Purchasing physical copies of audio books is expensive and everything in the local library’s collection that isn’t Danielle Steel or Louis L’Amour is scratched all to hell.
I have internet access at my work and a wireless headset.
Is there an affordable online resource for books?
Well, audible.com is the one I go to. Great selection, prices vary if you’re buying a la carte. For a monthly subscription, it also depends - $15 a month for one book charged monthly, down to about $9.50 per book average if you get the 24 per year (pay in advance) plan.
Emusic.com has audiobooks too, one or two per month for ten bucks each. I’m not as impressed by their selection though.
Does your local library have digital lending? Mine has a ton of audiobooks available for download.
I also have an Audible account, which I love.
No, I live in the sticks.
Thanks, I’ll look into audible.
I love my Audible account. I download books to my iPhone and plug into the car to listen to on my commute.
Librivox fits my budget, although they have an extremely uneven quality of readers.
Podiobooks.com offers free serialized audiobooks via download or RSS feed.
Came to mention this. Librivox is the Project Gutenberg of audio books. They’re all free, public domain works. In some ways, you get what you pay for, but I’ve listened to a lot of them and mostly enjoyed them a lot.
There was a thread (and/or a web site) where people mentioned their favorite Librivox readers. Which was much-appreciated, because I listen to a couple of audiobooks a week, and love good readers, and I’m spoiled. I’ve given up on many Libravox books because of the quality of the reading.
But everything I’ve downloaded from Librivox that Karen Savage has read has been professional-quality. And she reads FUN books like The Scarlet Pimpernel (listening to one of the sequels now, also read by Ms. Savage).
Do you have a Cracker Barrel anywhere nearby? I’ve been known to drive out of the way to stop at one for (their grits and) their audiobooks. They have a deal where you sort of rent the book for up to a week. I’ve even taken my laptop, and ripped the CDs over breakfast. The clerk was surprised that I “checked out” the book for forty-five minutes.
ETA: Barnes and Noble has “downloadable mp3” audiobooks. Buy the book, and download it immediately. They, and iTunes, have cheap audiobooks. And even separate categories. iTunes has “Great Audiobooks $5.95 and Less”.
OP - if you join goodreads, there’s a group there dedicated to audiobooks.
There’s also a discussion in that group that attempts to be a list of the best quality librivox books.
Find a library system somewhere that has a good e-audiobook program and get a library card from them. An out-of-county card with my system, for example, is $45 a year, which is cheap for what it buys you. Other systems may be much cheaper.
I think the best answers have already been given, but there are other sites that sell audiobook downloads, that may or may not be worth exploring. One such, Tantor Audio, has all of its downloads on sale today (Friday) only for $4.99 each. (I assume this is accessible to everyone, and not just to certain customers.)