natural timing and emphasis in a way that serves storytelling rather than just reading text aloud.

Yes. TomeVox includes voices specifically suited to children's content — warmer, more animated tonal styles that hold a young listener's attention. The pipeline handles shorter sentence structures, repetition, and simple vocabulary naturally. For picture books and early readers especially, the expressive quality of the narration matters as much as accuracy.

Uploaded files and production outputs are stored for 30 days after production completes, to allow re-download if needed. After 30 days, both the source file and audio output are deleted from TomeVox's servers. We do not use your manuscript content for AI training, model improvement, or any purpose other than producing your audiobook.

Yes, completely. You retain full commercial rights to the audiobook TomeVox produces, with no exclusivity. Upload directly to Google Play Books and Kobo Writing Life, go wide to Apple Books and Spotify through an AI-friendly aggregator (PublishDrive or Author's Republic, which also unlocks Chirp), or sell direct from your own website. TomeVox claims no royalties, rights, or revenue share from your sales — there is no royalty share with a narrator, so you keep your full share of each sale, minus only the retailer's standard cut. The audio file is yours.

Standard ACX submission requires human narration. Audible is rolling out acceptance of third-party AI-narrated audio, but it is not yet open to all independent authors (as of 2026) — contact ACX support to ask. Separately, Amazon's KDP Virtual Voice can generate AI narration from your ebook text, which is a different product from uploading your own files and does not accept author-supplied audio. To distribute a TomeVox file today, upload directly to Google Play Books and Kobo Writing Life, or go wide to Apple Books and Spotify through an AI-friendly aggregator such as PublishDrive or Author's Republic (Author's Republic also unlocks Chirp). Note: INaudio accepts AI narration only when produced via Google Play Books, ElevenLabs, or Spoken Press, so it is not a route for an external TomeVox file. Disclose AI/digital-voice narration wherever a platform asks, and as best practice everywhere.

Yes. Google Play Books and Kobo Writing Life accept AI-narrated files via direct upload. For Spotify and Apple Books, go wide through an AI-friendly aggregator such as PublishDrive or Author's Republic (Author's Republic also unlocks Chirp), since those stores ingest external AI audio through a distributor rather than a direct upload. INaudio (formerly Findaway Voices) accepts AI narration only when produced via Google Play Books, ElevenLabs, or Spoken Press, so it is not a route for an external TomeVox file. All of these require you to disclose AI/digital-voice narration. Platform policies continue to evolve — check each platform's current content policy before submitting.

Absolutely — and that's precisely who TomeVox was built for. You don't need a publisher, an ISBN, a distributor agreement, or any third-party involvement. You need a manuscript file and a TomeVox account. The resulting audiobook files are yours to distribute independently — upload directly to Google Play Books and Kobo, go wide to Apple Books and Spotify through an AI-friendly aggregator, or sell direct from your own site.