Audiobooks

Audiobooks

An Audiobook is your finished book as a single downloadable MP3, read aloud from start to finish. It is a separate product from the printed book and from the Digital Edition — not a format of either.

It Is a Synthetic Voice, Not a Person

We should be plain about this before you buy. The narration is produced by software. It is not recorded by a human narrator, and it will not do everything a human narrator would. If that matters to you, it is worth knowing before you pay rather than after.

Which Books Can Have One

Only books with a written story. If your book is a Journal Edition — the edition with no story inside — there is nothing to read aloud, so the Audiobook is not offered on it. Every other edition can be narrated.

What It Costs

$14.99 on its own, or $9.99 when you are also buying a printed copy of that book — now, in the same cart, or any time in the past.

Owning the Digital Edition does not earn you the lower price. The audiobook is its own product rather than a discount on a bundle, and the lower price is tied to the printed copy specifically.

Credits cannot buy an audiobook. Credits pay for making and changing books; this is a purchase at checkout, like printing. See Understanding Credits.

Where It Is Sold

Anywhere, once your book is made; new books can be started from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Outside the United States, audiobooks are sold by our international reseller, which may charge in your currency and adds your local tax. Beside a printed copy in the same checkout it is offered only when you are ordering from the United States for delivery there; otherwise you buy it on its own after your printed order, at the same add-on price.

Choosing Your Narrator

There are 5 voices to choose from. You pick one in your cart, before you pay, from the Narrator dropdown on that book’s line. Change it as often as you like up to that point. Your choice is fixed when you pay. It is the one choice here worth slowing down for.

Wanting a different narrator afterwards means buying the audiobook again. Your Downloads page offers the swap, and picking a voice there puts a new audiobook in your cart — it is a whole new recording, so it is not a refund, an exchange or a restore. It is priced the way any audiobook is: $14.99 on its own, or $9.99 if you are also buying, or have already bought, a printed copy of that book. Check the figure in your cart before you pay, because that is the one you will be charged.

Some template pages carry a section headed Hear it read aloud, where you can play each voice reading a passage from that template before you decide. We prepare those samples one template at a time, so not every template has them yet. If the one you are looking at does not, there is nothing to click and nothing has gone wrong — that template’s samples have simply not been made yet.

While the audiobook is in your cart we may also ask “How should we say these names?” and offer a few readings of each name in your book, with a Hear it link beside each one. It is optional. Skip it and we say every name the way it is spelled.

When It Is Made

Your recording is produced after you pay, not instantly. A full-length book takes a while to narrate, and we email you as soon as it is ready. Until then your Downloads page shows it as still being prepared.

Downloading It

When it is ready it appears under My Audiobooks on your Downloads page, with a Download MP3 button, the narrator’s name and the running time.

How Long We Host It

We host your download for 90 days, counted from the day the recording is ready rather than from the day you paid — the narration takes time to make, and you should not lose any of your window to it. We email you 15 days before it closes.

Save your own copy somewhere safe. The MP3 on your own device is yours to keep permanently. The audio file is large, which is why we host it for a shorter time than an EPUB.

If the window does close, the Downloads page offers Restore for 10 credits on that audiobook. That re-makes the same recording in the same voice and starts a fresh 90-day window. A restore is more expensive than a digital restore because the whole book genuinely has to be narrated again.

Audiobook Sales Are Final

Audiobooks are non-refundable from the moment of purchase, and that does not depend on whether you have downloaded the file yet. Before you pay you are asked to check this, word for word:

“I understand that audiobooks are non-refundable from the moment of purchase, that SimpleBookBuilder hosts my download for 90 days after the recording is ready, and that choosing a different narrator later is a new purchase rather than a refund or an exchange. If the recording is corrupt, incomplete, or does not match the book I approved, SimpleBookBuilder will repair or re-deliver it at no charge.”

We store the exact sentence you accepted with your order. If something is wrong with the recording, open a ticket from the Support page and we will put it right at no charge — there is no self-service rebuild, and a restore will not fix a faulty file.

It Also Unlocks Your Book

Buying an Audiobook counts as buying the book, exactly as a printed copy or a Digital Edition does. It unlocks your book and, once nothing else is waiting to be bought, your next free generation. See Understanding Credits for the whole rule.