Getting Cheaper Audible Books

David Griffith examines a variety of cheaper options for purchasing Audible Books.

As the major source of commercial Audio Books across the world Audible is an important resource for Blind and Visually Impaired people.

However Audible deliberately makes purchasing individual Books extremely expensive. Most popular Audio Books will cost anything from £25 to £35 . Although Short Novella style books are also available for under £20, it nevertheless makes no financial sense to purchase individual books. After purchasing 2 or 3 books you will be spending as much, if not more than a yearly subscription .

Therefore if you want access to Audible books you really need to bite the bullet and take out a subscription, even if this means canceling it at a later stage.

Audible also offer a free book with trial membership and a reduced rate for your first few months of subscriptions.

Plans

Audible offer 4 plans which are summarized below.

1. 1 Book Monthly Membership £7.99/month- = £7.99 a book.

2. 2 Book Monthly Membership £14.99/month =£7.49 a book.

3. 12 Book Annual Membership £69.99/year =£5.83 a book.

4. 24 Book Annual Membership £109.99/year=£4.58 a book.

The last plan may be attractive if you intend to share books across your family.

So when an individual Audio Book is often price at £35 or more it is clear that subscription is the only way to go.

However You are not required to purchase a book every month. You can "save" and build up available credits ,though you cannot continue this indefinitely. The amount you can accumulate depends on the plan. On the 1 book monthly plan you can save up to 6 credits whilst for the 24 book yearly plan you can keep up to 36 credits at any one time.

Like, I think most, i started with a 1 book monthly membership to put my toe in the water. This scheme also has the advantage of, as well as the initial free book, a reduced subscription of £3.99 a month for the first few months.

Whilst this plan seemed good value compared to buying individual books I then worked out I was paying almost £95 a year to access 12 books. This looked very poor value when compared to the yearly plans. I was unnecessarily paying an extra £25 compared to the 12 book yearly plan or alternatively I could pay just another £15 and could add rights to purchase 12 additional books at just over a £1 a book.

Deals

Additionally If your credits fall to 1 or less Audible will offer the option to purchase 3 more credits. On the 1 book monthly plan these extra 3 credits will cost £18. for those on the 24 book yearly plans this is reduced to 3 extra credits for £11.

In addition there are many other ways of acquiring Audible books for less than the normal credit prices.

– There is a daily deal which will allow all Audible Members to purchase a specific audio book for one day only at either £1.99 or £2.99. You can subscribe to an e-mail alert which can notify you of each book available. It can be annoying if you miss a book for £1.99 that you subsequently have to spend a credit on .

Remember though that if you are ever tempted by an Audible offer, you should always check first that the book is not already available for free in the RNIB Overdrive library. Apparently the Listening Book library also has many titles offered by Audible and is available for a £20 subscription for Visually Impaired readers.

https://www.listening-books.org.uk/

On a couple of occasions I have found that indeed the RNIB have these books. In this way Audible has oddly prompted me to borrow books from the Overdrive Library I would probably not otherwise have done.

In addition periodically Audible will offer different members only sales.

– These include 2 for 1 sales where 1 credit will buy you 1 book or theme sales where books are available for perhaps £5 or less. These are useful sometimes if you want to buy a whole series of books.

Using Kindle

There is also the little known use of using Kindle Books to access Audible content.

If you are a Amazon prime member you can get a free monthly Kindle book from a selection for free. With Kindle books you can often purchase Audible Narration as a cheap extra. The cost of adding narration varies but is often £2.99 or £3.99.

– Similarly there is a Kindle Daily deal scheme which allows you to purchase books typically for 99p or perhaps £1.29. Again it is often possible to purchase Audible narration for these books.

– For example I used this system last week to purchase a Kindle daily deal book for 99p and then added Audible Narration for £2.99. Effectively then I bought an Audible Book for £3.98, well below the cost of an Audible credit. I will not even bother reading it as a Kindle book and will instead use Audible.

– The advantage of the Kindle daily deal system is that there is normally many more offers on books available to choose from than their Audible equivvalent. This is true generally for Kindle compared to Audible. For example there is currently an Autumn Kindle sale where 400 books are available at cheaper prices. Many of these will have optional Audible narration to purchase. Effectively then this is also an Audible Autumn sale though it is not publicized as such.

– Similarly to the Audible daily alerts you can get an e-mail for kindle daily book offers.

Note – once Audible narration is purchased the Audible book will simply be in your Audible library alongside all your other Audible Books to listen to as normal. They can be downloaded just like any other audible book to play in your preferred device.

Negotiation

Finally some report that if you contact Audible to cancel your plan you will be offered reduced terms for at least a while to maintain your membership. I have never actually done this however.

I hope that this post gives some food for thought on cheaper ways of accessing Audible

Acknowledgements.

Thanks to Ibrahim Gucukoglucontent who alerted me to the cheaper opportunities available through Audible yearly plans.

Thanks to Michael Allan for alerting me to the potential use of Listening Books.

Thanks finally to Dean Wilcox who reported the possibility of negotiating cheaper rates with Audible if you show intention to cancel.

David Griffith