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Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing
- alehul 7y agoTried parsing through the first few paragraphs; can someone offer a tl;dr of how Audible is assaulting leisure time? Is it because Audible can be listened to while performing other tasks or going about your day, and it removes the previously quiet, uninterrupted time of the day to ponder?
- dang 7y agoThe article looks like a profile of Audible and the growth of the audiobook market, as well as some sort of critique of it. Let's not focus only on the critique part. Titles tend to do that—focus attention on too small a spot—so we've replaced the title above with a wider phrase from the article. Actually, we already did replace the title with the subtitle in the hope of widening the focus, but it didn't work.
- kurthr 7y agoKinda, but I admit to being confused as well... 'It’s simplistic but not entirely inaccurate to say that Audible’s parent, Amazon, is to book publishing what Facebook and Google are to magazines: the troll under the bridge whose idea of a toll is to devour consumers and competitors whole.' and 'On the train to get coffee with a well-meaning writer twenty years your senior who will advise you to “climb the ladder” like she did. By listening, you partially reclaim the lost hours, preserving some ghost of an alternate universe where you don’t have to do what you’re doing, and you’re on the couch reading the old-fashioned way instead.' Personally, I find audio-books almost completely different from active reading... mostly distracted entertainment rather than true immersion.
- ghaff 7y agoI don't find that with audiobooks at all. When I commuted regularly they were a good source of ad-free interesting content on my drive. (Though some books work better as audiobooks than others.) I pretty much never listen to them now. For occasional drives, podcasts are a much better fit because it's hard to dip in and out of books with multi-week gaps. But, then, I mostly don't much care for random background entertainment--even music much of the time and certainly not talk.
- Causality1 7y agoAudiobooks are rather unique in that you have to maintain a degree of mental discipline to avoid giving into the temptation to treat them as background noise. My personal strategy is to stick to lighthearted podcasts when I'm doing something that requires cognitive attention like web browsing or gaming and save the audiobooks for truly routine tasks like commuting to work or cutting the grass. I've also gotten good results from reading the first chapter of a book to firmly place the characters and setting in my mind and then switching to the audiobook.
- matwood 7y agoI'm similar, except when I'm at the computer I only listen to music. I could turn on a podcast, but will hear absolutely zero of what is said. Podcasts are great for the gym, drive, and yard work though. For books, I prefer to read. The pacing of reading allows me to think more deeply about the content. Admittedly, I do not read a lot of throw away novels. If I did, maybe they could take the place of podcasts.
- _i____ii_______ 7y agoAudible's greatest assault is on my wallet. So many audiobooks on that platform are exorbitantly expensive.
- gh02t 7y agoAudiobooks in general are pretty expensive, especially when compared to the price of a print/digital book. The costs to produce one are higher, and the market is smaller (though the latter is changing, as the article shows).
- _i____ii_______ 7y agoWhy are the costs to produce audiobooks higher? Librivox has public domain books for free, submitted by volunteers.
- reificator 7y agoYes, you've been plugging this throughout the thread. I've been working on writing a book and want to sell an audio book alongside it. Could you go ahead and record it for free for me so I can sell it to recoup my own costs? No? Why not? I'm glad there are volunteer projects out there, especially keeping public domain works available and accessible to more people. I'm even more glad that you feel that the quality of your work stands up to the quality of commercial work, as mentioned in other comments in this thread. I've not heard your audiobook recordings, so I'll abstain from comment on that front. But why are you in here claiming that your volunteer work diminishes the paid work of others? Is that something to be proud of?
- chihuahua 7y agoIt's a variation on the theme "I own a DSLR camera and am capable of pushing the shutter button, therefore I don't understand how professional photographers can charge $$$$ for wedding photographs"
- _i____ii_______ 7y ago
- Causality1 7y agoI just wish Audible had adopted a Netflix-style distribution system rather than an Amazon.com style one. Watching all the Netflix I want costs me fifteen dollars a month. Listening to all the Audible content I want would cost me hundreds if not thousands of dollars a month because I'd have to purchase each piece of media individually.
