I've been noticing more and more sites (mostly news sites) are allowing their readers to listen to the article by clicking on a play button at the top. Most of these sound like computer-generated voice, but high quality. I've even found some that do the same with stories, sometimes using recorded audio of someone reading, such as this one:

etc.usf.edu/lit2go/32/the-adventures-of-sherlock-holmes/352/adventure-8-the-adventure-of-the-speckled-band/

I've long wanted to do something like this for 5earths.info and 5earths.com, but my experiments in recording myself reading stories have been mixed at best. I like reading to my kids, but I think it would take far too long to edit out all the mistakes I make.

There's computer-generated voices, but the ones that actually sound good cost money. If it was a relatively small one-time fee it wouldn't be so bad, but a lot of them tend to want you to subscribe for a monthly fee! (No thanks!)

So I'm still looking for a good solution that doesn't cost much or anything.

Meanwhile, I would also need a good place to host audio files for next to nothing as well, even if advertising is involved. Do any of you know any sites for hosting audio files that I could play on the website?