My daughter (19) works at a warehouse job and listens to a lot of audiobooks.
I’d like to gift her a subscription to a service, but I don’t know much about the options. She had audible for a while. I just use Libby.
What audio book services do you recommend?
I use Downpour. They all kind of have the same pricing service. $12ish for a monthly one credit, buy more at the same price. Downpour lets you either use their app for syncing or just download the MP3 and/or M4B (a format similar to MP3 but with chapter stops for books) to use however you’d like.
Though I’m not sure it supports gifting. Someone else suggested Libro.FM which is very similar but I know does have gifting.
I avoid Audible personally, they’ve historically taken a huge cut from authors. I can get basically the same deal everywhere else. If you’re curious check out Brandon Sanderson’s various posts or media releases about the topic.
You could try Scribid
https://www.scribd.com/slideshare
2 months free trial. I used it a while back. Signed up for trial the immediately cancelled. I primarily use audible these days.
I’ve had an Audible subscription for a long time, but you don’t really own the content. I found a way to download and unlock the content and as soon as I’ve used up all my credits, I’ll cancel it.
Spotify has an audiobook program, but there was mention a few days ago that they have changed their terms and conditions to mess with the content rights of authors. They also have this strange metering system where as part of the service you get so many hours of listening and then have to purchase additional credits to finish the book, or wait until next billing cycle.
Libby and Hoopla are both tied to public libraries and are free, but you have to put holds on popular audiobooks and wait.
Another interesting service is Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/plus. They have an all-you-can eat plan for audiobooks as well as ebooks+audiobooks. I haven’t used them, but will after I cancel Audible.
There are services like https://audie.ai/ that use AI to turn textbooks into audiobooks. There are a lot of them out there. Most are targeted at authors or publishers, but there are also projects to convert Project Guttenberg books into audiobooks: https://www.csail.mit.edu/news/ai-generates-thousands-free-audiobooks
Has anyone tried Everand? https://www.everand.com/
A podcast app that supports RSS would also be a good idea.