- jaabe 7y agoUntil you want to read a book that isn’t currently available. Maybe it’s different on the American Netflix (and similar), but currently none of the streaming services in Denmark have all seasons of x-files. I prefer buying things to renting them, but of course with modern digital distribution you often end up renting them even when you “buy” because of DRMs. Maybe I’m old, but I just don’t get modern media consumption. I mean, if we look beyond DRMs (and maybe you can crack Amazon’s), then you’ll own 120 books in 10 years as opposed to the Netflix model where in 10 years and the same amount of money, you’ll own 0 books.
- icebraining 7y agoSome of us don't care about owning. I always gave 95%+ of my paper books away, long before I started reading digitally.
- cannonedhamster 7y agoHoopla and Overdrive have audiobooks through your library or some just for using their service. Costs you nothing. Having it through your library gets you more options though. Might help you lower your costs. Aside from Audible you could check out Downpour. Similar service to Audible but less restrictive on ownership.
- houqp 7y agoHave you tried scribd?
- ineedasername 7y agoScribd used to be really good, but then they switched to a model where a small number of books are in the "all you can eat" pile and the rest are on a credit system like Audible. The best "all you can eat" plan I've seen is from Playster. A very decent selection around the same price as Audible.
- raverbashing 7y agoWell, you are free to not do it In fact I can't stand podcasts or similars for the most part as I can't do some things while listening to it. Maybe driving but that's it. As much as it's nice to learn stuff, at some point it is just shallow edutainment (as much as I like some of the science yt channels)
- gman83 7y agoI like podcasts because it turns things that I used to absolutely hate doing like dishes or gardening into somewhat enjoyable for me.
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- goldcd 7y agoI could not agree more. Audiobooks and podcasts are one of my favourite things. If I need to concentrate there's music - if I have to do some mundane physical task that used to bore the bejeezus out of me, I now have them. I even enjoy the mundane tasks - as gives me time to enjoy the information pumped into my ears, and actually get something useful done at the same time. (Today I decided as spring was hear, I'd spend an hour removing the worst offending weeds from my garden).
- Causality1 7y agoI'm a bit confused about your complaint. Do you dislike podcasts because they demand too much attention and feel like educational content or because they're shallow entertainment? Because those seem like two opposite problems.
- raverbashing 7y agoThey are not exclusive, because I can't concentrate on some tasks while someone is speaking in the background, regardless of what's being said.
- carrja99 7y agoI just love audio books. I listen to them while walking the dog, working out or doing chores around the house.
- sorenjan 7y agoI've tried it a few times, but I have a few problems with them: I can't skip boring parts, like long descriptions or other annoying parts. I zone out from time to time when doing other things, and I have to skip back and try to find where I lost track. Sometimes I have to go back and reread numbers, names, and other important info, but that's much harder with audio.
- Ozzie_osman 7y agoJust posted about this as a top-level. But might be worth trying Spokn. In general I usually have 10-15 mins in free time increments. Audio books don't work for me for that reason. Narrated articles do.
- jrumbut 7y agoBoring parts are the reason I do audio books (which in my mind I still call books on tape). I listen primarily to massive ancient works like The Illiad, Parallel Lives, and Herodotus' Histories that are impenetrable to me in text because they have enormous sections devoted to lists of ancient names or inaccurate dimensions of Egypt that I can just zone out to during a drive. Of course you can skip those parts in text but if you half listen to them you get to say you heard the whole thing and you begin to appreciate the role they played in the work and the influence they had on later authors and politicians.
- chiefalchemist 7y agoI have the same issues. My conclusion is to listen to things that were intended to be heard (e.g., speeches, plays, etc.). That said, I've read / heard that if you want to increase listening comprehension, speed up the play back. The novelty + speed forces the brain to focus more and listen closer. Moi? For listening, I listen to music. I still read paper books because I already spend too much time gazing into a screen (writing code).
- intrasight 7y agoI think that article would have been better in audible form ;)
- Ozzie_osman 7y agoMy problem with audio books is that they are long, and I can't skip around, and listening in bursts of 10-15 mins ends up being inefficient and disorienting. I've been using Spokn, which provides narration of high quality articles from HBR, NYT, etc. Works a lot better for my schedule.
