What audio files can I upload, and how long can they be?

Common recording formats work, including MP3, M4A, WAV, AAC, OGG and WebM, so exports from most podcast hosts, phones and voice recorders can be used directly. Each plan has an allowance for total uploaded minutes, and Pro also has a per-file length limit. Your remaining allowance is shown on the upload screen before you commit a file, and audio you record in the site recorder does not count towards the uploaded audio allowance.

Can Your Book Pro tell who is speaking on an interview recording?

Not automatically. There is no automatic speaker detection, so the wizard asks you to confirm who spoke on each recording and add contributors such as a host or a guest. You label attribution yourself, and you can reassign it later without re-transcribing the audio. This matters most before any direct quotation is used, because permission to quote, paraphrase, combine sources or export travels with each contributor.

How do I get chapter suggestions from my recordings?

Once transcription finishes, the wizard's shaping stage reads your sources and proposes a possible structure, and the Plan tab then shows those suggestions as proposals linked back to the passages they came from. Nothing is added to your plan or manuscript until you accept it. You can open the underlying source passage for any suggestion, accept, edit or skip it, and any conflict or drift from your existing plan is reported rather than applied silently.

Spoken source material

How to Turn Audio Recordings into a Book with Your Book Pro

A studio microphone on a wooden desk with a glowing sound wave flowing across to an open book, printed transcripts and notebooks

If you have recorded podcasts, talks, lectures, sermons or interviews, you already have hours of considered material in your own voice. This guide walks through exactly how Your Book Pro turns those recordings into usable book material, screen by screen, and where you stay in control of every decision.

Nothing in this workflow rewrites your manuscript or your plan behind your back. Recordings become sources; sources produce suggestions; you decide what, if anything, becomes part of the book.

A podcast host at a microphone, a speaker at a lectern and an author editing pages at a desk, joined by a flowing golden sound wave — Recorded conversations, talks and lectures all enter the same workflow: transcribe, review, then shape into book material.

Before you start↑

Work inside an existing book. The recordings workflow always attaches to one of your books, so your genre, plan and manuscript stay exactly as they are. If you do not have a book yet, create one first, then come back to the Dictate tab.

Have your audio files on the device you are using, in a common format such as MP3, M4A, WAV or WebM.
Know roughly how long each recording is - allowances are measured in minutes of audio.
If other people speak on the recordings, be ready to say who they are before any direct quotation is used.

1. Upload your recordings↑

Open the book you want to work in and go to the Dictate tab.
Select Upload. A short dialog asks "What would you like to upload?"
Choose Audio recordings - described as "Turn podcasts, interviews, talks or other recordings into material for this book" - rather than An existing manuscript, which imports a document you have already written.
You arrive at Upload recordings, step 1 of the recordings workflow. Select Choose audio files to use your device's file picker, or drag and drop files onto the card. You can select more than one file at a time.
Each file appears in a list showing its name, duration and size, with a live status badge as it uploads. A summary line above the list shows how much of your upload allowance remains. Use Add more files to extend the selection, the remove icon to take a file out, and Retry if a single upload fails.

If a selection would exceed your allowance, an amber warning explains whether the problem is total minutes or the number of files, and asks you to remove some files before continuing. Pro accounts also see a Buy More Storage option at that point.

2. Complete the wizard↑

Uploading is step one of a seven-step workflow. Each step autosaves, and Continue later returns you to your library without losing progress.

Upload recordings - the screen above.
About your recordings - a short note about what you just uploaded. It shapes the workflow only; it does not change your book's genre or plan.
Review voices - "Who spoke on each recording?" Confirm who said what, which matters before any direct quotation is used.
Discover your book - up to three book concepts drawn from what you actually recorded. Pick one or ask for another set, then approve.
Shape the book - a chapter spine built from what you have and what is still missing, which you approve.
Choose voice and draft - decide how much shaping to apply, then draft a chapter at a time.
Review and continue - a readiness checklist plus counts of contributors, permissions and manuscript blocks.

3. Wait for processing to finish↑

Transcription, segmentation and source analysis all run after upload. The Discover your book step stays disabled until your recordings have finished processing, because concepts are drawn from the transcripts rather than from file names. Larger files simply take longer; you can leave the wizard and return.

What the completion screen actually says

At Review and continue you see: "Your recordings are now part of your book. Your recordings have been added to Manage Sources," followed by either a note that themes and planning suggestions are ready to review in the Plan tab, or an invitation to rerun the analysis. Three buttons follow - Review Plan, Manage Sources and Continue to Edit.

