I’m amazed people end up with unused credits. The only time I’ve rolled any over was when I bought extra credits a month before my annual renewal because they were inexpensive.
That’s what I came in to say. Most decent public library systems subscribe to an electronic platform like OverDrive or 3M’s Cloud Library. I’ve been favorably impressed with their selection of e-books and audio books. Typically you can borrow them for 2 or 3 weeks at a time. After that you can renew them, or join the waiting list to renew if there is one.
Same here. Although then it threatened to remove my remaining credits once I cancelled so I wound up buying a couple books I only had middling interest in. I still haven’t gotten through my library although I tend to rotate my commuter listening between music, podcasts and books.
Conversely, I’m also slightly annoyed when there’s a book by an actor, comedian, news reporter or other person who deals in the spoken word and they don’t narrate their own book. Especially if it’s their life story and reflections and I’m listening to a voice I know is “wrong” for whose story it is.
Yeah, they should’ve gotten Benjamin Franklin to narrate his own autobiography, dammit!
I found Audible to be way too expensive. For the last couple of years, I’ve been using OverDrive. It’s an app that goes through whatever library you use. I have a library card because I take my grandkids to the bookmobile. I can listen to all the books I can handle free of charge. I listen to books while I walk and when I’m in the car (haven’t listened to the radio in ages). I go through at least 3 per month. You can also download books to read. All free of charge! My only complaints are:
Not every book is available as an audible book - but so far I haven’t run out of options.
The app is kind of clunky at first. It took me a while to figure it out.
Put the “Say” back in “Seance”!
Some readers are fantastic; some are good; some are merely adequate; and some are IMHO unlistenable. Before buying an audiobook (from Audible or anywhere else!), it would behoove you to listen to a couple of minutes of the sample and to look at the customer reviews.
Which reminds me, the book that motivated my wife to take the plunge was Stephen Fry’s Mythos, but once we subscribed, we discovered that the audiobook of Mythos has been withdrawn from all platforms (at least in the United States). She was super-disappointed, but I tried to explain to her that it must have been the publisher’s decision.
Came in here to recommend Overdrive (there’s also a couple similar or rebranded services out there; best bet might be to ask your library what they support / use). I don’t listen to audiobooks enough for Audible to make sense economically, but Overdrive is a cool service.
I’ll also mention that Amazon (aka Audible) DOES have a subscription streaming service, but it’s part of their Kindle Unlimited e-book service. They call it “Books with Narration in Kindle Unlimited” which is a horrible mouthful, but boils down to all-you-can-eat audiobooks from a limited library.
Looks like Scribd has audiobooks, ebooks, e-magazines, etc. for $9/month. I’m sure they have less selection than Audible, but still might be enough.
Going through the recent purchases in my Audible library, it looks like Scribd has maybe half of what I’ve bought. For nine bucks a month, that’s not bad. The next time I put my Audible account on hold, I might pick up a Scribd subscription for a while and see what they’ve got. I did notice some books that I was sort of interested in but didn’t feel like spending a credit on.
Seconded.
Now, our local library system doesn’t have the greatest selection, but I can join several neighboring systems which improves the choices a bit.
But yeah, as everyone else has said, Audible’s standard plan (“gold”) basically has you buying one credit a month. This also gives you some discounts that someone coming in without a membership doesn’t get - e.g. if you pay cash for an extra book, you get some small discount, and they have periodic sales.
If you do cancel, be careful and use up all your credits; books you’ve bought using credits go away, but unspent credits DO go away.
I drop and resubscribe periodically. You’ll find they occasionally have sales on the membership (like on Amazon Prime day) where it’s half price for 3 months or similar. I’ll usually go for a few months, then unsubscribe until I see another special.
They do have at least one plan where you pay a monthly fee for unlimited access to a specific genre (romance). I don’t do romance audiobooks for the most part, so I’ve never bothered.
Another thing to be aware of: if you’re buying a book priced less than 14.95, pay cash vs using a credit. It’s easy to use a credit by mistake in that scenario. Fortunately the one time I did, they backed it right out when I contacted them.
I assume you meant to say “books you’ve bought using credits don’t go away”?
Also, occasionally it is cheaper to buy a Kindle book and then add the Audible book than to buy the Audible book first.
Price point depends on your membership type. It’s $9.56 if you’ve got a 24 credit a year plan.
I looked up the Scribd sci-fi audio book section, if anyone is interested. I’m not seeing anything that jumps out at me, but looks like they do have a cool service that’s an alternative to Audible. Here is the link for anyone interested: https://www.scribd.com/audiobooks/Fiction/Science-Fiction-Fantasy
For my part, I have such a large investment in Audible at this point with a library of hundreds of books that it probably wouldn’t be worth it to me to switch, unless I see something that I can’t get on Audible that I really, really want to listen too. But for the OP I’m thinking this might be what they are looking for.
There’s also LibriVox. It’s free, and it’s a huge collection of volunteer-recorded public domain works. The quality of the reading is spotty at best, but it’s definitely a “you get what you pay for” situation. Primarily in English, but there are some foreign language titles in there if you’re into that kind of thing.
A good resource to supplement and/or expand an audiobook collection for free. And if you don’t like a book or a reader, it cost you nothing! 
My library has 73 audiobooks currently available. Seven of them have James Patterson’s name on the cover, three are by Lee Child, Faye Kellerman, John Grisham and Lisa Scottoline all have multiple titles on the list. That pretty much describes their entire oeuvre. Without Audible I’d have diddly for audiobooks.
The narrator does make a difference, for example I bought the entire collection of Sherlock Holmes stories and novels by Arthur Conan Doyle narrated by Stephen Fry. That man was born to read Sherlock Holmes stories.
Plus, nearly 63 hours of listening for a single credit! What a bargain.
I have to disagree with the criticism of the two free Audible originals. I’ve listened to Stephen Fry’s Victorian Secrets, Twain’s Feast read by Nick Offerman, Hi, Bob with Bob Newhart, a true crime story called West Cork, No Land’s Man by Aasif Mandvi and several more and all were pretty darn good.
They also sell additional credits for less than the list price of $14.95. You can buy three credits for around $12 each if you’re down to one or fewer credits. That, plus the occasional two for one sales, the deals of the day that run less than $5.00 each means my books keep piling up. I certainly get my money’s worth out of my membership.
I only listen to audiobooks while I’m walking, but I walk around 50 hours a month, so I go through quite a few.
I don’t do that much walking, but I do more than I would if it weren’t for audiobooks. Thanks for keeping me healthy, Audible!
I’ve discovered its the perfect accompaniment to knitting.
Preach it.
I got Redshirts a while back. Great story. Narrated by Wil Wheaton.
Sorry, Wesley, your audiobook narration SUCKS. No voice differentiation between characters whatsoever (though in the few scenes where “acting” was involved he did a fantastic job, e.g. a drunken character). That one wasn’t helped by the fact that the characters didn’t have names good for audiobooks, e.g. Duvall and Dahl… between the name and the voice being the same, I had a hard time telling who was speaking.
There are narrators I look out for and will buy books just because they read them - Barbara Rosenblat is one.
Some of the “read by the author” ones are OK, some are awful. Neil Gaiman does a decent job, as does Yahtzee Croshaw (“Will Save The Galaxy For Food” is a hoot and a half).