- chiefalchemist 7y agore: " Audiobooks are the fastest growing part of publishing..." I hate to jump in and jump off topic but statements like that really annoy me. First, when a market is tiny but growing even small increases look amazing as a percentage. And then there's the maturity of the publishing market itself. Anything new that's growing is going to be growing more than the otherwise mature no-growth market. The question here is: How much new incremental business is this actually creating? Or, much like music CDs years ago, are most people simple trading one format for another newer one? Yes, those re-sales still count but it also creates a false sense that the market itself is actually growing; that new buyers are coming on board. Again, ask the music industry if they regret getting hooked on the "bonus" revenue from CDs. And how that not only drove people to downloads, but that false growth created a false peak that made the digital crash hurt even more. Again, please pardon the somewhat off-topic-ness.
- TylerE 7y agoAudible alone did over $3 billion last year. "Major publishers have confirmed to Good e-Reader that 1 out of every 10 books sold is in the audio format ... HarperCollins stated that downloadable audio accounted for about 25% of all digital revenue in the recent first three months of 201" https://goodereader.com/blog/audiobooks/good-e-reader-global-audiobook-report-for-2019 https://goodereader.com/blog/audiobooks/good-e-reader-global... Hardly tiny.
- chiefalchemist 7y agoThanks. You missed the point. Good job.
- dang 7y agoThis comment breaks the site guidelines. Would you mind reviewing them and following them when posting here? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- sien 7y agoFor context, the entire US publishing industry is only 26Bn. https://publishingperspectives.com/2018/07/us-statshot-publisher-survey-2017-estimates-revenue/ https://publishingperspectives.com/2018/07/us-statshot-publi...
- gambler 7y ago>Amazon, is to book publishing what Facebook and Google are to magazines Unfortunately, this is a very accurate analogy. I like listening to audio books and Audible is definitely very convenient, but I am 100% sure that in the not so distant future Amazon will completely destroy the whole publishing ecosystem in US and that will have horrendous effect on the quality of what is being written and on the availability of things to read. Audible is good, because it's not sustainable. It's good, because it benefits from the infrastructure that would not exist if books were created for audio instead of paper. If Audible get really popular, it will just become a centralized long-form podcast service. They're already edging that way with "originals". It's amazing that after seeing this process repeated again and again in the lat couple decades, people still can't predict when it starts to take pace in yet another industry. Technically, no one stops any book author from hiring a voice actor and then selling the result from their website directly. This doesn't require a middleman. Yet, how many authors do you know that actually do it?
- ChildOfChaos 7y agoI think Audible works though because of the monthly subscription and the fact people get credits a month in exchange for a book. This credit is purchased at a lot lower cost than paying for the book outright. But it's sold on the basis that people will stay subscribed and thus end up with books they wouldn't of otherwise bought as they are looking for something to spend their credit on this month. A different model than someone actually knowing the author, waiting for the release and then buying it directly from them. It's essentially free money for author/publisher so they are all rushing to the platform.
- max76 7y ago> But it's sold on the basis that people will stay subscribed and thus end up with books they wouldn't of otherwise bought as they are looking for something to spend their credit on this month. Why would someone feel pressure to use a credit? A person can have several extra credits at time. The credit system has a lot of advantages for Amazon, but time pressure isn't one of them.
- dblackker 7y agoThis article has taken the thoughts right out of my mind. I struggle, as an achiever type, to "waste" time and therefore fill my mind with audiobooks from the library as well as audible. The need to unplug is real.
- satvikpendem 7y agoI'm ready for when I can have my books read to me with machine learning à la WaveNet or similar, effectively cutting out the middleman and making a very cheap audiobook version. Google Books can already do this with epubs but it's not at the same level as a professional audiobook however.
- zipperhead 7y agoOh please no, not for me. A well-read audiobook becomes an integral part of the art form. An example is the recent Beastie Boys book, which is read by the two of them, plus a whole host of guest readers. Some of whom completely transform the experience.
