If you've never heard of Audible.com , it is an Amazon.com offshoot. If you've never heard of Amazon.com , go ahead and put your tinfoil hat back on because the CIA is coming after the radio signals in your fillings. Audible.com is the place to go if you enjoy audio books. Personally i was never that big a fan of books on tape/cd (whatever), i always preferred the paper. to me a book is not a book unless its made of paper. There just isn't anything like that book smell, or the feel of a book in your hands, or the sight of a newly added book to your collection. Why then, am i talking about a website designed specifically to sell audio books? Well that's simple, they do it very well. So well in fact that i seem to have developed a bit of an Audible.com addiction. In under a year I've managed to purchase more than 50 audio books through the good people of Audible.com , that's over a thousand hours of listening enjoyment.
First let me say that my conversion to the audio book was not entirely voluntary. I took a new job that requires we to commute 3 hours every day. FM radio pretty much sucks, in any given hour you will hear the same song at least 3 times and with the distance i travel it is hard to pin down any station for long be it FM or AM. So as i was listening to a certain podcast, the host happened to mention that if you go to audible and put in a code you would get a free audio book. Free is always nice, so even though i wasn't the biggest fan of audio books i didn't have anything to lose. I really don't recall what my first download was, there have beenn so many since, i believe it may have been the first book in the Honor Harrington series but don't quote me on that. Anyway, I downloaded my first audio book and i was hooked. A good reader is a voice actor, and through their acting they thoroughly engross the listener in the storyline. I think that more than anything go me hooked on the audio book. With subtle inflection a good reader can have you feeling any number of things for a character drawing you deeper into it all and leaving you wanting more and more.
Audible.com has a very simple interface, you just download an audio manager/player to your computer and once you download a book you can listen to it there or you can use your favorite audio program whether that's iTunes, Media Player, Winamp etc., and yes you can even opt to download your new listening goodness to your mobile device whatever that may be. I think my favorite part of the interface is that Audible.com keeps your audio book library online so you can even listen to them there or if something happens to your downloaded copy you can download it again.
Everyone wants to know about price, of course. Audible.com has a subscription service that starts at $14.95 (when this posted), with its lowest level subscription you get discount pricing and 1 credit. The credits are audible gold, you can get most books for a credit and every month you get a free credit. For comparisons sake I'm going to use Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings, the hardback ink and paper book is $27.99, the audio cds are $79.99, the audible download without a subscription $63.93, audible download with a subscription is about $45.00, or you can use your free credit that only cost you $15.00. Bottom line, for $15 you can get an $80 forty-five hour long audio book. Any way you look at it the folks over at audible.com are passing out great deals.
Disclaimer: I really love Audible.com and even though it would be super awesome of them to give me trucks full of money for my opinion, they do not. I am not employed by audible and they haven't given me any money or promised me anything. I just think they have a great thing going and i think anyone who loves books should give them a try.
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