Audiobooks: Have You Tried Them?

31/10/2012, CelineNyx, Discussion , 9

Since I’m only one hour away from finishing my first audiobook ever (I’m listening to Born Wicked by Jessica Spotswood – click cover to go to Goodreads), I thought I’d do a little post on audiobooks.

The Good

I can read when I’m in the train! Yay! Well, listen to someone read a book at least. I’ve got terrible motion sickness which makes it almost impossible for me to enjoy stories in any moving vehicle, so having someone read the book to me is ideal. I have to take the trip from my parents’ house to my room at university twice a week, which is a 2,5 hour commute. It isn’t that much, but so boring if you have nothing else to do but stare out of the window. I’m a good listener, so it’s not that hard for me to keep track of the story. Plus, if I do phase out for a second I can use the “skip back 30 seconds” button on my Kindle.

The Bad

Audiobooks aren’t for everyone. I know a lot of people get impatient with the narrators (or sometimes the narrators are just plain bad) or lose track of the story while listening. There is also the invention of abridged audiobooks (boo!). Plus, you can’t put them on your shelf unless you buy the CD version which is a lot more expensive than the digital download. There is also just a limited selection of books you can actually listen to, since only about 5-10% of the popular books (*) that get published get an audio version.

* I completely made that number up. Sorry.

Where to Get Them?

Something that took me a very long while was to discover where to get audiobooks. Some publishers actually have a seperate division for audio books (like Simon & Schuster’s Simon Audio) or sell them through Amazon (there’s no easy way to sort on Audio as far as I can tell). There are also the free alternatives like LibriVox, which is a slightly hard website to navigate but they got pretty good quality for a bunch of volunteers.

The easiest way is probably to buy your audiobooks through Audible. You can subscribe to get credits, with which you can then buy audiobooks. They also get quite a lot of sales which is great for members. The coolest thing about Audible (in my opinion) is that they let you buy one book for free. To get your free book you have to subscribe and enter your credit card information, then buy the book you want (for nothing), and then immediately unsubscribe. If you forget to unsubscribe you will have to pay $15 the next month (and you’ll of course get a credit). I did exactly that, immediately unsubscribe, and got a free audiobook out of it. It’s cheating the system a bit, but who cares about that? (: You can find the audiobook-for-free website here.

What do you think?

So, what do you guys think? Love them or hate them? Do let me know!

audible, audiobooks, born wicked, jessica spotswood