Audible is an Amazon company that produces and sells hundreds of thousands of popular audiobooks.
Listen while at home, in your car at the gym. Your entire library will come with you wherever you go.
Get a free audiobook to enjoy as part of your trial. The best part is you get to keep the book even if you choose to cancel! What is there to lose?
There really is something for everyone in the vast archive of books readily available on Audible. With new books being added all the time.
A couple of years ago, I questioned the value of audiobooks. Why? Well, listening to an audiobook felt like cheating on a real book. I was also skeptical about being able to get into something that an actor narrates. I saw audiobooks as expensive distractions from the written word.
How wrong I was. I took out a 90-day Audible trial and I picked my free book and gave this service a try.I haven’t looked back. In this Audible review, I will explain how much it costs and explain if an Audible membership is worth it.
First, you take out a free trial of Audible and get a free audiobook. At the end of your trial, you can buy a monthly subscription of Audible. Each month, Audible awards you with one credit. Then, you can use this credit to purchase audiobooks. If you want to buy more books, you can buy more credits or pay per audiobook.
You own your audiobooks even if you cancel your subscription. You can listen to your audiobooks anywhere using apps for your phone, Windows or Mac computer or Alexa device.
After your Audible free trial expires, it costs $14.95 per month, but you can cancel your subscription at anytime.
For this price, you get one credit a month that you can use to buy and keep any audiobook. You can also buy additional credits each month.
Alternatively, you can buy individual audiobooks which costs anywhere between $10 and $25. For example, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson is currently an Audible best-seller, and it costs $15.59, at time of writing.
Therefore, if you plan on listening to more than one audiobook, a monthly Audible subscription is more cost-effective. Audible also offer member-only deals whereby you can save up to 60% on the cost of an audiobook.
In the past, I also bought individual audiobook off the iTunes store. This worked out fine at the time, but if you listen to at least one audiobook a month it’s cheaper to take out a subscription. For example, that same Mark Manson audiobook costs $22.95 on iTunes at time of writing this Audible review.
The Audible app is available on phones, tablets and desktops. I use this app mostly on my iPhone, and because my phone is always with me, I can listen to audiobooks while commuting, in the gym or out for a run. More recently, I’ve started listening to Audible audiobooks using an Alexa.
In other words, I can read and do something else at the same time. The Audible app makes it easier for me to spend more time reading and finishing great books.
My favourite Audible feature is a clever technology known as Whispersync For Voice. Here’s how this works:
use Audible to listen to an audiobook while out for a walk or run using the iPhone app. Later that night when I pick up my Kindle, it automatically finds my place in the book in question so I can continue reading. Then, the next morning when I open Audible before my commute, it resumes narrating from where I stopped reading on my Kindle the night before. Awesome!
There are a few caveats.
A monthly Audible membership is worth it if you listen to audio on the go and love reading.
Audible allows people to pickup where they left off when they're out and about or at home.
Being able to access your entire library of books while on the move beats carrying around tons of books. It's far more practical and makes more sense.
Some people do prefer the ability to flick through pages of a book. The physical aspects are lost when using Audible so that is definitely something you'd miss out on.
