Spoken v1.10 Release Notes: Studio Reimagined

A Complete Passage Editor Overhaul. Precision Controls. Total Creative Authority.

Without question, Spoken v1.10 is one of the most transformative Studio updates we've ever released.

This is a complete structural redesign of how you interact with your manuscript, your voices, your audio — and now, your professional production ecosystem.

From a fully reimagined Passage Editor to Lexicon elevated into its own dedicated production step, complete audio version history (undo), intelligent split and join behavior, visual drag-to-set padding, a refined three-tier voice casting system, and the introduction of our new Producers tab — Studio just leveled up in a serious way.

Welcome to the new Spoken Studio. And while this release will feel monumental to anyone who works with digital narration… just wait for what’s coming next.

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The All-New Passage Editor & Studio Interface

Studio’s Passages tab has been completely redesigned from the ground up.

Your manuscript now appears with the visual integrity of a true writing workspace — familiar, fluid, and readable — while preserving Spoken’s powerful passage-level control system underneath.

What’s New:

• Full manuscript continuity view — your story reads naturally, like it would in your writing platform.

• Color-coded padding indicators remain, but are now integrated seamlessly into the layout by way of Padding blocks beside the text.

• Passages requiring narration display subtle black underline indicators on the Padding icons and low-opacity text.

• Narrated passages appear in full dark type for immediate visual confirmation.

• Integrated audio player per passage with:

• Visible MP3 length

• Scrubbable waveform control

• Instant proofing and precision playback

Editing is faster. Proofing is cleaner. The text-to-audio workflow is truly seamless.

Spoken is your browser-based narration production studio.

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Passage History & True Audio Undo

You asked for it. We built it.

Every change made to a passage now stores its prior MP3 versions in Passage History.

You can now:

• Revert to any prior audio take

• Experiment freely without fear

• Restore a previous performance with confirmation

“Change the audio file of this passage to the version from 1/28/2026?”

Refinement is no longer destructive. It’s creative.

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Lexicon Is Now Its Own Dedicated Studio Step

Lexicon has been elevated into a full Studio tab.

Before you ever reach passage editing, you now have global control over:

• Difficult names

• Unusual spellings

• Fantasy terminology

• Tricky phonetics

The refined Lexicon system identifies and isolates the words that truly need attention, giving you manuscript-wide pronunciation control at the highest level, long before you ever reach your passages.

This is Spoken doubling down on helping authors prepare their story for the best possible digital narration result — while honoring exactly how they wrote it.

Visual Padding Control — Drag. Set. Done.

The milliseconds of pause before a passage begins are now represented as a visual, color-coded block beside the passage — aligned to the speaking character.

You can now:

• Click

• Drag

• Adjust padding in real time

Timing is now instant and tactile. No manual updating after padding changes is needed.

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Precision Playback

Editing audio inside Studio now feels dramatically more tactile.

Every narrated passage now includes an integrated waveform player directly inside the Passage Editor. You can see the exact duration of the generated MP3, scrub through the waveform with precision, and instantly review specific moments without replaying the entire passage.

Experiment with delivery. Compare takes.

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Smarter Split & Join Behavior

Editing passages is now intelligent, intentional, and safe.

Split Behavior:

When splitting a passage, you can choose:

• New passage, same paragraph

• New paragraph

If you create a blank passage at the beginning or end, the original passage remains untouched — and will not be marked for re-narration if it already has audio.

If you split within text, you’ll be guided through whether you want structural separation or paragraph distinction.

Join Behavior:

Joining passages now behaves contextually:

• Joining paragraphs keeps passages intact and preserves MP3 histories.

• Merging two passages into one requires confirmation and re-narration — clearly stated before proceeding.

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Three-Tier Voice Selection System

Voice selection in Studio has been completely clarified and streamlined into three distinct paths:

Custom Voice

• Prompt-based discovery

• Three sample generation

• Search your existing custom voices

Voice Actor Voice

• Standard finder tools

• Enhanced vector “Best Match” suggestions

My Voice

• Use My Personal Voice Clone

• Create My Personal Voice Clone

• Manage My Personal Voice Clone

  Voice casting is now cleaner, clearer, and faster.

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Click-to-Profile Character Navigation

Clicking a character name at the top of the Passages tab now opens that character’s voice profile directly.

No more jumping to the Voices tab and searching manually.

Character-to-voice relationship is now immediate and fluid.

