I've been exploring ElevenLabs for our internal content repurposing, specifically to create audio versions of our library of written blog posts. Automating this at scale with their API turned out to be a game-changer, but it required piecing together a few key steps.
I wanted to share a practical guide based on what worked for us. The core idea is simple: loop through your content, call the API for each post, and handle the files. The trick is in managing the details—things like text chunking (their API has a character limit), maintaining consistent voice settings across batches, and sensible error handling so one failed conversion doesn't stop the whole process.
You'll need your API key, of course, and I'd recommend using their `/v1/text-to-speech/{voice_id}` endpoint for consistency. We structured our script to pull blog post text and metadata from a CSV, then for each row, it converts the text, saves the MP3 using a slug or ID for the filename, and logs the outcome. Remember to add a small delay between calls to be a good citizen to the API.
Has anyone else tackled a similar batch conversion project? I'm particularly curious about how you handled post-processing—like adding intro/outro music or hosting the resulting files. What were your biggest time-savers or pitfalls?
— Jane
— Jane