- lucb1e 7y agoI agree, a well-read book can really make it. A bad reader not only makes a good book boring, it also works conversely. For example, Ready Player One was a mediocre movie, an alright book, and the audio book was really great (i.e. I also enjoyed the story itself much more because of the telling). If you just want to read books without the effort of reading, and have "audio books" be cheap, text to speech is totally there. You'll miss some intonation, but modern speech engines are beyond understandable. If it would be just about understandability, try espeak (apt install espeak). An absolutely awful voice, but copy any decently sized text (maybe a pg essay) and listen to it. I find that after 30 seconds to a minute, I've adjusted enough to perfectly understand it, and after 4+ minutes I forget that I'm listening to the most horrendous voice known to mankind. And if you want to nerd out some more about our brain's capacity to understand speech and adapt to things that don't even resemble speech anymore, try whistling languages. I'm always amazed how understandable they can be.
- nytesky 7y agoI was thinking of Ready Player One, and how it’s reading really was part of the experience. Did you mean to bury the lede that it’s read by none other than Wil Wheaton?
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- steve19 7y agoPeople complaining forget what the industry was like before audible. It was terrible. Audiobook cost an absolute fortune, and selections were very limited. Audiobooks in the late 20th century were, I imagine, simular to paper books in 18th century. Something most of the population could not afford to own. I have been listening, and loving, audiobook for a very long time audible was, and still is, a breath of fresh air. Combined with the similarly lax attitude to drm as the amazom kindle, removing drm is simple. Audible has created a market that publishers were either ignoring completely or extreme price gouging (or some of both) .
- tty2300 7y agoBefore online audio books we borrowed then from the library for free.
- Doubl 7y agoIn the late 20th century I almost weekly got an audiobook in tape cassette form from my local public library to listen to in my car. As far as I can remember they cost me nothing. They had a room full of the things, so the selection was enormous. I have particular memories of listening to James Lee burke's books read by Mark Hammer. Later in the noughties I joined audible but it wasn't cheap and they had a couple of sharp practices that turned me right off. The first was that you couldn't carry over credits. The second was they made it hard to cancel. Then there was the way they leaned on the audio software guy whose software allowed you to remove the drm, so you could burn to disk in mp3 rather than the only supported way which would have required a bunch of CDs per book. Bottom line for me today is they're too expensive. Being restricted also to one book a month (was two back then) for the same cost as Spotify and Netflix combined is a joke
- miki123211 7y agoI hate Audible, with a passion. They have drm, so I can't listen in the app I like, and the prices...Back in secondary I've been listening to audiobooks at the rate of approximately one book a week. I've used polish libraries for the blind which were legal, free and had everything I wanted (almost). I can't even imagine how much money I'd spend if I had to use Audible instead. Actually I wouldn't even be able to, as I'd been listening on a Rockboxed[1] player, not a smartphone. [1] https://rockbox.org https://rockbox.org
- genera1 7y agoTechnically you can download audible .aa files and convert them to whatever format you want, default ffmpeg can handle the conversion.
- krtkush 7y agoHow does one do that?
- AndyMcConachie 7y agoOpenAudible.org Then I wrote a script. https://github.com/smutt/mp3_split https://github.com/smutt/mp3_split
- krtkush 7y agoThanks!
- dfabulich 7y agoInstead of Audible, I recommend downloading audiobooks for free from your local library. The San Francisco Public Library uses an app called "Libby." (I think most major US libraries support it.) It's free and convenient. No complaints.
- gnicholas 7y agoFYI, Libby is an app made by OverDrive, (which is in turn owned by Rakuten). Although OverDrive has published multiple open letters proclaiming their dedication to accessibility, they have done relatively little in this space. In one disappointing conversation with a senior executive, I was told that if they can’t charge libraries more for a feature, they won’t add it. To my mind, the definition of accessibility is making decisions that make a product more accessible even if doing so does not make more money. Given that OverDrive has 90% market share in the US, it’s a pity that this is their attitude toward accessibility.
- frosted-flakes 7y agoRakuten also owns Kobo, which sells ebooks and audiobooks (along with e-ink ereaders).
- rahimnathwani 7y ago"To my mind, the definition of accessibility is making decisions that make a product more accessible even if doing so does not make more money." Their clients (libraries) are the ones providing a service to end users. It's up to the libraries to determine what's important when selecting a supplier or developing a custom solution. Imagine I download an app on my phone. And I find it can't be used with a screen reader for some reason. Who is responsible here? Me? Google Play? The app publisher? The outsourced developer who did the coding for hire? Now imagine the same situation, but: - the app publisher being a US entity which takes federal funds - the app being assembled wholly from existing community-maintained open source projects It seems obvious to me that the party providing the service, and not the developer of the underlying software, is responsible.
