OutaStory can narrate a story chapter by chapter with synthetic
voices. When you press play on a chapter, that narration is what you
hear — no human reader is involved, unless the author has
commissioned one.
Not every story has audio — and that's normal
This is the single most common misunderstanding, so let's be clear:
narration is not automatic. Publishing a story does not narrate
it. The author has to ask for narration, and many authors never
do. If a story has no play button, nothing is broken and nothing is
queued — the author simply hasn't added audio.
Narration also can't be produced for a draft. The story has to be
published first.
Who picks the voice
The author chooses the voice, and that voice is used for the whole
story. As a reader you can't substitute a different one.
An author can create more than one narration version, and when they
have, you can switch between the versions they made — see
Voices and audio versions.
There is no separate voice tier for Premium listeners. Everyone
hears the same narration; Premium changes other things, not the voice.
How long it takes
Narration is generated in the background and takes several minutes
per chapter, longer for a long chapter or a long story. A story is
readable the whole time; the audio simply appears when it's ready.
When a story's audio disappears for a while
If an author regenerates a narration, the existing audio is deleted
first — the old version does not stay available while the new one
builds. So a story you were listening to can briefly have no audio.
Give it a few minutes and check again.
Editing a chapter's text does not silently re-narrate it.
Something sounds wrong
See When audio sounds wrong
for what to try. If a file is genuinely broken, open a
support ticket with the address of the chapter.