Text-to-speech (short for TTS) is an amazing technology to help you read digital text aloud. Nowadays, many popular reader programs also come with built-in TTS capability, which helps improve a readers’ concentration and focus while reading. What’s more, reading ebooks aloud with TTS reader can make reading more practical and comfortable for customers with vision impairments or other reading disabilities. Needless to say, it is always good to turn any ebook into an audiobook without costing a dime. It is also a nice option to have if you're on a long journey and your eyes need a rest.
1. Text-to-speech (TTS) Introduction
Text-to-speech (TTS) is a type of technology that reads digital text aloud. The voice in TTS is computer-generated. Usually, reading speed can be sped up or slowed down. And many TTS tools highlight words as they are read aloud, which is very helpful for people who struggle with reading. For me, the best part of TTS is that it allows people to multitask.
Besides, there are many different types of TTS tools, including built-in TTS (text to speech), web-based TTS tool, TTS apps, and TTS software programs. Next, let's get to know some of the professional text-to-speech readers to help you read your ebooks and documents out.
Adding ebooks and documents from outside the Book Store(like Amazon or Apple) to its reader program requires they be DRM-free. If your ebooks are encrypted, you can follow this guide to remove DRM from Kindle/Kobo/Google Play/Nook books effortlessly.
2. Top 4 Text To Speech Readers
1. Kindle for PC/Mac
The free Kindle app, available on iOS, Android, Mac, and PC, is one of the best versatile reading apps with abundant amazing features. Putting your ebook library at your fingertips, the free Kindle app allows you to read your ebooks anytime, anywhere you want.
Kindle enables customers to customize their reading experience by adjusting the text size, font type, layout, margins, line spacing, reading themes, and more. If you encounter a difficult word while reading, the Kindle app can help you can read smoothly by using the dictionary lookup or the instant translation function.
Even cooler, you can make the app read the text aloud for you by starting the text-to-speech function on the tool bar. Or use the shortcut for read aloud function (Ctrl+T) to start reading aloud the whole book, starting at the current page. You can also use this shortcut to stop text-to-speech. The biggest disadvantage of using Kindle text-to-speech is that you can not change the speed and the narrator.
If your ebooks or documents are not compatible with the Kindle desktop app or the following text to speech readers, you can use Epubor Ultimate to convert your DRM free files to EPUB/Mobi/AZW3/PDF/TXT for free. Depends on the actual needs, you can pick an appropriate output format.
2. Calibre Built-in TTS Viewer
calibre is a powerful and easy to use e-book manager. It can view, convert, edit and catalogue e-books in all of the major e-book formats. It is cross platform, running on Linux, Windows and macOS. calibre has a built-in e-book viewer that can display all the major e-book formats. It has full support for Table of Contents, highlighting, bookmarks, read aloud, a reference mode, searching, copying, multi-page view, embedded fonts, and on and on.
To use the text-to-speech function in calibre, you can simply click the Read aloud button in the preference settings to start reading the text aloud. Or use the shortcut for read aloud function (Ctrl+S) to start reading aloud the whole book, starting at the current page. The word being currently read is highlighted. Once you start reading aloud, there is a floating bar with pause and other controls, like speed up speech and slow down speech, close read aloud, and configure read out, etc. You can also change the voice being used by clicking the gear icon in the floating bar that is displayed while Read aloud is active. And the best part of using the calibre read aloud feature is that you can start reading the text aloud from any place on the current page by putting the mouse on the word you want it to start reading.
3. Apple Book Built-in TTS Reader
Apple Books is an all-in-one ebook reader, bookstore, and audiobook player, which lets you lose yourself in the best books and audiobooks right on its iOS and macOS operating systems and devices. Yap, Apple Book is available only for Apple users.
The redesigned Apple Book App adds some new features which make the reading experience more terrific and user-friendly. This includes the ability to take notes, highlight the text, bookmarks, text-to-speech, adjust brightness, font size, fonts, background color, auto-night theme, scrolling view, etc.
Apple Books offers text-to-speech capabilities as well. It means you can turn any ebook into an audiobook with a computerized voice. To use Apple Book's text-to-speech feature, simply select the text > Right-click > More > Start Speaking.
4. Microsoft Edge Browser
Microsoft Edge is a cross-platform web browser developed by Microsoft. It is available for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS systems. The new completely rewritten Edge browser which is based on Chromium first released in 2020. Now it has greatly improved performance and security while browsing online.
Microsoft Edge comes complete with built-in features designed to customize your browsing experience and to help make you more productive. One of the most useful features is the immersive reader mode. To start, launch the Microsoft Edge browser and head to the website you want to read. Then, to enable immersive reading mode by clicking on the book icon in the address bar. You can also enter or exit the immersive reader by pressing the F9 key on the keyboard.
There’s a special toolbar on the upper right corner of the screen while in immersive reader mode, including Read aloud, Reading Preferences, Grammar tools, and Text Preferences. The new Edge browser comes with many useful features which you won’t get with other readers. For example, the Grammar tools feature allows you to split words into syllables and highlight all nouns, verbs, and adjectives with different colors. And under Reading Preferences, you can translate the entire page to another language. Of course, there is the Read aloud feature that lets the digital assistant read the article out loud. And you can control the speed the articles are read to you as well as change the voice. Besides, the Edge browser is also a great viewer to open your PDF files. Yes, the only shortage of Edge browser is that it only supports the PDF format.
TTS is a tool that reads text aloud. An audiobook is a recording of a book read by a human voice (or created by TTS). For better sound quality, you should purchase legal audiobooks instead. If you want to back up Audiobooks purchased from Audible/Kobo/Nook/Chirp/Storytel/Everand for personal use, you should convert Audiobooks to MP3 with the powerful Epubor audiobook converters.
Amy Lopez crafts informative articles on eBooks and eReaders, uncovering optimal methods to enhance your eBook reading experience, and eagerly shares her findings with you.
Evie is probably the best TTS app i can get. (current date ~11/2021) I've tried all the others including Flyreader. The Kindle App is sort of like Apple, you pay for everything and they still deliver ads directly to you.
Evie will Karaoke and has a number of TTS (offline and Online) voices. Giving your reader an accent you can listen to and the app also allows the pause between sentences to be as short or as long as needed. Punctuation can break an App that reads to you.
Flyreader is nice, since its on windows and has a great interface but it doesn't know how to pause between sentences or slow down. It also doesn't follow along.