Recording and cost

Stage ③ Record makes the audio.

Passages

The book is cut at scene and paragraph boundaries into passages of a couple of thousand characters — a length narrators hold steadily, and small enough that a new take is cheap.

Only what changed is recorded again

Every passage is content-hashed. The hash covers the text, its direction, the narrator, the voice that speaks it and the pronunciation list — everything that affects how it sounds. Position is not part of it, so inserting a paragraph in chapter 2 leaves chapters 3 to 40 recorded.

What it costs

The usual prices (the button always shows the current one):

• Included voice: about 15 credits for a full-length novel, scaled by what you actually record.
• Realism lite: about one credit per 2,000 characters — roughly 250 credits for a 90,000-word novel.
• Studio realism: about one credit per 1,111 characters — roughly 450 credits for a 90,000-word novel.

The button quotes the price of exactly what it will record, and the quote and the charge come from the same calculation. Passages already recorded are never charged again.

It runs in the background

Recording is a worker job. Leave the room or close the tab; it keeps going, and when you come back the Studio picks it up again — progress and Stop included.

New takes

Tick passages and choose Re-record to give them a fresh take with the same words. It is charged like any recording, because it is one.

Cancelling, and refunds

• A job no worker has started ends immediately and costs nothing.
• A running job stops at a passage boundary, and you are refunded for what had not been recorded. What was recorded stays and is free to reuse.
• A failure refunds in full. A crash is our fault; a cancel is your choice.

What to watch for

• One narration job at a time per account.
• Changing the narrator or voice makes every passage stale.
• The included voice is dramatically cheaper. If budget matters more than performance, that is the decision that moves the number.