Category: book Nook
The subject line pretty much sums it up. Those of you that belong or have belonged to audible, is it worth it?
I personally find it expensive. I believe I'm reading it correctly, $14.95 for the cheepest plan? So this gives me one book a month? I just can't fully wrap my head around purchasing digital books. Once I spend this $15 and read my book, I can't do anything with it. No selling it used, or turning it in for partial credit.
Lol, it feels like a bummer to me! AS if I'm just wasting most of that $15.
Thoughts and suggestions are welcome! I've looked at other book rental programs, but it is way more expensive, then say, netflix or something. *smile*
I would have thought that thatt would give you 2 books, its worth it if you read a lot, to buy the bookss would cost around 60 each. Having said that i sometimes fine it hard to choose books. The selection is ok, but not the biggest, often there are books i know are available in audio but not on the audible service
I think it only gives you one book. $60 for each book? Holy wow! I thought I was reading around $25 or so for each book.
I have a few complaints with audible books. Firstly I don't like to have audio files that are longer than a CD in length, that is to say around seventy five minutes of audio in any one file is about as much as I want. Audible files are extremely long. I'm not exactly sure how they determine a cut point for a file but to give an example, a book of approximately 12 hours in length will come in just two files. I don't want that so that is problem one.
Secondly is the audio quality that audible provides. Some people are apparently perfectly content to listen to audio books that sound as though the narrator has his or her head submerged in a bucket of mud. If you're content with that then of course that is your business, however, if I'm going to fork out money to buy a book to listen too, I expect considerably better than that.
Lastly I don't like their proprietary format nonsense. I wish for my audio books to be in a format that can be played by any media player or easily transferred to any portable device. In short, I want .MP3 files, not .AA files. I've paid for it, therefore I want to be able to do as I wish with it.
So if you'd be content with all of the above then audible is certainly the way to go. Unquestionably it is cheaper than alternate ways of getting books, but if any of the above sounds as though it would irk you as much as it does me, then I'm afraid that you're going to have to shell out a little more to either find other sites to download from, or by the book on disk or cassette.
Just a word on buying books away from audible, it isn't true to just whack a $60 price tag on like Jack G has and say that all audio books will cost you that much to buy on CD. I have certainly seen books priced that highly, but far from all books. For example I am a huge follower of the Jack Reacher series written by Lee Child. I buy those books on CD from Amazon every year when they come out and it has always cost me between $25 and $30 for the unabridged book which has always been on 10, 11 or 12 disks. If you can find books on .MP3 CD's you can often get them even a little cheaper.
Hope all that is at least of some help.
Dan.
I have to disagree slightly with Dan, doesn'thappen often but there you go.
I don't like my formats centerred around the lengt of a cd, so a long audio file bothers me less than getting a book, say, on 12 cds I either have to carry around with me along with an arcane player or go through the wor,k of ripping them. That being said, I wish there was a program to split the files from Audible down into pieces you want, say an option to split a book by chapter. I like the fact there is just a few files to download but it'd be good to be able to split them up afterwards.
I have aowrked in text book production, as a project manager, and I have seen first hand how near impossible it is to get a publisher to allow you to produce a book in .mp3 format. They think these books automatically will be downloaded on every single mp3 player all over the world and they will lose all their revenue. I think illegal downloads of books and movies are a bit different from music downloads, in a sense, because I think the majority of books and movies are a one-time pleasure, whereas music is more of an investment, so I see some grounds for their worries. So the proprietary format is a nuisance but inevitable at this stage, and I have to command Audible for doing a lot of work porting their format or integrating it with hardware music players. The large majority of players you get today will support Audible, though my Creative player, for instance, does not do it well. If I stop in the midst of an audio file I cannot go backwards by any means, I have to start at that point, which is pretty annoying, and multiple bookmarks are impossible. Still it's not like you need their special player, their desktop player is not a great piece of software and they should be compatible with Winamp, foobar and other desktop players, which they aren't, but still I think they've done a reasonably good job.
And thirdly it is a lot of extra expense to produce an audio book. In Iceland I know we pay non-professional readers the equivalent of $30 a recorded hour. For professionals I have heard they read the book 3 to 4 times before they record it, they must demand a higher rate and so I would not be surprised to see each recorded hour charged at $200 to $300 so for, say, a 10 hour book it is $3000 and, given $15 a download they need 200 downloads to justify the cost. For some books that is no problem, but for some it probably is a stretch, so they must use profits from the blockbuster books to finance the less well known ones.
I still would like to see a cheaper format that would self destruct in, say, 2 weeks, so it would be more like borrowing a book than buying it, and those might be charged at, say, $3 or something.
But what I appreciate the most about their services is that it is a site I can go on and buy and download my book, no proof of blindness needed, no membership in some foundation or other, no waiting and minimal hassle.
Keep in mind you get 3 months for $7.49 with one book redit each, and there are sales with 50% off from time to time, every 3 to 6 months, so you can get books cheaper than $15 sometimes.
I think it is a step in the right direction, taking a format for the blind primarily and trying to popularize it for, say, people driving or working out etc, thus expanding the market, which may increase the availability of books and bring prices down.