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- dangoor 7y agoFor people worried about Audible's dominance here, there's _starting_ to be a countermovement among indie publishers, and I assume big publishers would also support competition. * Chirp, from Bookbub: https://www.chirpbooks.com https://www.chirpbooks.com * Authors Direct: https://authors-direct.com https://authors-direct.com (from Findaway Voices, which helps indies produce audiobooks) * Overdrive and Hoopla are bringing library-purchased audiobooks to people: https://www.overdrive.com https://www.overdrive.com https://www.hoopladigital.com https://www.hoopladigital.com Audible tries to get people locked into multi-year exclusive distribution contracts, and a lot of people go for it given their current hold on the market. Hopefully, demand will start rising for these other distribution channels.
- jrgaston 7y agoFor me audio books don't replace regular books, they supplement them, by expanding my reading time and by getting me to read books I'd otherwise not. I often end up with both the physical or e-book plus the audio book. Sometimes I start with the audio book, especially if the book is challenging, then later switch to the non-audio book. Sometimes I jump back and forth. Yeah, crazy. Down sides? Choice. (You want a different translation of The Brother's Karamazov? Ha!) You still need a hand, or at least a finger, to pause or go back, like when your mind inevitably wanders. You can't share an audio book with a friend, a downside of e-books too. And then there's the whole mind-wandering thing. I can't multitask. I can't listen to an audio book at just any time I need my hands for something else. The context switch is a buzzkill. The key to a good audio book, in addition to the book itself being good, is a good reader, so here are some of my current faves with splendid readers: A Clockwork Orange narrated by Tom Hollander; Lincoln in the Bardo, Nick Offerman; Mrs Dalloway, Juliet Stevenson; Lolita, Jeremy Irons; and Milkman, Brid Brennan.
- icebraining 7y ago> You can't share an audio book with a friend, a downside of e-books too Sure you can, DRM-breakers are easy to find.
- lugg 7y agoPretty much this. If I have Tien to sit down and read it's going to be a technical book with lots of code. Audible gives me an opportunity to read other types of books.
- bgeeek 7y agoPart of what you're talking about is what bugs me about Amazon and the publishers. When I buy an audio CD, I can have it "auto-ripped" and available to download immediately as an MP3. I wish the same applied for more expensive physical copies of books, too - I wish they would also offer me a digital copy for my own convenience.
- glial 7y agoI have used Audible for a long time, but have recently switched to Libro.fm. Pricing is the same as Audible, and my local book store gets a cut.
- ebg13 7y agoI used to really love Audible because they had excellent customer service. Now I only tolerate them. One more instance of needing to send a dozen back and forth emails to their so-called customer support repeating the same message over and over and getting increasingly frustrated and upset because not a single goddamn one of their offshored drones actually bothers to read what you write before responding about something entirely unrelated and I will terminate the service I've had with them since 2002. Watching a company you loved dealing with destroy the human side of its service makes me very sad.
