Creating a Rough Audio Book

As I was in the process of finishing the final edits of my book I began to think how great it would be if I could find a way to convert the text of my book into an audio file, using one of the default text-to-speak programs on my Mac. Well, lo-and-behold, it IS possible via the friendly 'Automator' application. Here are the steps I used:

1. I opened my Word document in TextEdit.
2. Removed the table of contents and other non-useful copy that I didn't want to listen to.
3. Opened Automator from my Applications folder.
4. Chose the 'Workflow' template.
5. In Automator, in the left-side menu, under 'Library' I selected 'Text'
6. In the menu that appears just to the right, I selected 'Get Contents of TextEdit Document' and dragged it onto the workflow area (to the right).
7. Back in the same menu I selected 'Text to Audio File' and dragged it onto the same workflow area, just below the first one.
8. Over on the workflow area, in the 'Text to Audio File' section I entered the name I wanted ('draft_01') into the 'Save As:' field
9. Last I clicked on the 'Run' button at the top right, and the Automator created an audio file of all of my text.

Voilà!....instant audio book that you can listen to 'on the go.'