Amazon Kindle

Hi, I'm probably one of the only people who doesn't have an alexa, maybe I would if I could put my own music on it, instead of stream it, a lot of stuff I like is more rare, and not on streaming services. Anyway, I have kindle unlimited, and have bought kindle books often, do you have to have an alexa to use the alexa app to read books? It sounds intriguing to be able to read them this way, because in theory, I wouldn't have to keep my screen unlocked to listen to a book, and notification alerts wouldn't interrupt reading.
Thanks

No worries. I also don't have an Alexa device. You're definitely not the only one.
Regarding my situation, Alexa will read the content from the book just fine, but the problem is, whenever I want to speed up, or slow down the audio, I get this message. I don't see anywhere to adjust the speed manually.
This device doesn't support changes in playback speed.

Hey, quick update on this situation — I don’t know what’s going on with the Speak Screen feature being choppy on my phone, but I did manage to figure out one of the problems that’s been bugging me lately.

So with the Amazon Alexa app , I was trying to get it to read my books. I’m using the Alexa app on my iPhone, which actually seems like one of the most efficient methods out there. The problem I was having is that every time I told Alexa to speed up or slow down the text, I got this error message saying my device “does not support playback for speed.” I still don’t know what that even means — or why it happens at all. However — and this is important — when I turned on microphone permissions for the Alexa app, I was finally able to tell her to adjust the speed using my voice , and it worked. So the only explanation I can think of is that this feature is optimized more for Alexa as a physical device — like an Echo or something — and if you’re trying to use it from the app on your iPhone, you kind of have to treat your phone as if it’s the device. Which honestly makes no sense, because we should be able to manually adjust the speed in the app on iPhone, even without talking to it. But hey, at least I got that part working now, and I might stick with that method. I might also keep using the two-finger swipe-down method with VoiceOver — even though it’s slower than I’d like — just in case Speak Screen keeps glitching. Another problem I noticed: some books don’t support auto-scrolling. I don’t know why, but I think it has something to do with how Kindle Unlimited works. From what I understand, a lot of authors turn off features like auto-scroll because when you’re in KU, you’re basically getting the book for free — you pay monthly for the service, but the author only makes money based on how much of the book you actually read . And apparently, they only get paid once for a read-through. So like, if you go back and reread the book two or three times thinking you’re helping the author — nope, it doesn’t work that way. They only get paid for the first time . If you buy the book outright with a credit card or gift card or whatever, then yeah, that’s different — they get paid for that sale. But with Kindle Unlimited, it’s a one-time payment based on how many pages you read the first time around. So now here’s my question: I’m using Kindle Unlimited, and Alexa reads the books for me in the Alexa app. The app tells me it’s using the Kindle assisted Reader . And honestly, I love the voice that it’s using — it sounds really natural on my iPhone. I normally use the Samantha default voice as my system voice, but the one I hear when Alexa reads the book is different — much smoother. I’m wondering: is that voice the actual Alexa voice ? Because if it is, I’d love to use it directly in the Kindle app without switching to the Alexa app every time.
Right now, my workflow is kinda all over the place: I download books from Amazon, add them to my Kindle library, open the Alexa app to read them, and then return them from Kindle. But if there’s a way to get that same Alexa voice — or whatever voice the Alexa app is using to read — to work inside the Kindle app itself , that would simplify everything. I could stick to one app instead of bouncing around between two or three. So yeah — does anyone know if it’s the Alexa voice being used to read those Kindle Unlimited books in the Alexa app? And if so, is there a way to get that voice to work directly in the Kindle app too? Please let me know. Thanks.

That is the Alexa voice. And, as far as I can tell, you cannot have that play directly on the Kindle app. Which is sad, because you would think Amazon would design it, so that the assistive reader on the Kindle app, was what you get with an Alexa device, or the Alexa app. Sadly this is not the case.

I don't know. This entire thing is frustrating, and since they took away the auto scroll feature, voiceover can't read multiple pages back to back anymore. Makes no sense. This is why it's not working well for me. And, maybe it's my device, but the Kindle app keeps draining my battery.
It would be nice to be able to change the voice that reads on the Kindle app, or to get some third-party voices, just for the reading aspect

You can change the voice for the Assistive Reader that is built into the Kindle app. It’s kind of limited though. You may have already touched on this, I cannot remember, but if you go into settings, accessibility, spoken content, you can navigate down to the voice and change it to something else. The only downside is, I do not believe you can use the Siri voices right now, which is sad because those would be amazing with the built-in Assistive Reader.

