Help in the form of a life preserver!

I came across a really neat idea last week while I was surfing through Twitter. I usually surf through this social media outlet pretty fast because there is so much content I’d be waterlogged by the time I finished if I stopped and peeked at every little tweet.

What caught my eye was the fact you could send documents to your Kindle and then use the text-to-speech feature to have the document read to you. Well that would be great! After all, I’m addicted to audiobooks and this will give me the option to listen to my WIP to check for errors.

I decided to try this idea out on my last book, Coffee-Drunk Or Blind, before attempting my WIP because I’d already sent it to my Kindle as a document earlier. Was I amazed to find no text-to-speech option! 

So I started googling. Google is my BFF! I settled in for a long progress and it took a while to find the answer, but I wasn’t going to quit before I did. I know you have all heard that everything you read on the internet is true, so I knew the answer was hidden in that hole-of-knowledge somewhere – and it was!

Evidently, you have to change your file to a .mobi file and then send that file to your Kindle for the text-to-speech feature to work. Technology and I sometimes clash so this process scared me. I had no idea where to start. After researching some more, I finally found some kind soul on the internet who had related part of the the process in people talk.

I had to download the program, Calibre, to do the trick. I detest having to learn new programs. There is always that learning curve that throws me a curve ball!

As soon as I downloaded the program, I looked the dashboard over and paled over the header and sideboard selections such as add books, convert books, get books, formats, tags, and identifiers, etc. By the way, what’s metadata? They got me there and I haven’t had time to google that yet. I’m sure it’s something technical I know but don’t know that I know.

I soon found that help was on the way in the form of a button that looked like a lifesaver float to throw to someone drowning – and drowning I was. Just tapping on that lifesaver took me to the Calibre User Manual, and the third and fourth short paragraphs explained the process. Easy-peasy. Less than a minute! 

I could now listen to my WIP with the text-to-speech feature on my Kindle. Keep in mind, this feature is NOTHING like listening to an Audible book. The reader’s voice is flat, with no emotion or distinction. Very low-key. There are pauses at comma’s and stops at periods though. Sometimes those mistakes you made jump out at you if you hear your content read aloud. The first page immediately showed me an error I made by leaving out a word at the end of the sentence – and I thought I had edited that so well!

Now, I’m no expert on the subject, but this process worked for me and if this helps someone else, all is well and good in the world!

~Elle

Don’t forget that Coffee-Drunk Or Blind is available on KindleUnlimited for free and a mere $2.99 otherwise. It’s also available in paperback. As a bonus, when I hit those fifty reviews, some lucky reviewer is going to win a $50.00 Amazon gift card. Let’s hope it’s you!