I’m considering purchasing an iPod and the ability to listen to unabridged books would be an essential feature. Audible.com seems to have a tempting membership: $19.95 per month for any two audio books. Since most purchases of individual books would cost more than that, I wonder if there is a catch. I eyeballed the Terms and Use Conditions of Use Agreement but didn’t notice anything prohibitive.
So if any one is a member, could you please leave your likes, dislikes, or other impressions?
I’ve been a member for a couple of years now. I joined after I found that there was a device that I could use to listen to books on my Handspring Visor.
The Visor device worked fine, but you only got about 45 minutes of audio storage. When I got a new PDA, I got a Palm Zire 71, partly because it came with Audible software available. With the Zire 71’s ability to use external storage cards, my Audible listening has gone way up. I can put 2 or 3 8 hour books on a 256 m card.
I’m on the plan where you get two books per month for a flat fee. There’s no catch, as far as I can tell. It really helps to have a fast connection though. I’m still on dial-up, and it’s really not worth the time it takes to download a file via a dial-up line. (Think 6 hours to download an audiobook.) Luckily, my sister will let me use her DSL to download stuff. I just copy it to a CD, take it home to my computer, and copy it over, import it into Audible Listener, and load it onto my Zire.
I look for the high-ticket items. They make me feel like I get more value for my $$.
It’s a pretty good system, really. You can download books and burn them onto CD if you want to, to make it easy to listen to.
I’m such a neophyte about computers that I don’t know if this might be anything that would interest you, but our library offers e-books, free. Sounds as if these might be what you’re talking about. We’re a fairly small city, so I imagine most libraries have them.
A good friend of mine is a member of Audible. He enjoys it. I’m looking into it myself, especially since they give you a free mp3 player when you sign up for a year.
Or $100 off an iPod, which would certainly interest you, Pyrrhonist
Many libraries have books on tape (and probably on CD now) available for checkout. But they won’t work on an iPod, or a PDA.*
*Caveat: there may be new technology out that I’m not aware of yet.
IMO, it’d be fine as long as you were simply listening the once. If you were adding them to your library, it would be wrong. But if you were simply moving from one media format to another (CD to digital) for the period you have the item out from the library, I’d be fine with it.
I just bought a Zire 72, which comes with a free 1 month subscription to the Audible.com service. However, I have to register with Audible.com in order to avail of this offer. The registration form asks for a credit card number. The terms of agreement say that the card is automatically charged every month unless you cancel your subscription.
Does this mean I have to cancel my subscription immediately after registering ? Or will my membership just expire after 1 month ? Will my card be charged if I forget to cancel ?
I haven’t signed up yet, but it looks very promising from the demo files they gave with the software. The sound is amazingly clear on the Zire 72.
Thanks for the info. It sounds like Audible would be a pretty good deal for me. I’m not sure if I’d join for a year for the $100.00 credit, but I’d probably try it out.
Now if only I get off the fence and buy the damn iPod.
This is the dilemma that started me thinking about joining Audible. The public library has enough books on CD to keep me busy for years, but I’m not wholly comfortable ripping a copy for my own use, even if I delete it when I’m finished. $19.95 won’t break the Bank of Pyrrhonist and the writers of the books will get paid.
If Audible didn’t have a book available, but the Library did, maybe I’d consider ripping a temporary copy. But somehow it doesn’t seem quite right.
I can’t speak for Audible.com here, but my experience with similar situations is that what you’d need to do is sign up, download your book(s), and cancel your membership if you don’t want to continue. Otherwise (as you say), “your credit card is automatically charged each month unless you cancel your subscription.”
I suspect that the only bit that expires is the “free” part.
But I like Audible. I’ve had a couple of questions and minor problems over the past couple of years, and they helped me quickly and gave me good information. And they have a pretty good selection of books, including lots of Terry Pratchett!
Thanks for the info Archergal. I signed up with audible.com . It has an amazing collection, and it sounds so damn clear on my device. I love it.
I’ll have to cancel it before my free month is out, or else they’ll auto-charge my card. Thing is, they only take cancellation requests by phone. Which shouldn’t be too much of a problem, but I’d still prefer if they had a “Cancel my Account” link.
I had free credits for 1 audio book, and 2 periodicals/radio programs. I got myself Stephen Hawking’s The Universe in a Nutshell (Unabridged)*, the NY Times and an NPR radio show called Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me.
For anyone who’s interested in a free month of audible.com, email me.
Yup. It’s so easy to get INTO these things. To get out, not so much.
Enjoy your audio books! I just finished listening to one (Deep Wizardry, by Diane Duane) while I was finishing up a blanket for a baby shower this weekend. Next book: City of Bones, by Michael Connolly. I like to mix things up.
I’ve been a member for a little over a year, and no big complaints… found out about it through a list of links about ebooks you could get and play on microsoft reader with your pocket PC…
I burn titles to CD, play them on the free Otis player they sent me with my membership, or listen to them on computers. (I’ve had a few problems with the pocket PC interface, and the sound quality isn’t great, so I mostly don’t bother with that actually.) Will probably cancel in some months more, once I’m having a hard time finding titles I’m interested in, but right now I’m still an enthusiastic member.
xash: wasn’t there a link to buy a trial title for the list price if you didn’t want to sign up for the monthly deal at all? That’s what I did, and I think I recommend it.
I LOVE audible.com. Since I travel a lot, these are a godsend. At first, I didn’t become a member and just bought directly from them and burned CDs. I joined about 2 months ago and cannot be happier…and I got the MuVo mp3 player which is very, very good…if not a little hard to manage since the books themselves are their own sections! I’ve accidently hit the forward button and lost my place in the book. :smack:
They now have the My Next Listen tab which is similar to the Wish List, whereby you order the books you want to download with the next month’s credits. I find this very handy since I did worry about losing credits if I didn’t visit the site. Now I have a few in the queue and it’s like Christmas when I do visit!
I get the 2 books a month deal they have there, since I can listen to Car Talk, Wait…Wait… and This American Life for free from their websites so I don’t see the point of subscribing.
I’ve gotten all the David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell, some Keith Ablow and Lisa Gardner. I’d love some other recommendations.
I liked city of bones, very enjoyable. Wasnt too happy with Just one look/Harlan Coben. Ended up geting it on both tape and cd…oops.Donated them to my library.
Anybody into food should get the cooks tour by tony bourdain…VERY good.
I’m into my third month of premium subscription service at Audible. I’m quite pleased, so far. As of yet, I haven’t needed to call the notorious customer service line, so can’t validate the bad rumors I’ve heard about it.
At $19.95 per month for two unabridged books, it’s a damn good deal.
The selection is reasonably good. It seems a little heavy on the current bestsellers and all that ilk, but I can’t really fault them for that. There are deeper selections as well.
The Bush/Kerry debate was a free download. Can’t beat that.
The books I’ve gotten so far:
The Castle—Very Good. The Exorcist—Excellent, read by the author in a deep, sonorous voice.* Islam, a Short History—Okay. Underworld—Very Good
I have decided on this month’s selections yet as I’ve still got 5 hours of Underworld to finish.
*May not truly be unabridged. I listened to the end confrontation between Karras and Regan and/or the Devil while reading the text. (I think hearing the text read by the author and reading along is very interesting.) A few words here and there were edited out. The words are spoken by the Devil and deal with source of Karras’s crisis of faith. I won’t spoil it, but it is interesting that the author decided to edit out the Devil’s proclamations, especially if he did it for the reason I think he did
