# Make an audiobook with Claude or ChatGPT

Source: https://docs.vieneu.io/docs/integrations/mcp/audiobooks

Give the assistant a story, a chapter or a whole book — paste it or attach the
file — and ask for an audiobook:

> "Làm sách nói từ truyện này. Giọng dẫn chuyện nữ miền Bắc, mỗi nhân vật một giọng riêng."

The assistant turns your text into a script — the narration, and every line of
dialogue with the character who says it — picks a narrator and a voice for each
character, and tells you what it will cost. Once you agree, VieNeu reads the
book chapter by chapter and masters each chapter into an MP3 ready to publish.

This works in every app on the [MCP server](./index.md) — Claude and ChatGPT show
a player for the chapters right in the chat.

## How it goes

1. **The script.** The assistant creates the book and adds the chapters in
   order. It copies your text word for word — its instructions forbid
   summarizing or rewriting — and leaves out tables of contents, page numbers
   and copyright pages. Free.
2. **The cost.** Before anything is spent it tells you the estimate in tokens:
   every character is billed like any synthesis, with the default engine's
   rate (`get_token_balance` tells you how far your plan goes).
3. **Start.** When you say yes it starts the book. Each chapter is billed when it
   starts rendering; a chapter that fails is refunded automatically and made
   again on its own (see [failures](#stopping-resuming-failures)).
4. **The wait.** Audiobooks are made while VieNeu's servers are not busy with
   people waiting for audio — expect hours rather than minutes, often overnight.
   Books waiting at the same time take turns, a chapter each, so a short book
   is never stuck behind a long one. You do not need to keep the chat open: when the book is done, a notification
   appears under the bell on vieneu.io.
5. **Listening.** Ask *"Sách nói xong chưa?"* The assistant shows the progress
   and, for each finished chapter, a download link (valid 24 hours — ask again
   for fresh ones). In Claude and ChatGPT a player lists the chapters and plays
   them one after another. Every chapter is also saved in your **Library** on
   vieneu.io.

## Voices

- **The narrator** reads the narration and the chapter titles.
- **Characters** — up to 30 — each get their own voice. Minor characters can
  stay with the narrator: the assistant writes their lines as narration.
- Describe what you want ("một bà cụ miền Nam", "cậu bé tám tuổi") and the
  assistant searches the catalogue with `list_voices`. Your own cloned voices
  cannot read audiobooks yet.

## How a chapter sounds

| What | How |
|---|---|
| Between paragraphs and lines | 0.6 s of silence |
| After the chapter title | 2.5 s |
| At a scene change | 2 s |
| Start and end of the file | 0.5 s of silence before, 3.5 s after |
| Loudness | −19 LUFS integrated, peaks at most −3 dBTP |
| File | MP3, 128 kbps, mono, 48 kHz, tagged with title, book, author and track number |

Stores differ in the files they accept — Audible, for one, asks for 192 kbps at
44.1 kHz — so check your store's requirements before uploading.

## Tools

| Tool | What it does | Cost |
|------|--------------|------|
| `create_audiobook` | Create the book: title, author, narrator, characters' voices | Free |
| `add_audiobook_chapter` | Add a chapter as a script in reading order, or continue a long one | Free¹ |
| `start_audiobook` | Start the book — also resumes a stopped book and redoes failed chapters | Tokens |
| `get_audiobook` | Progress, and the download link of each finished chapter | Free |
| `list_audiobooks` | Your books, newest first — finds a book from an earlier chat | Free |
| `cancel_audiobook` | Stop: chapters not started are never billed; one already being made finishes | Free |

¹ A chapter added to a book that is already being made joins it, and is billed
when it is made.

A chapter's script is a list of segments: narration (no speaker), or one
character's spoken words. A line such as *"— Đi thôi! — Lan nói."* becomes Lan
saying *"Đi thôi!"* followed by the narrator reading *"Lan nói."*

## Limits

| Limit | Value |
|---|---|
| Chapters per book | 200 |
| Characters per chapter | 60,000 (about 80 minutes), less on a plan with a daily cap¹ |
| Characters per book | 1,500,000 |
| Characters with their own voice | 30 |

¹ A chapter is billed in one go, so it has to fit the plan's daily (or weekly)
token cap — on a trial of 50,000 tokens a day that is about 12,800 characters.
The book reports its ceiling (`chapter_chars_max`), and a chapter over it is
refused when added, with the size that fits, rather than waiting for tokens that
never come. The assistant splits such a chapter into several.

An assistant writes every word of the book into its tool calls, a few thousand
characters at a time, so long chapters arrive in several pieces — that is
normal. Each piece says how many segments the chapter already has
(`after_segment`): a piece sent twice is refused instead of being added twice,
a piece that went missing is noticed before the next one lands, and each answer
shows the words the chapter now ends with. Before starting, the assistant checks
every chapter against your text. A whole novel is a long conversation: it is
fine to carry on in a new chat, where *"tiếp tục sách nói …"* finds the book again.

## Stopping, resuming, failures

- **"Dừng sách nói"** stops the book. Chapters not started are not billed; the
  one being made finishes, because it is already paid for.
- **"Làm tiếp"** resumes it, with the cost of what is left.
- A chapter whose rendering fails — a server restarting mid-chapter, a voice
  server down — is refunded and made again on its own a few minutes later,
  continuing from the parts already made, twice. Only a third failure counts:
  the book then ends as *partly done*, and starting it again redoes only the
  failed chapters.
- A chapter whose job stops moving for 45 minutes is treated the same way, so
  one stuck chapter never holds up the books behind it.
- If the finishing step (the MP3) fails, it is tried again with growing waits for
  about an hour; only then is the chapter handed over as WAV instead.

## Your text

You are reading your text to VieNeu, so make sure you may: your own writing, a
public-domain work, or one you hold the audio rights to.

## From your own code

The same books are in the Cloud API: `POST /v1/audiobooks`, then
`POST /v1/audiobooks/{bookId}/chapters` and `POST /v1/audiobooks/{bookId}/start`;
follow progress with `GET /v1/audiobooks/{bookId}`. See
[Every operation](../../cloud-api/overview.md#every-operation) and the
[API reference](/api-reference).