4. Work in Manage Sources↑

Open your book, go to the Edit tab and find the Manage Sources card. It lists everything attached to the book: dictations, uploaded audio, podcasts and imported text. A dropdown at the top lets you select one source, or All sources.

With a single source selected, the controls do distinct things:

View transcript - read the source exactly as transcribed. The transcript itself is never rewritten.
View themes - the themes and ideas analysis found in that source.
Review import wizard - jump back into the recordings workflow for that source.
Add verbatim as chapter - creates a new chapter containing the unedited transcript. Existing chapters are untouched.
Add a note - your own private note against the source.
Pin or attach to a chapter - keep the source visible against the part of the book it belongs to.
Send to Plan - surface the pinned source in your Plan tab as reference material.

The source you select here is also the one Ask Your Book Pro uses when you choose "Current source".

5. Review planning suggestions↑

In the Plan tab, suggestions arrive in a card titled Planning suggestions from your sources, with the reminder that nothing is added to your plan until you choose. Each suggestion shows Your plan now beside Proposed, plus which sources it came from. Four actions are available per suggestion:

Add - append the proposed text to that plan section.
Merge - combine the proposal with what you have already written.
Replace - overwrite the section. You are asked to confirm first, because your previous wording is not kept.
Dismiss - remove that suggestion from the list.

Accept all safe additions applies only the suggestions that do not overwrite anything you wrote, and reports anything it skipped. If you edited a plan section after the suggestions were prepared, you get a "Your plan has changed" prompt rather than a silent overwrite. Your manual plan writing is protected throughout.

6. Draft a summary or new prose in your voice↑

Verbatim transcript is rarely the book. To create new prose from a recording, use Ask Your Book Pro in the Edit tab.

Set the outcome selector to Create manuscript text.
Set the scope selector to Current source (the one picked in Manage Sources), Choose sources to tick several, or All sources.
Write your request - for example, "Summarise the central ideas from this recording in my authorial voice."
Review the draft. It is labelled Draft - nothing has been added yet, with a word count, the voice used, and a From your sources panel listing the passages behind it and why each was used.
Edit the generated title and text directly before doing anything else.
Choose Add as a new chapter or append to an existing chapter from the dropdown.
Select Review and add and confirm. A version of your manuscript is saved first, so the insertion can be undone.

What stays under your control↑

Transcripts are never rewritten in place.
Nothing is written to your Plan or manuscript without an explicit action from you.
Overwrites are always confirmed, and your manuscript is versioned before insertion.
Approved material keeps its provenance, so you can trace a passage back to the recording it came from.

Upload allowances↑

Basic: 15 minutes of uploaded audio in total.
Pro: 10 files and 600 minutes in total, up to one hour per file.
Dictation: audio recorded in the site recorder does not count against uploaded audio allowance.

The remaining allowance is always shown on the upload screen itself, so you never have to work it out from a pricing page.

Frequently asked questions↑

What audio files can I upload, and how long can they be?: Common recording formats work, including MP3, M4A, WAV, AAC, OGG and WebM, so exports from most podcast hosts, phones and voice recorders can be used directly. Each plan has an allowance for total uploaded minutes, and Pro also has a per-file length limit. Your remaining allowance is shown on the upload screen before you commit a file, and audio you record in the site recorder does not count towards the uploaded audio allowance.
Can Your Book Pro tell who is speaking on an interview recording?: Not automatically. There is no automatic speaker detection, so the wizard asks you to confirm who spoke on each recording and add contributors such as a host or a guest. You label attribution yourself, and you can reassign it later without re-transcribing the audio. This matters most before any direct quotation is used, because permission to quote, paraphrase, combine sources or export travels with each contributor.
How do I get chapter suggestions from my recordings?: Once transcription finishes, the wizard's shaping stage reads your sources and proposes a possible structure, and the Plan tab then shows those suggestions as proposals linked back to the passages they came from. Nothing is added to your plan or manuscript until you accept it. You can open the underlying source passage for any suggestion, accept, edit or skip it, and any conflict or drift from your existing plan is reported rather than applied silently.

Start with what you have already said↑

The hardest part of a book is usually finding the material. If you have been speaking about your subject for years, that part may already be done. This workflow simply gives it structure, and leaves the judgement with you.