🎧 Audible EPUB3 Maker

Generate audiobooks from plain EPUB files in EPUB3 Media Overlays format using high-quality TTS (Text-to-Speech) engines like Azure and Kokoro, now with an intuitive Web GUI.

You can read or listen to the generated EPUB using any ebook reader that supports EPUB 3 Media Overlays, such as Thorium Reader. The generated MP3 files can also be played with any standard audio player.

✨ Features

• Convert plain EPUB books into audiobooks compliant with EPUB 3 Media Overlays specification.
• Supports TTS engines:
  • Azure TTS (high-quality cloud service)
  • Kokoro-82M (offline open-source model, currently supports English text alignment only)
• Automatic sentence segmentation and force alignment
• Parallel multi-process generation
• Gradio-based Web GUI for easy interaction without command line
• Docker-ready architecture for easy deployment

🛠 Installation

⚙️ From Source

1. git clone & pip install

git clone https://github.com/funway/audible-epub3-maker.git 
cd audible-epub3-maker
pip install -r requirements.txt

2. TTS Engine Configuration

Depending on the engine you plan to use, follow the steps below:

• Azure:

  • You must configure the following two environment variables:

    AZURE_TTS_KEY=your_azure_speech_key
    AZURE_TTS_REGION=your_speech_region
    

  • You can define them:
    • In a .env file in the project root (recommended)
    • Or export them manually in your shell or .bashrc / .zshrc file:

      export AZURE_TTS_KEY=your_azure_speech_key
      export AZURE_TTS_REGION=your_speech_region
      

  • How to get Microsoft Azure Text-to-Speech API key

• Kokoro:

  • No environment configuration is required.
  • The model file will automatically download on first use.

🐳 From Docker

We provide pre-built Docker images hosted at:

• Docker Hub: funway/audible-epub3-maker

• GitHub Container Registry (GHCR): ghcr.io/funway/audible-epub3-maker

The image includes all dependencies and runs the Web GUI by default.

Using docker-compose

A sample configuration file docker-compose.example.yml is included in the repository:

services:
  aem-web:
    image: ghcr.io/funway/audible-epub3-maker
    ports:
      - "7860:7860"
    volumes:
      - ./output:/app/output
    environment:
      - AZURE_TTS_KEY=your_azure_speech_key
      - AZURE_TTS_REGION=your_speech_region
    restart: unless-stopped

Using docker CLI

docker pull ghcr.io/funway/audible-epub3-maker

docker run -d \
    -p 7860:7860 \
    -v ./output:/app/output \
    -e AZURE_TTS_KEY=your_azure_speech_key \
    -e AZURE_TTS_REGION=your_speech_region \
    ghcr.io/funway/audible-epub3-maker

💡 Notes

• Using Azure TTS? Make sure you set the AZURE_TTS_KEY and AZURE_TTS_REGION environment variables before starting the container.

• Using Kokoro TTS? Keep an eye on your system’s memory usage — the model runs locally and can consume several GB of RAM. On low-memory systems, this may cause OOM (out-of-memory) errors.

🚀 Usage

🖥️ CLI

python main.py <input_file.epub> [options]

Required:

• input_file: The path to the source EPUB file.

Optional arguments:

Example

python main.py mybook.epub \
    --tts_engine azure \
    --tts_lang zh-CN \
    --tts_voice zh-CN-XiaoxiaoNeural \
    -d ./output_dir \
    -m 4 \
    --log_level DEBUG

🌐 Web GUI

python web_gui.py

Optional arguments:

Then open your browser and interact with the friendly interface!

💾 Output

• *.mp3: Generated audio for each chapter
• *.epub: A new EPUB file with embedded mp3 audio and synchronized smil overlays

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

🚗 TODO

• Add CPU/GPU selection for offline TTS models (note: pip install on amd64 arch defaults to pull a 4GB NVIDIA library ("▔□▔) )
• Support more TTS models
• Implement voice preview and cost estimation for commercial models
• Integrate WhisperX for audio-text alignment in TTS models without native word boundary output