If you have an Amazon Fire tablet or an Amazon Echo speaker, you can have your device read selected books to you. You probably know that if you sign up for an Audible subscription or purchase an audio book you can listen, but many books have a text-to-speech feature that will allow the device to read to you in the voice of Alexa, Amazon’s digital assistant. Not every book has it (all of my novels do), but there’s a good selection out there.
Here’s how to use it. Open up your book.
Tap a blank space on the page. It will shrink down and show you some options.
It Text-to-Speech is available, you’ll see it at the bottom of the page. Tap the arrow to play.
You can adjust the speed of the speech. All the way from .7 speed to 4X the normal speed. Just tap the speed icon.
If you own an Echo speaker, you can just say “Alexa read…” You may have to be specific and say and give the title and author.
You may need to even add “from my library.” to the sentence. Kindle or Alexa will only read books that you have purchased or downloaded for free from Amazon and only if the publisher has authorized that feature.