This One Weird Trick for Getting Free Audio Editions of Your Favorite E-Books

"Alexa, read Cryptonomicon from my Kindle library."

It's not a hidden feature or anything, and it's far from perfect, but I hardly ever hear it mentioned. So I'm mentioning it.

Some of the down sides:

• Depending on formatting (it doesn't seem to happen with every e-book), you may end up listening to Alexa read long tables of contents, etc.
• Don't count on it to reproduce the proper meter/scansion/rhythm/emphasis in poetry.
• Inline footnotes get read, which tends to interrupt the actual work (I have an e-edition of Dante's Divine Comedy which seems to be mostly footnotes).
• There are going to be occasional mispronunciations, e.g. /laɪv/ when "lives" should be /lɪv/. But not as often as one might expect. It does a fair job.
• I was disappointed when I said "Alexa, ask Samuel L. Jackson to read Moby Dick from my Kindle library," and Jackson's voice only introduced the book before it reverted to the default Alexa voice. I could really dig having Samuel L. Jackson read some of my favorites.
• So far as I can tell, there's no way to navigate by voice command, e.g. "Alexa, go back one page," or "Alexa, start reading at page 43." Since I usually have Alexa read me to sleep when I have "her" read to me at all, I have to get on my Kindle or the computer app and navigate to the place I want her to re-start at.
• Captain Obvious reminded me to tell you that you have to have the book in Amazon Kindle format. Alexa's not going to read a paperback to you.

The BIG up side is that if you have an Echo Dot (or other Alexa-enabled device), and if you've already bought the Kindle version of a book, you don't have to pay extra to get an audio version from Audible or Chirp.

For straight modern fiction without a bunch of footnotes, it works quite well. The default Alexa voice is pleasant, and the reading pace/speed is reasonable -- not so fast that you can't understand it, not so slow that things drag.

You're welcome.