Make a personal audiobook from a PDF
Do you have a book, a thesis or a long report as a PDF and would rather listen to it? You can turn it into your own audiobook, chapter by chapter, to listen to wherever you like. It stays yours: it is not for sharing.
Can you turn a PDF into an audiobook yourself?
Yes, if the PDF contains selectable text: Readotte reads it with a natural voice and, with Readotte Plus, assembles it into an MP3 file. You get a personal audiobook you can play on your phone or audio player.
It is not a studio audiobook: the voice is synthetic, with no narrator or performance. For an essay, a course or a report, it is often more than enough.
Should you make one file per chapter?
Yes, it is more practical: Readotte assembles a document into a single MP3, with no chapter splits inside the file. With one document per chapter, you get one MP3 per chapter, easier to find and resume.
To do this, copy each chapter's text and paste it as a new document: line breaks in the middle of sentences are joined back automatically. A pasted document can be up to 400,000 characters; see turn text into speech.
How does Readotte handle a book's layout?
It rebuilds the reading order and leaves out what should not be read: repeated headers and footers, page numbers, small-print notes and captions, citation marks like [12]. Chapter and section headings are read as separate sentences, with a falling intonation.
Since footnotes are left out, information that appears only in a note will not be read. For details, see read a PDF aloud.
How long does it take to make the MP3?
A short chapter is ready quickly, a long document takes several minutes. The file is assembled in your browser with the current voice and settings: keep the page open in the meantime.
For listening time, count about 800 characters per minute at 1×. Readotte Plus includes fair use of about 20 hours of generated listening a month, which leaves room for several books.
Am I allowed to make an audiobook of a book I bought?
We cannot give legal advice, but one simple rule applies: keep the file to yourself. The text belongs to its author or publisher, and Readotte's MP3 is for personal use only in any case.
Do not share the file, put it online or resell it, even for free. Some ebooks also come with their own terms; if in doubt, read them. The rules on the audio side are detailed in text-to-speech and commercial use.
Which formats and books don't work?
Readotte reads PDFs with text, article links and pasted text, in English and French. It does not read EPUB files, Word files, images or scanned PDFs.
If your book is an EPUB, you first need to get its text in another form, while respecting its terms. If your PDF will not play, see why my PDF won't read aloud.
Listen to your document
PDF with selectable text, 25 MB max. Scanned PDFs (images only) are not read yet.
Free, no account: about 10 minutes of listening a day. The text is extracted and read by our servers in Europe.
Frequently asked questions
Does the MP3 have chapters you can navigate?
No, each document gives a single MP3, with no chapter markers. To navigate by chapter, create one document per chapter and number the files.
Can I give the audiobook to someone?
No, Readotte's MP3 is for your personal use only, and the text remains protected by copyright. The other person can listen to their own copy with Readotte.
Can I listen without downloading the MP3?
Yes, reading in the browser is available for free, about 10 minutes a day, and picks up at the sentence where you stopped; it needs a connection. The MP3 is mainly for listening offline.