How to make an animated audiobook

An animated audiobook is the full text of a story read aloud while its scenes play out as animation: a narrator reads the prose, and each character speaks their own lines on screen. To make one, paste a chapter or short story into Nima's Long-form Video with the narrator switched on. It keeps every word, draws the cast once so the faces hold for the whole running time, and films about 150 words a minute, up to 10,000 words an upload.

Your first trailer is free.

Last updated 8 October 2026

What makes it an audiobook and not a film

A film adapts. It cuts description, merges characters and rewrites dialogue. An animated audiobook does none of that: the listener hears the book as written, and the picture shows what the words describe.

The film above is Conan Doyle's The Red-Headed League made this way. Watson narrates, because Watson narrates the story. Holmes and Jabez Wilson speak their own lines with their mouths in sync. Nothing was added.

The numbers

Narrated film runs at about 150 words a minute. Our Red-Headed League is about 9,000 words and runs an hour. Chapter one of Little Women runs 25 minutes.

Films are made on a monthly plan metered in minutes of finished film, from as low as $10 per finished minute. A longer book is made as episodes, one upload each. That suits YouTube anyway: we cut our own into episodes of 10 to 20 minutes.

How to make one

1. Paste your pages. Open Long-form Video and paste the scene, chapter or short story you want filmed, between 150 and 10,000 words. Nima reads it, maps the scenes, the cast and the places, and asks before it cuts anything.
2. Pick a look. Detailed claymation, felted wool, comic book ink, acid pencil, which is coloured pencil, or paper love, which is cut paper. Nima can draw your lead character and your main location in all five so you compare them side by side.
3. Approve the cast and the places. Every character is drawn once, from the descriptions in your text, and every location is built once as a set. Leave a note on any picture and Nima redraws it.
4. Pick the voices. Each speaking character gets five voice auditions, each one reading a line from your book. Choose the one that sounds like the person you wrote.
5. Watch your free trailer. Nima cuts a trailer of 15 to 20 seconds from your text: several of its places and people, two or more of your lines spoken word for word, music under it, your title at the end. You see it first as a storyboard with the voices, give one round of notes, then start a free 7-day trial and it is fully animated. Nima emails you when it is ready.
6. Make the film, if you want more. Pick a plan, metered in minutes of finished film, and Nima films the text scene by scene. You review a full draft with the voices, leave notes in each round your plan includes, then approve the render. The finished film is yours to download and share with a link.

For an audiobook, two choices matter more than the rest. Keep the narrator on, so the prose is read and not only the speech. And take your time over the narrator's voice: it is the one the listener hears most. In a first-person book the narrator is a character, and Nima casts them that way.

What holds a long one together

A trailer can get away with almost anything for 60 seconds. Half an hour cannot. Three things keep a long film coherent, and they are worth checking in your draft:

• The faces. Each character is drawn once and that drawing is used in every shot, so nobody changes between chapter one and chapter three.
• The rooms. Each location is built once and every camera angle is taken from it, so the fireplace stays on the same wall.
• The things. Objects the story turns on, a letter, a ring, a portrait, get their own drawing and stay the same object throughout.

You see new characters as they arrive, before the part of the film that uses them is made, and you review the whole draft with its voices before anything is rendered.

Before you start

You need the right to adapt the text. Your own book qualifies, and so does anything in the public domain. If a publisher holds your film or audio-visual rights, ask them before you post a trailer.

If you have sold audio rights to your book, check your contract before making a version in which the full text is read aloud.