With the suggestions Imade above I'd very much like Audible, even without them I am a subscriber, just for my appreciation of what they are doing, despite their shortcomings.
cheers
-B
Total Recorder can split the books and converting the files in to mp3 or whatever format you wish. I don't think this is illegal, since you already purchased the books. It becomes a problem when you start sharing things. I'd recommend the professional adition so that you can run total recorder while you are using your screen reader.
www.highcriteria.com
Anyone had any issues unsubscribing? Say I only stick around for the 3-months. *smle*
i like audible, ti's a real good site.
I have discontinued my subscription and resubscribed later with no problems, they kept my library of books in tact so I could still log in and download my books even if I had discontinued paid subscription.
So, in my experience, there are no problems.
Of course I could laways just be lucky.
Sixty bucks? I've never run across a book that even cost close to that much. The closest I've seen is about thirty. And those usually are longer and require, say three parts to download. I'm currently subscribed to the second cheapest plan, which is 23 bucks for two credits. And since the credits don't expire, contrary to what I've heard on here occasionally, I've had as many as four or six some months. You can have a maximum of twelve at one time. But even though I read a lot this generally works for me. And even if you use up your credits one month you get something of a discount for actually buying the books if you're a member. And i have to disagree about the audio quality. I've never had problems with that either.
When I subscribed 4 years ago to about 3 or 2 and a half years ago, it was true that your credit expired at the end of the month if you had not downloaded it, something I had a huge issue with.
I just started subscribing again and have used up my credits before the end of the month, but I am glad to hear that this is no longer the case, as I always felt a little bit cheated, because I paid for the credit and I should be in charge of when I use it, at least within reasonable time limits, say 6 months. I could be on a month long trip or forget for 3 days to download my book and my credit was gone.
So, thumbs up to them for having fixed this.
Wow, have y'all seen the offer if you sign up for Audable for a year, you get $00 off an audable compatible player? This would include an iPod touch.
i signed up to audible and pay 7 a month for one credit i reckon its worth it as i usually try and get the more expensive books with my credit so ive only paied 7 for a 30 pound book and i think they have quite a good selection.
i use audible but have not signed up to a plan as yet. i have to convert the files to mp3 to get my plextalk to play them, which i only discovered after downloading my first book,and it just seems like a bit of hassle to do this every time, but having said that, once converted the files work well, the quality is great and most of the books I want are on there. plus I can get them straight away pretty much. so yeah, from my point of view they are worth it.
I have been a subscriber to audible for about 2 years now. So far I have had no problems with the site, or the quality of the books. I think their selection is great too.
That's why I like the VR Stream. You don't have to convert the files in order for it to play them.
Let me just say this, most books that are put out by the company known as "recorded books" are 60 and up if you buy directly from them. Often in a bookstore, the books are 35 to 45 dollars a pop. What I love about audible is they do their best to grow and get the books their customers ask for. I am on the platnum plan which means I pay 23 dollars a month for 2 credits, which means I can get two books a month. there's no way to buy an unabridged book for twelve dollars and fifty cents, and if you're a member, the books are I think .3 percent less than the regular price. I love audible. I subscribed right before I went to college and have had no problems. To me, it is well worth the money! Also I think they've added another level of quality that's better than the quality 4 files. I can't remember what it's called though.:) Good luck!
I have seen books that were as high as 120 dollars, and I am not kidding. So... yes, when I found those books on audible for 40 and one credit, I jumped at it.
I also love audible! I get books for fun and school there at a great price and it is extremely accessible.
Have had no problems with audible.We don't have a membership but just buy the books we want and I think their readers are really good and have had no quality issues either.
i don't get the beef with the file length. if you listen on the stupid library they have you hcan have that proble, but it is very easy to download to a stream or other portable device.
Yeah. I do that all the time. And they have most of the books I want. And the ones they don't have at one time they might get sooner or later.
Speaking of books, I found a good book from audible that is absolutely awesome! It's called "The Help." I posted a topic about it already.:)
Is the platinum plan the highest plan that you can get with Audible? And the iPod Touch can play Audible files? Because that's what I have and I also have a Stream as a backup.
The IPod Touch can indeed play Audible files. In fact I'm listening to one right now as I write this. It works quite well actually.
not to sound stupid, but doesn't IPod touch mean it's touch screen? If so, how can you use it effectively?
Apple put their own screen reader on the latest versions of the unit. When it's enabled, Voiceover changes the way the touch screen operates. Normally of course, touching an option would activate it. With Voiceover enabled, touching an option merely highlights it and speaks it. To actually activate it you have to do a sort of double tap with a finger. I was extremely skeptical at first but it does work quite well actually.
sweet!
Thank you
Jen
You're welcome. And as an added bonus it's easy to enable Voiceover without sighted help, although you do have to use ITunes to do it this way. Fortunately ITunes has become fairly accessible with Window-Eyes at least and possibly with the latest JAWS as well, although I wouldn't know about that. I haven't used JAWS in about three years.
I resubscribed to Audible, but my problem now is that I cannot seem to get my books into MP3 format. When I try and do that it cuts off the last 20 minutes of the book! I want to be able to get the books I want and read them legally, but seriously? Can anyone help?
Kate
Wow. I've never had that problem. Granted I've never tried converting them to mp3.
I finally got it working.. yeehaw!
Glad to hear you found something that works for you.