Reviewer’s guide
How to review your audiobook
Your narrator has invited you to listen to your book as they record it. Sign in, press play, and highlight anything you want said differently. That is the whole job. Nothing you do here publishes anything, anywhere.
Five minutes to read once, and a page you will know your way around after the first chapter.
Before you start
One thing matters here, and it is the email address.
Sign in at audlit.com using the exact email address the invitation was sent to. If you sign up with a different address, the book will not appear and you will see a message saying the invite went somewhere else. Creating the account is free and takes a minute.
The invitation link expires seven days after it was sent. If yours has lapsed, ask your narrator to send it again; they can do that without losing anything.
Once you are in, you land straight on the review page for the book. There is nothing to set up and nothing to install.
What you are looking at
Three columns: the chapters, the script, and your comments.
The chapters run down the left side, numbered, with a word count under each title. The middle column is the script. The right side is where your comments collect.
The small marks beside a chapter title tell you its state:
| Mark | What it means |
|---|---|
| Green speaker | Audio is uploaded and ready to hear |
| “No audio” | Your narrator has not uploaded this chapter yet, so there is nothing to listen to |
| Blue download arrow | Saves that chapter’s MP3 to your computer |
| Green check | You have approved this chapter |
| Amber triangle | You have asked for changes on this chapter |
| Purple speech bubble | How many open comments the chapter has |
You do not need to work through the chapters in order, and you do not need to finish one in a sitting.
Listening to a chapter
The script follows the narration. You can also take the audio with you.
Press play and the script scrolls along with the narration, highlighting the line being read. You can stop reading along whenever you like; the audio keeps going.
The one thing nothing on screen tells you
Click any paragraph to jump the audio to that spot. It is the most useful thing on the page. Use it to re-hear a line without hunting along the progress bar.
If you would rather listen away from the computer, the small blue download arrow next to a chapter saves that chapter as an MP3. You can play it on a phone, in the car, anywhere. Come back to the page when you want to leave a comment.
There is also a light and dark reading mode, if the script is easier on your eyes one way or the other.
Telling the narrator something
Highlight the words, pick one of two buttons, type or talk.
Highlight the words you’d like to leave a comment on, and a small toolbar appears with two choices.
- Add Note for anything at all: a line that did not land, a pace that felt rushed, a word that came out wrong, a sentence you would like read again.
- Pronunciation for a name, a place, or a term you want said a particular way.
Both let you type, and both let you record your voice instead. For a name, say it out loud. A recording of you pronouncing a character’s name is worth far more to your narrator than any spelling you could write, and it takes five seconds.
Your comments collect in the panel on the right, where you can see everything you have left on the chapter so far. The narrator sees them on their end as you go; you do not send or submit anything.
Be as specific as you can bear to be. “This paragraph felt rushed” is useful. “Chapter 4 felt rushed” costs your narrator an afternoon of guessing.
Approving, or asking for changes
Two buttons, and neither of them publishes anything.
Each chapter has two buttons in the comments panel, and they are a message to your narrator rather than an action on the audio.
Approve tells them you are happy with that chapter. It does not publish anything, anywhere. Nothing goes to a retailer, a store, or a listener. It marks the chapter green on their screen so they know it is settled.
Request Changes opens a box for you to say what you want different, then marks the chapter amber. Your narrator gets an email with what you wrote, and sees it at the top of that chapter while they record. Use it for anything that needs another pass, however small. When they send new audio for the chapter, it goes back to unmarked for you to listen again.
You can leave a chapter at neither. An unmarked chapter simply means you have not reached a verdict, which is a perfectly good state for it to be in.
Things that look wrong and are not
The five that come up most.
Some chapters say “No audio.”
That is the normal state of a chapter your narrator has not uploaded yet. The script is there because the whole book’s text is loaded from the start; the audio arrives chapter by chapter.
You cannot mark your own comment as done.
That is deliberate and it is your narrator’s job. They work through your notes, re-record what needs it, and close each one off as they go. Leave them open and let them come back to you.
There is no Save button.
Everything you do is kept the moment you do it. You can close the tab mid-chapter and pick it up later.
The audio may differ slightly from the script.
A narrator reads the sentence, not the punctuation, and small differences are usually a choice rather than a mistake. Flag what sounds wrong to your ear and leave the rest.
The page is not public.
It needs your login, and only you and your narrator can see what you write there.
If something really is broken
Tell your narrator. They have a direct line to us.
Tell your narrator, in whatever way you normally reach them, and say three things: which chapter, what you were doing, and what happened instead. A screenshot settles most of it in one go.
Worth reporting rather than working around:
- The book does not appear at all after you sign in
- A chapter shows a green speaker but will not play
- Clicking a paragraph does not move the audio
- A comment you left is gone when you come back
Your narrator can pass any of that straight to AudLit. You do not need an account anywhere else or a support ticket.