How to Make an Audiobook

The audiobook editor turns a written script into a finished narration. You work chapter by chapter, cast a voice for each line, generate the audio, and export the whole project as a single file.

Watch the full walkthrough

Prefer to read? The written steps are below.

Before you start

There are two ways to get your text into the editor:

• Import a book file — upload an EPUB, PDF, DOCX, or TXT and VocalLab splits it into chapters, works out who's speaking, and sets up the cast for you. This is the fastest way to start a full-length book. See Importing a book below.
• Type or paste — start from a blank project and build it up line by line. Best for short scripts or when you want full control from the first word.

You'll also want at least one voice ready. Use any of the built-in voices, or bring your own via voice cloning or voice design.

Importing a book

The quickest way to start is to import your manuscript instead of typing it in.

1. Open Audiobooks in Studio and click Import ebook.
2. Drop in — or choose — an EPUB, PDF, DOCX, or TXT file, up to 25 MB. (Scanned, image-only PDFs won't work: there has to be selectable text to read.)
3. VocalLab parses the file and shows you the detected title, chapter count, and character count, plus the point cost to analyze it.
4. Leave "Add emotion and sound effects" ticked if you'd like it — it's free and gives the narration expression out of the box.
5. Click Analyze. VocalLab reads the whole book, splits it into chapters and lines, and figures out which character speaks each line of dialogue.

Analysis runs in the background, so you can close the tab — we'll email you when it's ready. When it finishes, the book opens in the editor as a normal project, already split into chapters and blocks with each line attributed to a character. From there, cast your voices (the Auto-cast button assigns a well-matched voice to every character in one click, or you can pick each one yourself), review anything you like, and generate.

What it costs: analysis is billed at 1 point per 500 characters (with a 50-point minimum) — only a few percent on top of what the audio itself will cost. Generating the audio afterwards costs points as usual.

Step 1 — Create a project

Prefer to write directly in VocalLab? Open Audiobooks in Studio and click New audiobook. The project is created immediately with one chapter and one empty line, ready to type into.

Click the project name in the breadcrumb to rename it.

Step 2 — Understand lines and chapters

An audiobook is a list of chapters. Each chapter is a list of blocks, and there are two kinds:

• Speaker blocks — a voice and some text. This is where your narration lives.
• Pause blocks — a gap of silence, adjustable from 0.5 to 10 seconds in half-second steps.

Hover between any two blocks to get + Speaker and + Pause buttons. Blocks can be dragged to reorder, or moved with Move up / Move down in the block menu.

Add chapters from the Chapters rail on the left with New chapter.

Limits

The 40,000-character ceiling is per chapter, not per project. If you hit it, split the chapter in two — there's plenty of room across 50 chapters.

Step 3 — Cast your voices

Every speaker block carries its own voice, which is what makes multi-character narration work: give the narrator one voice and each character another, line by line.

Click the voice chip on a block to pick from the project's voices, or open the full picker to choose any voice you have. Picking a voice on a line automatically adds it to the project.

In the Settings panel, the Voices section lets you manage the cast:

• Change — swaps that voice across the entire project at once. Useful when you've narrated three chapters and decide the narrator should sound different.
• Delete — removes the voice from every line but keeps the text. Nothing is lost, but those lines then have no voice and won't generate until you re-cast them.

Step 4 — Add emotion and vocalizations

Each speaker block has an emotion dropdown: happy, sad, angry, surprised, fearful, disgusted, laughing, or whispering.

You can also drop vocalizations inline in the text with the vocalization bar, which appears when a block is focused: [laugh], [breathe], [clear_throat], [cough], [sigh], [yawn].

Step 5 — Generate

Two ways:

• One line — click Generate on that block.
• A whole chapter — click Generate Chapter at the bottom.

Generate Chapter only processes lines that are missing audio or have been edited since they were last generated. Change a line after generating it and it gets an Edited pill; the next chapter generation picks up exactly those lines. You never pay twice for text that hasn't changed.

Generations run one at a time. Starting a second while one is running gives you "A generation is already running — wait for it to finish."

The counter above the button tells you what you're about to spend — how many lines need generating and roughly how many points that costs.

Reusing audio you already have

The block menu has Use audio from history, which pulls in a past generation instead of making a new one. This is free — no points, no regeneration. Handy for repeated intros, outros, or chapter stings.

One quirk: the search box filters only what's already loaded, so if you don't see what you're after, use Load more and search again.

Step 6 — Export

Click Export project. VocalLab stitches every chapter, in order, into one combined MP3, inserting real silence for your pause blocks.

Things to know:

• Export is always a single MP3. There's no per-chapter export and no format choice.
• Lines with no audio are silently skipped. The export dialog warns you how many were skipped — generate them first if you want a complete file.
• You need at least one generated line to export at all.

Tips

• Generate as you go, chapter by chapter. Writing all fifty chapters before generating anything makes mistakes expensive to find.
• Listen to a chapter before moving on. The chapter play button stays grey until every non-empty line has fresh audio, so it doubles as a completeness check.
• Use pause blocks for pacing, not blank lines. A 1–2 second pause between scenes reads far better than a hard cut.
• Cast the narrator first and generate a single test line before committing to a whole chapter in that voice.

Troubleshooting

"Write something in this chapter first." Every line is empty. Add some text.

"N lines don't have a voice — pick one for each before generating." Some lines have no voice assigned, usually after deleting a voice from the project. Re-cast them.

"Everything in this chapter is already up to date." Nothing has changed since your last generation. This is a success message, not an error.

"This chapter exceeds the 40,000-character limit. Split it into more chapters." Exactly what it says — break the chapter up.

"Generate the chapter first to hear it." The chapter play button needs every non-empty line generated before it will play the chapter through.

"A generation is already running — wait for it to finish." Only one generation runs at a time. Wait for the current one.

Out of points Generating costs points. Top up or upgrade, then continue — your project and any audio you've already generated are saved.

Related

• Casting Multiple Voices — more on giving each character a voice
• Exporting Your Audiobook — more on the finished file
• How to Clone a Voice — narrate in your own voice
• How to Design a Voice from a Prompt — invent character voices