I’ve been wanting to join audible for a long time, but I’ve been put off by the one book monthly limit.
Could anyone that has an account please tell me how it works and if they find value in it.
I have 2 small children and would have liked to have an audiobook for myself (for my commute) but also for my children at bed time so we can follow along and help them learn to read and listen to a lot of the classic children’s books.
I really thought you could have several books on the go, but how does the one book per month limit work. Doesn’t seem value for money to me.
I buy most of my books on Audible as I don’t have time to read physical books but I can multitask listening and doing something else.
The one book a month didn’t work for me either at first so I have the 12-month, £69.99 level membership where you get 12 credits at once to use how you want over the 12 months.
If you use those 12 credits up early, you can pay another £69.99 instantly and get more. I did this a lot at first to build up my collection, but now I’m at a point where I don’t spend them all at once. I now have around 80 audiobooks and I have two credits left until the New Year, and my recent ones have been impulse uses of the credits.
I really thought it was more a kind of streaming thing whereby you stream as much as you want but the one book per month ting threw me (because you can exchange a book if you don’t like it) ie what was to stop you listening to a book and then cheekily exchanging it at the end.
You basically get a book a month. You keep them forever - even with the free trial. Pro tip: use the free trial, then cancel it and theyll give you another free book, then cancel it again or continue to pay.
Yes, it is a full purchase, not streaming ‘like’ Spotify.
I guess internally they will monitor how often you return books, but in essence, there isn’t. It is known however that some people on Amazon.co.uk have been banned for very high return rates of goods.
I’ve listened to this book twice now over the last 6 months and I can still return it.
After a while it will state it is ineligible to return it. I think after 12 months.
I haven’t returned that many because I tend to get books I want to keep and I assume Audible run on that basis. They want you to keep the books you really want so would rather you hand back those you don’t like.
@redshift They sometimes give you £10 credit too when you play chicken all the way through the online cancellation process. I’ve done that three or four times over the years but it doesn’t always work and you do end up cancelling your subscription.
Also from what I know from friends quite often you can buy a bundle of the kindle book and the audible book for a cheaper price than the audible book on its own. Particularly useful for people using WhisperSync
Audible holds an estimated 90% of the audiobook market so there are not many options when it comes to audiobooks. I don’t think there is a mainstream audiobook streaming service for this reason.
It took Apple throwing money and braking anti-trustanti-price fixing laws to start to break Amazon’s hold on the ebook market which is considerably bigger, and Amazon still leads it.
Unfortunately it would take something similar to break Amazon’s hold over audiobooks, but they did introduce Kindle Unlimited “free” ebook like streaming, so you never know!
I thought Amazon is still Apple’s top ebook supplier, it is just not the only one in a few countries like Germany following some EU investigation and fines…
Apple got exclusive ebooks from 5 publishers in return for helping them raise the price of ebooks which Amazon had created the market by pricing ebooks lower than print books.
It’s with noting that not all libraries will have all books but I’ve really enjoyed using Libby, you can add multiple libraries if you have cards for others too so you might be able to find a book that’s in one but not the other.
