Tuesday, 10 April 2018

Turn any eBook into an Audiobook with new Smartphone App

Good e-Reader have released their first major app for Android smartphones/tablets -  From the Good e-Reader website -

It is called Audio Reader and it turns any ebook into an audiobook. It reads aloud all of your sideloaded content using Amazon Polly, which is what Alexa is built on. We support 28 different languages and 12 different voices for English users.
We are the first Android app to employ Amazon Polly, which sounds way more natural for reading ebooks than Cortana, Google Voice Assistant or SIRI. Polly is the perfect narration tool for readers who want their books read aloud and don’t want the standard robotic voice that most TTS systems use.

There is a little over 36,000 audiobooks produced globally every year and most publishers want to focus on their front-list titles, most of the back-list is less of a priority. The average professionally narrated audiobook ranges from $15 to $49, which can get expensive. Audio Reader will narrate any EPUB/MOBI/PRC sideloaded books aloud with a natural sounding voice, for free!

Key Features
• Turn any eBook into an audiobook
• Immersion Reading: Text is highlighted when the audiobook is playing.
• Audio Narration available in over 28 different languages.
• Select a male or a female voice
• Collection Management: Add books to your own personal collections.
• Dynamic Home Screen: Keeps track of all of your ebooks.
• Built in file manager to import in your favorite eBooks.
• You can import eBooks from your phones internal storage, SD or Google Drive
• Supported eBook formats: EPUB, MOBI, PRC, FB2, PDF
• Bright and Vibrant eBook cover art.
• Change fonts, text size, margins and much more.
• Change the background of the book you are reading or adjust the brightness.
• PDF User Guide will teach you how to use the app
• You can forgo the Polly System and just read with our advanced parser and rendering engine.


I downloaded the ap to my Galaxy S8 and it took me some fiddling to get it to work - firstly it wouldn't work with any of the kindle books already on my device, and I had to sideload a book to the phone. I did this and it worked fine - I went through all the available voices until I found one I liked.

I was also impressed in the amount of languages it will read in. For instance I listened to the book, written in English, translated to both German and French - that's a clever touch. Eventually I settled on the Geraint voice which read English with  Welsh accent.

Find the App HERE



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