- lefstathiou 7y agoI can’t resist the temptation to ask given this thread is on HN (a community I love) and Audible is a passion... for those who love Audible and Audio books, would you mind sharing 2-3 you particularly enjoyed? I’m always hunting for new ones. Here are some I would recommend: Management 1. Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People 2. Getting to Yes Great book on negotiation in life and business 3. The Hard Thing About Hard Things On management 4. Influence The psychology of persuasion Non-Fiction Recommendations 1. River of Doubt True story of Teddy Roosevelt's exploration of a previously unchartered region of the Amazon River where he and his team almost perished. 2. Endurance True story of Sir Ernest Shackelton's journey to be the first to reach the south pole. Arguably one of the greatest survival stories of all time. 3. The Disappearing Spoon Story behind the periodic table, the elements, the people who discovered them and the context under which they were discovered. Learn a lot about day to day things you don't put much thought into. 4. Business Adventures Bill Gates was interviewed and asked what his favorite business book is - this was it (out of print for 40 years until 5 months ago). It's a collection of about a dozen 1-1.5 hour true business case studies (20th century). A lot of them were seminal events in corporate America (for example, the event that resulted in modern day insider trading laws, the creation of the income tax, etc). You'll enjoy this if you like business books. 5. Creativity Inc by the cofounder of Pixar. Good story. 6. Alchemy of Air Story of the investors of the Haber-Bauche process to convert nitrogen in the air to ammonia (the key component of artificial fertilizer, gas and gunpowder). Arguably the greatest discovery of the 20th century if you take into account the fact without this process, Earth's arable land mass can only sustain 2bn people. It also has resulted in hundreds of millions of deaths by allowing wars to wage on indefinitely 7. A Short History of Nearly Everything A fast pace, well written science book by Bill Bryson that covers what we know about the creation of the world thus far. You'll enjoy it. 8. The Boys in the Boat Very inspiring story about the men's 1936 olympic gold metal rowing team 9. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight Very inspiring story by the creator of Nike. One of the best memoirs I've ever read. 10. Lessons of History by Will Durant Short and extremely thought provoking. Stylistically tough to get into but once you do it is quite good. 11. Ghengis Khan and the Making of the Modern World The first half of this is better than the second but overall a very enlightening book about the impact of the Mongols, broadly considered to be Barbarians but in actuality far ahead of their time (first to broadly use printed currency, a postal system, a judicial system, military engineers, etc). Fiction / Fantasy Recommendations 1. The Martian Awesome story and as realistic as fiction can get. Was a great listen. 2. Theft of Swords great story about two lovable characters. It is part of a trilogy 3. Red Rising Part of a trilogy, great listen but worth caveating it is an extreme hunger games like story that is quite violent 4. Name of the Wind Epic fantasy adventure, one of the highest rated books on Good Reads. Absolutely worth it but at 30 hours may be a large commitment as a first book 5. The Way of Kings This book gave me heart palpitations... again, a large commitment but I can't drop it from the list 6. Lies of Loch Lomura A very fun adventure story; reader's voice takes a moment to get used to but once you do it is very fun and endearing 7. Mistborn Great story in a unique world
- listenandlearn 7y agoI absolutely love Audio Books, I think I went through maybe 25+ audio books, mostly non fiction, in 2018 alone. It is a fantastic way to maximize dead time, but generally I think non music audio is going through a sort of renaissance. While the author of this post is really distraught about Amazons dominance with Audible I do think in some ways non music audio is much bigger than just Audibooks for example Podcasts are on the rise and at least for the moment they are totally open. I also think Amazons hold with audio books will be difficult to maintain especially as technology and AI gets better. Why pay them when a great sounding AI could read your book to you. As a little shameless self promotion I have been working on a side project that does exactly this, it takes any Article or PDF from the web and converts it to great sounding audio so you can listen to it on the go. It sounds pretty good, and it’s a great way to maximize your dead time and stay informed on the go. If you want to check out my project you can find it here: https://articulu.com/ https://articulu.com/
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- chrstphrhrt 7y agoSweet project! There's also https://curio.io https://curio.io which I stumbled across reading Aeon, and it's got high quality but pretty low volume of content so far (I'm sure they're working on that).
- listenandlearn 7y agoSure I follow them but their issue is it’s human read articles which is why the volume is so low. Articles unlike books are being produced in the millions everyday and so it’s really hard to find the best pieces to read over.. which is what they have to do. I think there is room for letting people listen to anything and AI/ML advancements allow us to get pretty damn close.
- KloudTrader 7y agoWe run an ebook to audiobook conversion service and most of the growth comes from places like web serials and fanfiction: https://Auditus.cc https://Auditus.cc
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- ericdykstra 7y agoI’ve been an Audible subscriber for a fairly long time (2011), and really enjoy the format. I really wish it wasn’t tied to Amazon, though. The recent increase of their “digital book burning” is pretty egregious, and it’s weird to own books on Kindle and Audible that are no longer even available for purchase. There are, fortunately, some authors that publish their audiobooks direct, and others that put their work free on archive.org. However, the vast majority are Audible-exclusive, and it keeps me locked in.
