Frustration with Elevenlabs reader and perceived lack of interest.

Emailing them works better. Find their email address and have at it.

I have experienced this with Burt, it is the voice. As you may know these voices are trained within certain restrictions. I remember a voice was available and the owner of the trained model requested for his voice to be removed from the app. So it might be Burt who is doing this not the app. I use Mad Scientist, and it does a perfect job. Burt sometimes skips the f-words while the mad scientist is rude enough not to. So pick another voice and you're good to go.
For the subscription, please pray they won't do that. I read they are having plans to ask for $200 annually for subscription. Huge loss for me.

Hi,
I know this isn't the same as the developers implementing Bookshare integration, but I can read anything from Bookshare if I download it as an EPUB file, then import that file to Eleven Reader. I keep all my Bookshare downloads in a Dropbox folder, so I can access them from the computer or grab them with Eleven Reader as needed.
It's not a perfect solution, but it's done the trick for me.

When you die, your voice is the property of your estate. that is why Sir Lawrence Olivier and, yes, dear old Bert Reynolds, refuse to utter naughty words. That is understandable - if I were famous I most certainly would not want my voice being used to say certain things after my death, whether in a story or not. Just to run with one of the examples given by the original poster, you could run a pro-Apartheid passage from a book through the reader and manipulate or use that clip to claim, for political purposes for instance, that I held certain views when I was alive. You'd presumably be hauled through the courts for that, on the assumption that my executors had the money to do so, and you would ultimately lose the case, albeit at a cost to my estate and at a cost in residual reputational damage. so that is why Sir Lawrence will not say, for instance, the N word - ironic given that at the start of his acting career it would have been perfectly acceptable for him to do so. It is frustrating but I can understand why you have to change voices for something like that.

Personally, I think they could make the interface better for Voiceover users. I'm also still not clear whether you can now rewind a book that you've started or whether that absurd restriction that once you've started listening, you can't go back to a previous point still applies. If it does, it's a non-starter for me.

Thankfully, the rewind nonsense is over and done with. I don't understand why it was ever impossible, but it works now, so that's a win.

Kelly, that's the best news I've had since finding out that the garden office currently under construction at the Bingo Residence would have as strong a wifi signal as you can get right next to the router - which is on a small, round table just by the entrance to the kitchen and a good 30-40 yards from said garden office, just to ggive my readers a bit of context. I wish now that the interface were more VoiceDream-like. what fun and larks that would be! I'd also like it if one could choose the voices of, Say, Sir Michael Hordan, or Margaret Thatcher.

PS: I found that wifi news out this morning - apparently, according to Kieth the electrician, it's done by doing permanent cabling from the Bingo router that snakes along the skirting board (base board in american) out into the garden and thence the considerable distance through the extensive grounds at Bingo Towers from back door into the garden office, feeding into a permanent wifi access point. I kind of knew that was how it worked but it was jolly decent of the fellow to explain it all to me this morning. Can't be done today - there's still a bit of construction work needs doing first - but it's nice to know that's what we'll have.

I love ElevenLabs. I think the Reader is pretty amazing. I’m sorry, but like, let’s be real—if they’re not doing the work now, I don’t see how they’re going to do it just because there’s a subscription involved. If anything, you’d end up paying for a product that doesn’t work. Try reaching out to them via email and see if that helps. I was going to suggest using the Alexa voice to read, but I don’t think you can import documents into the Alexa app for reading. I did manage to import a file into the Kindle app, but Alexa doesn’t recognize the book, so I’m guessing that’s a no-go.

Apparently, they’re working on a new application. I saw a preview in the App Store, and the expected release date is June 30. It’s called ElevenLabs: AI Voice Generator , and from the name, I’m guessing this is going to focus on the audio side—specifically where you’re able to generate different voices from a text prompt. You can specify whether you want it to sound male or female, and describe the tone—like young, vibrant, energetic, lower, deep, raspy. That part of the site is free to use, and you can also clone your own voice. Some features are free, but others do require a subscription.

When I use the ElevenLabs Reader, I usually go with the Jessica voice. On the website I saw one called Brittany—I’m not sure if that’s one I accidentally created or if it’s always been there, but I think it’s a default. There’s another voice I don’t remember the name of, but I know I heard it in one of those animated story videos on YouTube, so it was cool recognizing it and realizing where they got it from.

I hope the new app is accessible, because ElevenLabs is doing well overall. But there’s this one glitch: when you speed up the voice, it starts making this weird static noise. That’s actually the main reason I haven’t used it more—it really messes up the flow, especially for longer reads. I’d love to use it more for books on Everand. Kobo is completely inaccessible. And when I email the developers, it’s always the same canned response: “Thanks for bringing this to our attention, but we can’t confirm whether your suggestions will be implemented.” But, of course, you know that we value accessibility. It’s frustrating. I follow a couple websites to get books when Kindle doesn’t have what I’m looking for. I pay for Kindle Unlimited, and if I see a book I want on another site, I usually copy the link and import it into ElevenLabs Reader. I wish they’d consolidate everything. Right now it feels like I have to download three or four apps from the same company, and everything is scattered. It’s too much. The quality is decent, but the process needs to be streamlined.