A news publisher’s guide to getting started with Everlit for AI-powered text-to-audio

Everlit, an AI text-to-audio tool made with publishers in mind, allows news organizations to easily convert their text articles into audio tracks, expanding accessibility and revenue opportunities.  

The tool can quickly adjust to developing story updates , and publishers can train the AI that does text-to-audio conversion on the desired pronunciation of words or other colloquialisms.

Once articles are turned into audio, news organizations can also use the tool to monetize the audio through ad placements and distributing the audio to social media and podcasting services.

Keep reading for more information about Everlit’s capabilities and onboarding process.

Step 1: Inquire to get signed up

To get started with Everlit, use the website’s inquiry form. A member of their team will reach out to start the account creation process.

There is a free tier that allows five articles converted into audio a month, but that plan does not allow publishers to place pre-, mid- and post-roll advertisements. 

Paid tiers of Everlit start at $125 a month, which allows converting an unlimited number of articles to audio. Pricing goes up depending on the sophistication of features and the number of publications a publisher has. Contracts can be paid monthly or annually, and there is enterprise pricing for large organizations with multiple newsrooms.

Everlit also offers a partner discount for Newspack publishers.

Step 2: Get connected

WordPress and Newspack publishers will benefit from using Everlit’s plugin to get connected to the tool. The tool also offers universal CMS support for Arc, Naviga, BrightSpot, HubSpot, Contentful and other content management systems. 

Using Everlit’s Auto Audio feature, audio will be automatically generated for every story. But publishers don’t have to convert all articles to audio — and if they are on the free tier, may not want to — so turning off Auto Audio and manually choosing which stories are converted is also an option.

Step 3: Navigate Everlit Studio

After your CMS is connected, Everlit Studio is the place to control your experience with the tool and see analytics. From here, you can access and tweak the following:

• The main dashboard will display metrics including views, plays, time listened, click through rate, device breakdown, latest articles, etc.
• Articles: Displays a list of all the articles that have been converted to audio.
• Playlists: Custom-built playlists for audio you’d like organized into playlists.
• Smart Playlists: Everlit can analyze its audio from your text and organize the articles into playlists on related topics.
• Media & Pronunciation (Library): This tool that allows editors to tweak the pronunciation of certain words in over 30 different languages.
• Socials: Management of sharing audio articles.
• Distribution: Channels where your audio files are distributed and displayed, whether it be your own newsroom, or a podcasting platform.
• Auto Audio: Tools for automatically generating audio for published or scheduled text articles.

Step 4: Customize your audience’s experience

Everlit allows news publishers to customize the audio player that appears in articles as well as the voice that audiences hear when they play an article. The players can appear with an image to enhance interest.

In our case study on The Texas Tribune, the organization decided to include an AI disclaimer as part of their audio player. This text appears under the player and links to the newsroom’s AI policy and a feedback form. The Tribune also includes a pre-recorded message that indicates to listeners the audio was generated by AI.

We also suggest spending some time in the Pronunciation Library to ensure certain words are pronounced correctly for your local audience.

Step 5: Monetize audio articles

Paying Everlit users can generate revenue through direct sales or through programmatic ads (via Google Ad Manager). In either case, the news organization has full control over where ads surface in the audio file (beginning, middle or end) and users can easily exclude or include articles for ads with taxonomy, category or tags.

Direct sales: 

• Here you can organize partnerships with brands directly while setting CPM rates. 
• There are pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll placement options, which is convenient depending on your audience and content type.
• You can also integrate sponsored content images for additional representation.
• Everlit also allows for campaign scheduling and targeting. 

Programmatic ads:

• Everlit supports automated ad delivery through Google Ad Manager (GAM).
• Real-time bidding optimization for dynamic ad campaigns.
• Has optimization features for various advertising budgets. 

These monetization controls are not available on Everlit’s free tier.

Step 6: Distribute to more platforms

Besides hosting text-to-audio articles on a newsroom’s website, Everlit allows publishers to export audio files to podcasting services. Using the Distribution option, newsroom organizations can make the audio version available to new audiences on the following platforms:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Pocket Casts
• RSS feeds

Audio can also be transformed into video for social channels. This includes platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and X.

Is Everlit right for your newsroom?

Everlit has proven to be a good fit for newsrooms because its platform gives publishers the controls they need to fully manage the audience’s experience while relying on automation to minimize effort needed to convert text to audio.

Thanks to its low point of entry (a free tier that includes 5 conversions a month), Everlit could be a good fit for small as well as large publishers. Paid features, like the ones used to monetize the audio, still require dedicated staffing support and budget to get the most use out of the tool. 

Publishers have also indicated that Everlit is responsive to feature requests.

Choose Everlit if you:

• Need a total text-to-audio workflow solution that will generate audio as well as automate next steps that can lead to monetization, distribution on other platforms or creation of playlists.
• Want to convert text articles into audio without relying on humans to read and record the audio.
• If you’re looking for a text-to-audio tool that will automatically update the audio to reflect changes in developing news situations.
• If you value the ability to customize audio players with links to internal policies or forms to give readers full transparency. 

Consider alternatives if you: 

• Tend to mostly publish listicles or bite-size articles, which is not the ideal use of Everlit’s tool, the company says.   
• Need humans to voice the audio. 
• Don’t have a compatible CMS. 
• If you’re looking for a tool that offers metered-use or pay-per-article conversion.

Pro tips and known issues

• If you hear a pronunciation of a word that you’d like to change, hop into the Pronunciation Library. Everlit also updates existing articles with the new pronunciation, so you can set it and forget it.
• Use the analytics tool to find out more about audience behavior. If audiences are listening more through articles on desktop and less on mobile, you can make decisions on audio placement. In the case of The Texas Tribune, all audio articles were moved to the top of the article page, even before any text was seen, maximizing visibility on different platform/device types. 
• Everlit supports multiple login methods for ease-of-use, including: custom username login, Microsoft and Google SSO methods. 
• You must contact Everlit directly to get a quote and get started, which means you can’t sign up at a moment’s notice from their website. 

Alternatives to Everlit for text-to-audio conversion

While Everlit does not appear to have many direct competitors, Trinity Audio seems to be the most similar. We’ve also included Amazon Polly and ElevenLab’s Audio Native, which have the ability to convert text-to-audio at scale, but don’t offer many of the features that make Everlit a more comprehensive solution for news publishing. 

• Trinity Audio is a text-to-speech conversion tool that also uses AI to convert articles between formats. The tool  touts the ability to convert in more languages than Everlit. Pricing for its least expensive plan starts at $6.50 a month for 5 articles, but also uses credits which may be confusing if you end up needing to re-convert a story due to a development. Trinity also charges more for the ability to customize the audio player and other monetization features.
• Amazon Polly is an Amazon Web Services offering that allows organizations to deploy text-to-speech conversions. Cost is based on a pay-as-you-go model, which means the more text you convert, the more expensive it gets. Amazon Polly offers self-sign-up, distribution in easy-to-read file formats (e.g. MP3, OGG),  and supports SSML, a W3B standard XML-based makeup language used for speech synthesis. This allows for SSML tags that allow the organization to control emphasis, intonation, and phrasing. It also means development support is likely necessary.
• ElevenLabs‘ text-to-audio tool that’s most like Everlit is called Audio Native. While ElevenLabs offers many other AI audio features, the tool isn’t designed to seamlessly integrate into a news publisher workflow. The company’s standards for creation also may not align with journalistic standards. 

Help Desk Product Director Leah Becerra contributed to this report. 

• Category: Getting Started Guides
• Tag: AI, Everlit, text-to-audio