A few recent threads have cropped up on audio books, and I realized that there wasn't really any substantive content here at AW about sources for audio books from a consumption perspective. So, I figured I'd take a crack at it.
The four big pitfalls or perils of audio books are the narrator voice, the financial cost, the time cost, and the source.
1. The Narrator
No doubt, a narrator can make or break a book. If it's a good book, the narrator can ruin it, and if it's an average book, a great narrator can really elevate the game.
2. The Finances
Audio books can range in price from free to upwards of $30-50 depending on where you get them from. Of course, as with anything, the more you pay, the better the odds of having a good experience. The problem then becomes one of budgeting. Many of the audio book services out there offer subscription services where you can limit your monthly spending because they give you a monthly allotment.
3. The Time
Depending on how much and how often you listen, it can take you a month, a week, or even just a day to listen to an audio book. The average audio book runs anywhere from 8-10 hours for a typical novel. Some of course are longer, and others are shorter (GOT for example was a 40 hour listen...so make sure you're okay with Roy Dotrice voice!)
All that said, when it comes down to it, you need to decide how much time, how much money, and what kind of quality you want from your listens.
4. The Source
The other factor that then comes in is where to get them from. You can just flat out buy them directly from providers like Apple, Amazon, or a myriad of sellers out there. These can get costly quickly though, so many resort to subscription services, so here's my short list of audio book subscription providers out there.
Audible
The elephant in the room, is of course, Audible. They apparently cover about 40% of the audiobook market though, which means there are some other options as well, but in general, they do have probably the most titles. While I have enjoyed a few books gifted to me through Audible, the membership options are limited and a bit pricey. There's several plans, and they break down as follows:
*Check here for changes or updates in pricing over time (remember, trust but verify)
I also really like their player. Like iTunes it continues to play in the background while I do other things like sift through email, or play a quick turn of Words with Friends. The user interface is nice and clean, and not a lot to decipher in here. It's just an easy experience.
Libraries
When my trial subscription from Audible ran out, I started going to my local libraries. Now, I have the particular fortune of having created accounts in every city I've ever lived in, and the local libraries have let me keep my accounts active despite my having moved out of state. (Ohio, Colorado, and now TN)> Of course, I never told them I was moving, so maybe I am gaming the system a bit.
But, libraries use apps like Overdrive for their player, or Libby, which sometimes will route you to Amazon and download the rented audio book to your Audible player!
This means adding another app to your smart phone, which is already screaming for more storage space from me, but I do use it to do a lot of other stuff like take reference photos, I store a LOT of music on there, and my email storage is, well gargantuan.
The problem with libraries is quite simply - inventory. They often don't have new releases, or if they do, the wait time can be really long. (Right now I am on a 4 week delay for a few popular audio books, but it's getting harder to wait as I want to get into another book without waiting a month!). So, I turned to some other sources out there.
Librivox*
I really like Librivox - their whole purpose is to create a library of works in the public domain. It's kind of a mixed bag for a reader, because you may find the book you want, but it's unlikely that just one narrator will be in your head. For an 8 hour listen, that could be kind of jarring to switch from one narrator to another abruptly and could really mess with the flow of the listening.
The only other caveat here is you need to provide your own player. They do not provide a player, just give you the zip file to download, which you then have to decompress or unzip and load the resulting MP3 files into a player of your choice. So, porting this on to a smart phone can be a bit of a challenge for the non-technically savvy folks out there.
But, you get it for free, quite literally, with no obligation. What more motivation do you need to sign up and at least give it a try?
ScribD
Very similar to Audible in the UI, and it's nice because there's another free trial period where I get unlimited play time before getting charged $10 (so 66% the cost of Audible, but I get unlimited access to their entire library. While they claim a library of more than 1 million ebooks and audio books, I am not sure what portion falls into the latter - could not find that broken down. But I already have found that some titles I am searching for are just not available there, which is unfortunate. But there are still plenty of titles here that may warrant keeping this as an option.
With the power of Google, I found two pretty decent summaries of the various options out there.
The rest of the players:
While I've not had a chance to peruse the rest of below, these others seem to be the remaining 50% of the audio book marketplace where there's any sort of substantial enough library. I think all have apps, but again, I've not explored them all yet. So, consider kicking the tires before committing to any of the below, as YMMV depending on what kind of UI and experience you are looking for.
Any others have their own experiences with audio book repositories they'd like to share, the more the merrier to this party! Thanks for taking the time to check this out, and let me know if you have any questions.
*Full disclosure, I am a contributing narrator to Librivox, so my personal subjective standards may have colored the option a bit above.
Finally, I put this post together after a bit of Google research, so you are free to Google and research on your own to find things however you like. To aid in that, the two sources where I found pretty much everything above (outside of what I'd found on my own of course), were these two articles:
https://www.technobuffalo.com/6-audiobook-site-alternatives-to-audible
https://modernmrsdarcy.com/audible-alternatives-audiobooks/
There is a bit of overlap between the two, and what I have done above, but hopefully this will serve as a good starting point for those looking to get started.
The four big pitfalls or perils of audio books are the narrator voice, the financial cost, the time cost, and the source.
1. The Narrator
No doubt, a narrator can make or break a book. If it's a good book, the narrator can ruin it, and if it's an average book, a great narrator can really elevate the game.
