The simple recording interface of HearThis is a great idea. I’ve seen people who would like to use it for non-Scripture texts.
Steve, thanks for the suggestion. You might recommend that people consider if recording in Bloom would meet their need. Bloom takes the same simple approach to recording as HearThis. It doesn’t have the same publishing options, however… currently Bloom assumes you want a talking epub, Reading App Builder, or (soon) Bloom Reader app. But if there were call for it, we could give you the option of just generating a single mp3 of the whole book.
Presumably Bloom does not automatic pulling the data out of these Paratext “extra” books though. If this is the “recommended” approach, I think we need to make sure it is a reasonable “end-to-end” solution and write up some procedures to help people do it.