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Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing

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Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing

#21

Post by goldcd »

_i____ii_______ wrote: post #3

Audible's greatest assault is on my wallet. So many audiobooks on that platform are exorbitantly expensive.

Individual prices of books exist solely to push you towards the monthly x-many-books model - which is pretty good value.

I've been a member since 2005/6 (pre-amazon ownership) and I think my longest recurrent monthly thing.

Audiobooks were historically insanely expensive - I used to borrow massive folders of cassette taps from my library of 'unabridged books' back in the 90s. Staple of my family holidays trapped in a car.

Audible the company was the first/only as far as I'm aware company to work out that audiobooks were the 'premium podcast' and actually bother to sell them at a reasonable rate.

Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing

#22

Post by matwood »

Causality1 wrote: post #16
kurthr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kinda, but I admit to being confused as well... 'It’s simplistic but not entirely inaccurate to say that Audible’s parent, Amazon, is to book publishing what Facebook and Google are to magazines: the troll under the bridge whose idea of a toll is to devour consumers and competitors whole.' and 'On the train to get coffee with a well-meaning writer twenty years your senior who will advise you to “climb the ladder” lik…

Audiobooks are rather unique in that you have to maintain a degree of mental discipline to avoid giving into the temptation to treat them as background noise. My personal strategy is to stick to lighthearted podcasts when I'm doing something that requires cognitive attention like web browsing or gaming and save the audiobooks for truly routine tasks like commuting to work or cutting the grass. I've also gotten good r…

I'm similar, except when I'm at the computer I only listen to music. I could turn on a podcast, but will hear absolutely zero of what is said.

Podcasts are great for the gym, drive, and yard work though.

For books, I prefer to read. The pacing of reading allows me to think more deeply about the content. Admittedly, I do not read a lot of throw away novels. If I did, maybe they could take the place of podcasts.

Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing

#23

Post by sorenjan »

carrja99 wrote: post #7

I just love audio books. I listen to them while walking the dog, working out or doing chores around the house.

I've tried it a few times, but I have a few problems with them:

I can't skip boring parts, like long descriptions or other annoying parts.

I zone out from time to time when doing other things, and I have to skip back and try to find where I lost track.

Sometimes I have to go back and reread numbers, names, and other important info, but that's much harder with audio.

Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing

#24

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

_i____ii_______ wrote: post #3

Audible's greatest assault is on my wallet. So many audiobooks on that platform are exorbitantly expensive.

Depending on how many books you read, it might be well worth buying a Platinum Membership. It costs $229.50/year and it comes with 24 credits, which means you pay $9.56 per book. After that you can buy additional credits for roughly the same rate, based on my purchase history it varies between $9.56 and $9.37 per credits.

I definitely wouldn't have bought as many as I have if it wasn't so cheap. I just recently passed my 400th book, which is pretty insane because there's still TONS of stuff for me to work through. Assuming each book was priced at $9.56, my library would be worth around ~$3,800. That's an amazing price! That's less money than I paid for my car, and the audiobooks have greatly enriched my life in all sorts of ways.

Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing

#25

Post by Ozzie_osman »

My problem with audio books is that they are long, and I can't skip around, and listening in bursts of 10-15 mins ends up being inefficient and disorienting.

I've been using Spokn, which provides narration of high quality articles from HBR, NYT, etc. Works a lot better for my schedule.

Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing

#26

Post by sorenjan »

goldcd wrote: post #21
_i____ii_______ wrote: post #3

Audible's greatest assault is on my wallet. So many audiobooks on that platform are exorbitantly expensive.

Individual prices of books exist solely to push you towards the monthly x-many-books model - which is pretty good value. I've been a member since 2005/6 (pre-amazon ownership) and I think my longest recurrent monthly thing. Audiobooks were historically insanely expensive - I used to borrow massive folders of cassette taps from my library of 'unabridged books' back in the 90s. Staple of my family holidays trapped in a…

How come audio books can be as or even more expensive than the same book in paper format? There's no production, shipping, and so on involved with digital products, and the recording itself is a few hours with the voice talent, often the author themselves, and a few more people in a small studio.

Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing

#27

Post by goldcd »

gman83 wrote: post #9
raverbashing wrote: post #6

Well, you are free to not do it In fact I can't stand podcasts or similars for the most part as I can't do some things while listening to it. Maybe driving but that's it. As much as it's nice to learn stuff, at some point it is just shallow edutainment (as much as I like some of the science yt channels)

I like podcasts because it turns things that I used to absolutely hate doing like dishes or gardening into somewhat enjoyable for me.

I could not agree more.

Audiobooks and podcasts are one of my favourite things. If I need to concentrate there's music - if I have to do some mundane physical task that used to bore the bejeezus out of me, I now have them.

I even enjoy the mundane tasks - as gives me time to enjoy the information pumped into my ears, and actually get something useful done at the same time. (Today I decided as spring was hear, I'd spend an hour removing the worst offending weeds from my garden).

Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing

#28

Post by Ozzie_osman »

sorenjan wrote: post #23
carrja99 wrote: post #7

I just love audio books. I listen to them while walking the dog, working out or doing chores around the house.

I've tried it a few times, but I have a few problems with them: I can't skip boring parts, like long descriptions or other annoying parts. I zone out from time to time when doing other things, and I have to skip back and try to find where I lost track. Sometimes I have to go back and reread numbers, names, and other important info, but that's much harder with audio.

Just posted about this as a top-level. But might be worth trying Spokn.

In general I usually have 10-15 mins in free time increments. Audio books don't work for me for that reason. Narrated articles do.

Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing

#30

Post by jrumbut »

sorenjan wrote: post #23
carrja99 wrote: post #7

I just love audio books. I listen to them while walking the dog, working out or doing chores around the house.

I've tried it a few times, but I have a few problems with them: I can't skip boring parts, like long descriptions or other annoying parts. I zone out from time to time when doing other things, and I have to skip back and try to find where I lost track. Sometimes I have to go back and reread numbers, names, and other important info, but that's much harder with audio.

Boring parts are the reason I do audio books (which in my mind I still call books on tape). I listen primarily to massive ancient works like The Illiad, Parallel Lives, and Herodotus' Histories that are impenetrable to me in text because they have enormous sections devoted to lists of ancient names or inaccurate dimensions of Egypt that I can just zone out to during a drive.

Of course you can skip those parts in text but if you half listen to them you get to say you heard the whole thing and you begin to appreciate the role they played in the work and the influence they had on later authors and politicians.

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