- OscarTheGrinch 7y agoI really enjoy audiobooks, but I dont think Audible is letting the medium flourish to its full potential. My main concern is that audible is missing the long tail which naturally forms in any price sensitive market, where older products tend to depreciate to the point where they find a buyer. With paper books I can find an old book for cheap and that is great for a lover of words. Audible distorts the audio-book market with its credit system: as far as I can tell they never discount older or less popular works, cutting off the long tail of potential readers. Why waste a precious credit on an audiobook who's physical cost is now fraction of its cover price? More marketplace competition, and price / demand sensitive business models would be welcome.
- computerphage 7y agoI've found books in Audible on sale for as little as $2.00.
- xnyan 7y agoThere are often good deals to be had on Amazon for audiobooks, as others have mentioned older audiobooks can be found for as little as $2, though for moderately popular ones its more like $10-15. Very popular audiobooks don't go on sale as often, but even the complete set of Stephen Fry read Harry potter 7-book-series, hundreds of hours, can be had for as little as 20 bucks sometimes.
- OscarTheGrinch 7y agoOK maybe that's my problem, I'm browsing solely through the audible app where I do see price difference, but I've never seen discounts signaled as such. Also I'm usually racing to spend credits before they expire, so price is less of a factor.
- manojlds 7y agoAudible has daily deals and lots of sales. Also, Kindle unlimited + whispersync means lots of cheap audiobooks. Lots of classics are available at $0.99. I recently got latest Pride and Prejudice narrated by Rosamund Pike for $0.99 Check /r/audible
- lifeisstillgood 7y agoMy problems with Audible - I cannot search for a new book on Audible - I need to go to amazon, buy there and come back. - I cannot get my podcasts on Audible app. - I cannot manage the books on Audible (same issue with kindle). There is one screen for seeing the whole library - sometimes I want to put books on a high shelf cos I know I won't go back to them ... ever. - Why can I not get a text version of each audible book for free? and vice versa. It annoys me to pay twice - especially when there is explicitly a kindle / audible sync designed to allow you to listen to page X then read from page X. It's like they thought it would be good but then failed to sell the idea to publishers. - Why can't authors put out their own readings (I think this is a publisher issue - but I think the whole market could 10x if authors just released audible books like podcasts, polished or not) - Listening takes longer than reading. So there is a big incentive to write scripts for audible only books - shorter and more radio play like. But mostly audible is just the after thought. - Frankly I know there is something there - it's just hard to see what the real market will look like when we find it.
- eicnix 7y agoPart of these issues are due to the in-app apple tax. Audiobooks and ebooks would be 15% more expensive. Searching and buying audiobooks and ebooks works fine on Android where Audible is allowed to provide their own in-app payment system.
- jimnotgym 7y agoImagine finding out that the New York stock exchange were buying and selling shares on their own account. They see you bid, execute a trade in between, and then fill your bid. This is fundamental, you can't be the global marketplace and be a trader. Take this one stage further, imagine finding that companies listed of the NYSE had NYSE directors on their board? Imagine finding that this year's hot IPO is a company owned by NYSE. This is what happens when Amazon become the publisher. It is time to break up Amazon
- mettamage 7y agoHmm... Is it legal to read a book outloud on Twitch?
- johnnydoe9 7y agoMicrosoft had ebooks until pretty recently but I only found out about it because of the news about the cancellation of the service. Google Books added audiobooks a while ago but why they don't advertise on YouTube videos and podcasts I'll never understand.
- rdl 7y agoAudible (audiobooks generally, but generally just Audible) is my primary form of long-form media consumption. I don't watch TV, I don't watch movies, I don't listen to very much music. I probably consume 100-150 Audible books per year, on top of another ~50 Kindle books, and 20-30 pdf/paper books. With promos and everything else, my average cost per Audible book is about $5. I guess I spend about $1k/yr on books, maybe a little more. Some people spend about that much for cable tv. I feel like I get a lot more value out of books.
- iofiiiiiiiii 7y agoI am a real big fan of audiobooks but unfortunately am forced to pirate them because Audible only works with DRM. I would love to buy audiobooks legally but even if I consented on principle to DRM (I do not), my MP3 players do not support DRM.
- loco5niner 7y agoHere you go: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19768543 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19768543 No excuse now :-)
- Jessica_Martin 7y agoAudiobooks are an amazing resource. I've been using them for years and never looked back, although some books do deserve physical attention.