2. The Finances
Audio books can range in price from free to upwards of $30-50 depending on where you get them from. Of course, as with anything, the more you pay, the better the odds of having a good experience. The problem then becomes one of budgeting. Many of the audio book services out there offer subscription services where you can limit your monthly spending because they give you a monthly allotment.
3. The Time
Depending on how much and how often you listen, it can take you a month, a week, or even just a day to listen to an audio book. The average audio book runs anywhere from 8-10 hours for a typical novel. Some of course are longer, and others are shorter (GOT for example was a 40 hour listen...so make sure you're okay with Roy Dotrice voice!)
All that said, when it comes down to it, you need to decide how much time, how much money, and what kind of quality you want from your listens.
4. The Source
The other factor that then comes in is where to get them from. You can just flat out buy them directly from providers like Apple, Amazon, or a myriad of sellers out there. These can get costly quickly though, so many resort to subscription services, so here's my short list of audio book subscription providers out there.
Audible
The elephant in the room, is of course, Audible. They apparently cover about 40% of the audiobook market though, which means there are some other options as well, but in general, they do have probably the most titles. While I have enjoyed a few books gifted to me through Audible, the membership options are limited and a bit pricey. There's several plans, and they break down as follows:
Plan | Cost | # Credits |
---|---|---|
Audible Plus | $7.95/ month | No Credits |
Audible Premium Plus | $14.95/month | 1 per month |
Audible Premium Plus 2 | $22.95/month | 2 per month |
Audible Premium Plus Annual | $149.50/year | 12 per year |
Audible Premium Plus 2 Annual | $229.50/year | 24 per year |
Audible Escape Subscription | $12.95/month for standalone customers, $6.95 for Audible Members or Kindle Members | No credits |
*Check here for changes or updates in pricing over time (remember, trust but verify)
I also really like their player. Like iTunes it continues to play in the background while I do other things like sift through email, or play a quick turn of Words with Friends. The user interface is nice and clean, and not a lot to decipher in here. It's just an easy experience.
Libraries
When my trial subscription from Audible ran out, I started going to my local libraries. Now, I have the particular fortune of having created accounts in every city I've ever lived in, and the local libraries have let me keep my accounts active despite my having moved out of state. (Ohio, Colorado, and now TN)> Of course, I never told them I was moving, so maybe I am gaming the system a bit.
But, libraries use apps like Overdrive for their player, or Libby, which sometimes will route you to Amazon and download the rented audio book to your Audible player!
This means adding another app to your smart phone, which is already screaming for more storage space from me, but I do use it to do a lot of other stuff like take reference photos, I store a LOT of music on there, and my email storage is, well gargantuan.
The problem with libraries is quite simply - inventory. They often don't have new releases, or if they do, the wait time can be really long. (Right now I am on a 4 week delay for a few popular audio books, but it's getting harder to wait as I want to get into another book without waiting a month!). So, I turned to some other sources out there.
Librivox*
I really like Librivox - their whole purpose is to create a library of works in the public domain. It's kind of a mixed bag for a reader, because you may find the book you want, but it's unlikely that just one narrator will be in your head. For an 8 hour listen, that could be kind of jarring to switch from one narrator to another abruptly and could really mess with the flow of the listening.
The only other caveat here is you need to provide your own player. They do not provide a player, just give you the zip file to download, which you then have to decompress or unzip and load the resulting MP3 files into a player of your choice. So, porting this on to a smart phone can be a bit of a challenge for the non-technically savvy folks out there.
But, you get it for free, quite literally, with no obligation. What more motivation do you need to sign up and at least give it a try?
ScribD
Very similar to Audible in the UI, and it's nice because there's another free trial period where I get unlimited play time before getting charged $10 (so 66% the cost of Audible, but I get unlimited access to their entire library. While they claim a library of more than 1 million ebooks and audio books, I am not sure what portion falls into the latter - could not find that broken down. But I already have found that some titles I am searching for are just not available there, which is unfortunate. But there are still plenty of titles here that may warrant keeping this as an option.
With the power of Google, I found two pretty decent summaries of the various options out there.
The rest of the players:
While I've not had a chance to peruse the rest of below, these others seem to be the remaining 50% of the audio book marketplace where there's any sort of substantial enough library. I think all have apps, but again, I've not explored them all yet. So, consider kicking the tires before committing to any of the below, as YMMV depending on what kind of UI and experience you are looking for.
- Audiobooksnow (dot com)
- Downpour
- Hatchette Audio
- Libro.fm
- Chirp
- FreeBooks
- The Classic Tales Podcast
Any others have their own experiences with audio book repositories they'd like to share, the more the merrier to this party! Thanks for taking the time to check this out, and let me know if you have any questions.
*Full disclosure, I am a contributing narrator to Librivox, so my personal subjective standards may have colored the option a bit above.
Finally, I put this post together after a bit of Google research, so you are free to Google and research on your own to find things however you like. To aid in that, the two sources where I found pretty much everything above (outside of what I'd found on my own of course), were these two articles:
https://www.technobuffalo.com/6-audiobook-site-alternatives-to-audible
https://modernmrsdarcy.com/audible-alternatives-audiobooks/
There is a bit of overlap between the two, and what I have done above, but hopefully this will serve as a good starting point for those looking to get started.
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