Do you have any recommendations when it comes to voices? With this change—whether it’s replacing the primary Samantha default voice or adding to it—are there any of the iPhone voices you’d suggest? I don’t want to be forced into a decision that makes no sense. It’s frustrating that we can’t even use the Siri voices here. Like I mentioned, I have mostly been using the Samantha default voice over the years. I feel like we’ve had the same ones on the iPhone for what feels like forever. Most of them either sound stuffed up, like they have a cold, or like they’re trying too hard to sound robotic but still fall flat. I understand that part of this is because voices need to be practical and clear—I’m not asking for some dramatic, over-animated voice—but even the so-called “enhanced” versions don’t sound significantly better. Sometimes, I even feel like the default sounds better than the enhanced ones, which might be bias, but still. To me, all the voices seem more or less the same—just repackaged slightly differently. They’re flat, monotone, and not very expressive. Again, I get that some content needs to be read without emotion to avoid misinterpretation, but at the same time, voice quality should matter. Especially considering how much we’re paying for these devices—I mean, $1000+ phones—and yet the quality of speech output doesn’t always reflect that value. So yeah, if anyone knows of any third-party voices I can install, even if I’d have to pay for them, I’m open to it. I know I can’t change the VoiceOver voice for everything, but even if it’s for reading or content playback, I’d appreciate having a better set of options.

For the spoken content feature of iOS, I like Alex. Granted it’s my own personal preference, but even now I think this voice is particularly soothing when having to read a long document, such as an e-book.
At one point in iOS history, we could acquire Ivona voices for VoiceOver, but at some point Amazon took over Ivona TTS, and took away the ability to use it for iOS directly.
In a twist of fate, I believe the Alexa voices are based off of the Ivona speech engine.
Talk about going full circle. 😫

I put this in the thread about changing the voice for Kindle’s Reader, but figured I would mention it here as well. Just click the link below, should jump directly to the comment with the instructions.
https://applevis.com/comment/173455#comment-173455

I’ve got another question—kind of a follow-up to everything else I’ve been dealing with lately. So, I’ve been using the Alexa app to read my Kindle books (probably gonna keep doing that until this whole Speak Screen mess gets sorted out), but I’m running into a weird issue. When Alexa is reading the book, everything works fine—she reads at 2x speed just the way I like—but I can’t figure out how to tell her to skip forward or backward by a chapter or even 30 seconds or a minute. Is there a specific command for that? Because right now, if I want to go back to a chapter or section, I have to open the Kindle app, scroll to the chapter manually, then switch back to Alexa and hope she syncs to where I left it. Most times she does, but still—it’s clunky, and I feel like there should be a simpler way. Also, I’ve been at this for months now. I started back in January trying to find legit survey websites—ones that were accessible, didn’t ask for selfie or ID verification—just so I could earn enough to get a prepaid Visa gift card. It took me over a month to grind out 13,000 points to finally get one, and I used that to activate Kindle Unlimited. I was lucky to catch that two-month deal for $0.99, but now it’s Sunday, and I activated it on Thursday, and I still haven’t been able to comfortably read a single book. I mean, I can technically read with the two-finger swipe-down method on the Kindle app, and yes, that part works fine in terms of turning the pages smoothly. But the issue with that is the speech rate—, with the pauses, it’s way too slow, and I can’t adjust it easily the way I can with Alexa. So, I’m stuck between something that’s smooth but too slow, and something that’s the right speed but awkward to navigate. Honestly, if Apple had a proper book subscription service with the kind of titles Kindle Unlimited offers, I’d switch in a heartbeat. At least their setup is more consistent.
And another thing—when I signed up for Kindle Unlimited, I really thought I’d get access to Audible versions of the books too. Not all of them, obviously, but at least for the ones that do have audio versions available. But nope, unless I also have an Audible subscription, I can’t access them. All I get is a sample if it’s there at all, which kind of defeats the whole purpose. Amazon’s whole ecosystem is way too locked down, and it’s getting frustrating. All I want is to read without jumping through hoops. I don’t need the fancy formatting, I’m not worried about paragraph breaks or page numbers—I want the voice to read the page, pause briefly, flip, and keep going. That’s it. But even that feels like a struggle right now. Removing the auto scroll feature was a poor choice for me. So yeah, if anyone knows how to get Alexa to skip back a chapter or rewind by a set amount of time like 30 seconds or a minute—or even a reliable way to jump back at all—please let me know. I’m trying to make this work, but it feels like I’m constantly running into a wall for something that should be so simple.