Frequently Asked Questions

TomeVox charges a flat per-book fee based on length. Current early bird pricing: $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 support@tomevox.com 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.

Footnotes and endnotes are read 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 structure and excluded from narration to avoid interrupting the flow. If your PDF has headers that are being incorrectly included, you can flag this during the chapter preview stage before production begins.

Tables are narrated 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. The first-chapter preview will show you exactly how your specific content is handled.

Books above 120,000 words are handled as custom projects. Contact support before uploading. We accommodate very long works — omnibus editions, multi-volume collections, reference books — with custom pricing. The per-word production cost typically decreases at scale for large projects.

Every completed production includes two deliverables: (1) an M4B audiobook file with embedded chapter markers, table of contents, cover art, and author/title metadata — ready for Apple Books and any M4B-compatible player; and (2) a ZIP archive of individual chapter files, each available in both MP3 and WAV format, formatted to professional distribution specifications (44.1 kHz, 192 kbps, ACX loudness range) accepted by Spotify, INaudio, Apple Books, Google Play Books, Kobo, and any other platform. You get everything you need to distribute anywhere.

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: meeting ACX technical specs does not imply eligibility for ACX submission — ACX currently requires human narration. See our ACX specs guide for a full breakdown.

Most books are ready within 24 hours. Processing runs asynchronously in the background — you don't need to keep your browser open. You'll receive an email notification when your audiobook is ready to download.

TomeVox offers 4 AI voices across American and British accents (male and female), each available in 3 reading styles: Classic, Vivid, and Scholarly. All voices are optimized specifically for long-form narration — not just clarity in short clips, but consistent character and emotional range across hours of content. You can preview any available voice on your actual book content during the free first-chapter preview. We also support voice cloning — upload a 5-minute sample of your own voice (or a narrator's voice you have the rights to) and we'll narrate your entire book in that 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 goes through two layers of quality assurance. First, an automated verification pass checks every sentence was captured correctly — nothing skipped, nothing garbled. Second, a human reviewer checks the chapter structure, audio quality, and the finished product before it ships. This human review catches things automation misses: chapter boundaries that don't match the book's structure, introductory material that should be excluded, and anything that would make a listener's experience worse. You receive a finished audiobook that someone has actually listened to, not just a file that came out of a pipeline.

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. Sell it on Apple Books, Spotify, INaudio, Google Play Books, Kobo, your own website, or any platform you choose. TomeVox claims no royalties, rights, or revenue share from your sales. The audio file is yours.

Not currently. ACX (Audible's publishing platform) requires human narration for submitted titles — external AI-generated narration is not accepted at ACX regardless of disclosure. Amazon's own AI narration programme (KDP Virtual Voice) is a separate, invite-only beta that does not accept author-supplied audio. For AI-narrated audiobooks, the platforms that openly accept submissions are Spotify for Authors, Apple Books, Google Play Books, Kobo Writing Life, and INaudio (which reaches 30+ platforms).

Yes. Spotify for Authors, Apple Books, Google Play Books, and Kobo Writing Life all permit AI-narrated content subject to disclosure. INaudio (formerly Findaway Voices, rebranded 2025) distributes to 30+ platforms simultaneously and supports AI narration with appropriate disclosure. Platform policies continue to evolve — check each distributor'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 through INaudio, Spotify, Apple Books, or wherever you sell your books.