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Everything about importing books, listening, and what each plan covers.
Aethel 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.
Most books are ready in under a minute. Long PDFs with heavy formatting take a little longer because the text is cleaned first — page headers, contents lists, index pages and stray page numbers are removed so the narration does not read furniture aloud.
Pick a language in Settings or from the reading screen and each chapter is translated on demand. Translations are saved, so revisiting a chapter is instant and never costs anything twice. 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.
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 one book and 30 minutes 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 the Plan tab and choose Manage billing. Cancelling takes effect immediately; your books stay in your library and can be read again whenever you resubscribe.
Your files, translations and audio are stored privately against your account and are never used to train AI models. Deleting a book removes its file, translations, notes and saved audio; deleting your account removes everything.