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Installment-Level Speed Control — Review Faster

When proofing an entire installment, you can now adjust playback speed on the fly.

Speed up narration to review structure and flow.
Slow it down to inspect tone and pacing.

For long-form authors especially, this dramatically reduces proofing time and keeps you inside your workflow.

“Want Help?” — Professional Support, Built Into Spoken

With the launch of the Spoken Dashboard, we opened our official Producer Submission Page, inviting experienced audio professionals to apply to become part of the Spoken Producers Network.

Spoken Producers receive access to advanced tooling inside the Dashboard and are certified in working within Spoken Studio, ensuring they understand the platform deeply and can elevate projects with precision.

Now, that ecosystem connects directly to authors.

Inside the Create page, you’ll now see a new “Want Help?” button.

For authors who:

• Feel stuck at any stage

• Don’t have time to complete production

• Want a truly professional ear on their project

You can click Want Help? and browse a curated list of Spoken-certified Producers.

These are qualified experts inside Spoken Studio — professionals who understand digital narration, pacing, voice direction, proofing, and final preparation for distribution. Authors can review, inquire, and engage directly based on their project’s needs.

What This Means for Existing Projects

All previously created projects will remain structurally intact.

Your passages will continue to appear separated passage-by-passage, just as they were originally built, now enhanced with the new visual padding controls.

Nothing about your existing narration structure is being rewritten or merged automatically.

For new projects created in v1.10, paragraph integrity is preserved from the start, allowing your manuscript to flow more naturally while still maintaining passage-level control.

In short:

Your past work is safe.

Your new work is more fluid.

And you’re in control of how either one evolves.

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The Bigger Picture

Spoken v1.10 is the next chapter of Studio experience. We’ve brought new life to how you interact with:

• Your pacing

• Your pronunciation

• Your structural formatting

• Your voice casting

• Your audio revisions

• Your manuscript integrity

It’s a refresh and re-engineering of how Studio feels in your hands.

Spoken has always believed the serious self-publishing author deserves professional-grade tools.

Welcome to the new Studio. You won’t believe what comes next…

Spoken v1.09 Release Notes: ePUB Support, AI Intelligence Upgrades & Workflow Acceleration

Industry-grade inputs. Smarter analysis. Faster paths to narration.

Stepping boldly into 2026, Spoken v1.09 introduces one of our most important upgrades to date: full ePUB support for manuscript uploads, alongside major intelligence and workflow enhancements across Studio.

This release closes the gap between professional publishing prep and audiobook production, giving authors a cleaner, more direct path from finished manuscript to narrated work.

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ePUB Manuscript Support — A Direct Path from Publishing to Narration

Spoken now supports ePUB files for manuscript upload.

This means your industry- and distribution-grade manuscript preparation can flow directly into Spoken — no reformatting, no manual restructuring, no special tags required.

With ePUB uploads:

• Chapters are automatically identified and structured

• The <INSTALLMENTMARKER> tag is no longer needed

• Non-narration elements (images, metadata, formatting artifacts) are intelligently removed

• Only the content required for narration moves forward

Your professionally prepared ePUB is now the cleanest, fastest, and most reliable way to bring a book into Spoken for narration.

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Smarter Studio — Intelligence at Every Step

Spoken Studio now operates with a significantly more advanced, context-aware intelligence system.

This upgrade enhances how Studio understands your work end to end — from story and character analysis to tone detection, pacing, emotional cue tagging, and even high-level “uber summaries” of your narrative.

These improvements touch nearly every part of the creative workflow.

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Selective Confabulation — Build Only What You Need

After uploading your manuscript and completing analysis, you can now select exactly which installments (chapters) you want to confabulate before moving into voice casting and narration.

Confabulate — the stage where Spoken parses your text, identifies characters, and prepares narration structure — is no longer all-or-nothing.

This gives you:

• Fine-grained control over how and when parts of your book are prepared

• A powerful workflow for serialized releases

• An easy way to create first-chapter teasers or samples

• Less manual work separating manuscripts upfront

You decide how your project unfolds — chapter by chapter, at your own pace.

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Improved Playback — Faster Proofing, Less Interruption

Installment-level playback has been significantly improved.

Previously, if narration was in progress anywhere in your project, playback could be blocked across the board. Now, if narration is happening outside the installment you’re viewing, you can still preview and proof your content freely.

