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Everything about importing books, listening, and what each plan covers.
Aethel Audio turns dense, technical books — textbooks, academic papers, financial literature — into narrated audio you can actually follow. Equations, tables and figures are explained in plain words instead of being read out symbol by symbol.
EPUB, PDF and plain text files up to 100 MB. Scanned PDFs that contain only images of pages will not work, because there is no text to read; a text-based PDF exported from Word, LaTeX or a publisher works well.
Books bought from Amazon or Apple are locked to your account by the shop and cannot be imported by any app. Any unprotected EPUB you own can be brought across: on iPhone or iPad share the book to Files, on Mac export it from Apple Books, then choose that file on the Add page.
The search on the Add page covers Project Gutenberg. You can also paste a direct link to an EPUB or PDF from a trusted public library such as Project Gutenberg, Standard Ebooks or the Internet Archive.
Short text-based EPUBs and PDFs usually import fastest; large or heavily formatted PDFs take longer. Aethel Audio filters common page furniture, but complex layouts should be checked before listening. Scanned pages without a text layer are not read because OCR is not available yet.
Three steps: add your EPUB, PDF or text file on the Add page, pick one of 17 reading languages, then read or listen as each chapter is translated and narrated. The step-by-step guide at /how-to-translate-ebook walks through it.
Pick a language in Settings or from the reading screen and each chapter is translated on demand. Completed translations are saved, so they open quickly when you revisit a chapter. You can switch back to the original text at any time.
They open a short answer about the passage you are on: a plain explanation, the same idea said differently, a worked example, or an answer to any question you type. Each answer is also read aloud in your chosen voice.
They are detected during import and kept as their own excerpts. Before playback, each one gets a short spoken description — what the formula computes, what a table shows, what a figure illustrates — and that description is narrated instead of the raw symbols.
Yes. Tap the voice pill at the top of the reading screen to switch voice, speed or reading language without losing your place.
On devices and browsers that support media controls, the lock screen can pause or resume narration, skip 30 seconds backward or forward, and select the previous or next chapter. Available controls vary by device.
Your library shows a percentage based on saved reading progress. The chapter outline in the reader also shows progress through the current book and its chapters.
By the length of the text spoken, at roughly 950 characters a minute. Clips are cached, so replaying a passage you have already heard is free and never counted twice.
Narration pauses and you are offered either an upgrade or a one-off voice pack. Reading, translation and explanations carry on as normal, and bought voice hours never expire.
The free trial covers five books and 1 hour of narration on standard voices. Pro Reader adds unlimited books and 6 hours of narration a month. Pro and Executive use the high-fidelity voice library with 12 and 25 hours a month, and Executive adds dossiers and analytical interjections.
Open Plan & billing and choose Manage subscription. The billing portal shows the effective cancellation date before you confirm; any paid access continues until that date. Cancel during the 7-day trial to prevent the first subscription charge. Your account and stored content remain subject to the Terms and Privacy Policy.
Your files, translations and audio are stored privately against your account. Aethel Audio does not use private library content to train its own models; relevant text may be sent to an external provider to perform a feature you request. Deleting a book removes its file, translations, notes, figure assets and saved audio. Deleting your account removes active account records and stored files; records we must retain by law and provider backups may remain for their applicable retention periods.