Comment by treetalker 4 days ago
For anyone looking for an easier alternative (and one without the bugs the author describes, such as skipping some prefaces or failing to detect some chapters), Voice Dream Reader on iOS (and macOS) handles .epub and other e-books just fine and supports a variety of built-in and external voices.
Yes, I’ve used Voice Dream for years with Pocket articles & ebooks because the Pocket app took up too much space and was limited to web articles. The voice quality is ok for short pieces or stints. The choice of voices is a bit robotic, but I find it useful while making written notes in Split View.
It is free at the moment. They clearly specify in their terms that it won't be completely free in the future. The price of their same product if accessed from the web is $100/month for the amount (barely) sufficient for book reading. It may be smarter to skip until they reveal their official pricing for the mobile app.
Unless something has changed, the iOS version is a one-time purchase. I bought the app many years ago (8?) and have been a happy user since.
Like you, though, I had that reaction to the subscription model for macOS and therefore decided not to "buy" it when it came out.
They got greedy and decided to milk it. That's what changed.
It's $80/yr for the iOS app.
Oof, I believe they changed ownership so I must have been grandfathered in. That's steep.
There are many apps. Voice Dream isn't up to date with voice quality (which was amazing 10 years ago when it started, but now even Apple gives you voices of similar quality for free), but is up to date with prices.
Here is a detailed comparison chart I have made that tracks over 100 features across most popular apps: https://speechcentral.net/speech-central-vs-voice-dream-read...