Read-along audio is per-page narration for illustrated books: a reader opens your story, presses play, and hears each page read aloud with expressive, dramatized voices as they turn through it.
It is an optional add-on, billed per page, and it is separate from audiobooks.
Which books can have it
Read-along is available for the four illustrated formats:
- Children's books
- Comics
- Graphic novels
- Webtoons
It is not offered for novels, short stories, non-fiction or scripts. Those use audiobook narration instead, which is a single continuous recording rather than one clip per page.
How to add it
You switch read-along on in one of two places:
- When creating the book. On the Quick Mode form, and on the Graphic project form with Auto-Generate selected, turn on Read-Along Audio (next to the audiobook option, or under Generation Options). For children's books it is on by default; for comics, graphic novels and webtoons you opt in. The narration is recorded as soon as the book finishes generating.
- From the editor. The Graphic editor's Publish & Export panel has a Read-Along Audio section, and the Publish dialog has a matching checkbox. Use either for a book you built by hand, or one you skipped it on at creation.
The clips appear in the online reader when they are ready. A long book takes a while, so it is normal for the audio to arrive after the book itself is already live.
What it costs
Read-along is billed once per book, per interior page, in Creation Points: 5 points a page for children's books and 10 points a page for comics, graphic novels and webtoons. Covers are not counted. A 12 page children's book is 60 points; a 24 page comic is 240 points.
Once a book has read-along, editing it and republishing re-records only the pages whose text changed, at no further charge.
Re-generating after an edit
BookZeta stores a fingerprint of the text on each page. When you re-publish, or use Update Read-Along Audio in the editor, it only re-records the pages whose text has actually changed, and leaves the rest alone.
That means:
- Fixing a typo on page 9 re-records page 9, not the whole book. In Graphic mode the narration is taken from each page's script text, not from words typed directly onto the canvas, so retyping a speech bubble on the canvas alone does not change the recording.
- Pages you delete have their narration retired, so the reader never plays the wrong clip against a page.
- Re-running it on an unchanged book does almost nothing, which is why the update button is safe to press.
The narrator voice
One narrator voice is chosen per book and reused for every page, so the book sounds consistent all the way through. The voice is selected automatically, and once a book has been narrated it keeps the same voice on later runs rather than drifting between recordings.
There is no voice picker in the reader. If you want a different narrator, contact support from the help page.
How it differs from an audiobook
| Read-along | Audiobook | |
|---|---|---|
| Formats | Illustrated books only | Novels, short stories, non-fiction |
| Shape | One clip per page | One continuous recording with chapters |
| Where it plays | In the online reader, page by page | The listen page, and in exports |
| In downloads | No | Yes |
| Cost | 5 or 10 points a page, billed once | Spends Creation Points per chapter |
The two never mix. Read-along clips are stored apart from audiobook audio, so generating read-along does not create an audiobook, does not appear in your export formats, and does not affect audiobook generation or downloads for the same book.
If it does not appear
- Check the format. Only the four illustrated types are eligible.
- Check there is text. Pages with no words, including most covers, are skipped. A wordless picture book has nothing to narrate.
- Give it time. Generation runs in the background on a long-running queue.
- Check it was added. Open the book in the Graphic editor and look at the Read-Along Audio section of the Publish & Export panel. If it offers to add narration, the book never bought it.
- Press Update once from that panel if the book has been live for a while with no audio, then wait rather than pressing repeatedly.
If a book stays silent after that, see When a generation fails or gets stuck or contact support with the story title.
Related
Generating audiobooks for long-form narration, and Reading, saving and reviewing in the library for how readers find your book.