This makes review faster, smoother, and far less disruptive — especially in larger or more complex projects.

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Narrate Multiple Chapters at Once

For authors ready to move quickly, Spoken now allows you to initiate narration for multiple installments in parallel.

This means:

• Faster overall production

• Less waiting between chapters

• A smoother path from draft to publish

Perfect for ambitious authors looking to complete and release their work efficiently.

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Closing Credits — Distribution-Ready by Default

Every Spoken project now automatically ends with a static Closing Credits installment.

This clearly signals the end of the work and provides a dedicated chapter MP3 required to pass quality control for several digital narration distributors.

Getting your audiobook everywhere it needs to go — cleanly, correctly, and without friction — remains one of Spoken’s highest priorities.

Listen to this example of our new Closing Credits

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Looking Ahead

Spoken v1.09 is about meeting you where you are — with smarter systems, more flexible inputs, and fewer blockers along the way.

Spoken in 2026 is faster, more intelligent, and more author-driven than ever before.
And this is just the beginning.

We’re kicking off the new year in a BIG way with “YOUR STORY”

And our friends at Author Nation and Reader Nation are helping us! 

You're invited to kick off 2026 with a unique opportunity to bring your story, and your voice(s), to life through "Your Story," a first-of-its-kind audiobook storytelling competition that celebrates not only great writing and audio, but the heart, purpose, and personal journey behind it. 

We’ve teamed up with Author Nation and Reader Nation to give indie authors a platform to reach new audiences and be celebrated not only for their craft, but for the personal “why” behind each story.

The top 10 contest entries will be streamed on our YouTube channel where Reader Nation readers will vote for the grand prize winner! 

Why are we doing this? 

Our collaboration with Author Nation is a response to industry trends and anticipated audiobook market explosion in 2026. 

WE’RE NOT JUST LOOKING FOR GREAT STORIES 

(+ GREAT DIGITAL NARRATION)

We’re looking for the story behind the story and why it mattered enough for you to make it -- and we've got some BIG PRIZES to celebrate that! 

Using Spoken Studio, narrate and submit a short audio work (under 10,000 words) using single, multi-voice or duet digital narration, along with a brief author commentary that explains the spark and the personal truth behind it.

”Audio is the fastest-growing segment of the publishing industry. So when the Spoken team came to us with this idea, we thought it was a great way to usher in the new year.” 

– Joe Solari, co-producer of Author Nation and Reader Nation 

“This is a perfect time for authors to build creative momentum, and the contest helps expand visibility. And with our invitation to Reader Nation participants to vote, this is another way to reach a captive audience of readers.” 

– Suze Solari, co-producer of Author Nation and Reader Nation

A growing number of indie authors are narrating full-length audiobooks, as well as shorter works, including teasers. Some stick with single narration, while others are casting voices for every character and exploring duet narration, as well as cloning their personal voice. "Your Story" celebrates the writers who are embracing storytelling in new and exciting ways through Spoken.  

“This isn’t just about a great story. It’s about why you are the only person who could have brought it to life,” 

– Spoken CEO and sci-fi author Phil Marshall  

“Your Story” puts voice, connection, and authenticity at the center of the audiobook experience. Projects will be evaluated on the story itself, the performance, and the personal story behind it.  Authors are invited to submit a short work (less than 10,000 words, such as a short story or the beginning of a novel) narrated on Spoken, along with a personal commentary that gives readers a deeper understanding of the story behind the story, and the person writing it. 

Submissions are open January 12 - February 20, 2026

Entries will be reviewed by a panel of distinguished indie author judges and narrowed down to 10 finalists. The finalists will be featured on a dedicated YouTube playlist hosted by Spoken, with the readers of Reader Nation invited to vote for their favorite story in March.

The Grand Prize winner will receive:

• Fully-produced YouTube audiobook

• Cinematic book trailer 

• Post-contest interview

• Free promotion of their story on YouTube

• Ticket to Author Nation 2026 

• VIP ticket to Reader Nation 2026

• One year of a Spoken subscription

All finalists will receive free Spoken publishing credits (100,000 words), featured placement in Author/Reader Nation and Spoken newsletters, and an invitation as a panelist on an exclusive Winner Webinar hosted by Spoken and Author/Reader Nation on March 25. 

More details can be found at www.spoken.press/yourstory.

As always, thanks for being part of our story. And thanks for inviting us to bring yours to life.

The Spoken Team