Audiobooks – My new way to Read (Listen)!

Since most of my work involves the laptop, my eyes get tired easily nowadays. I generally work for 45 minutes or 1 hour and then take a break.

During the breaks, I am unable to see the TV or read as my eyes need rest. So I was wondering how to engage myself productively during that time.

That’s when I came across Audible Audiobooks.

I have been listening to eBooks even before – I use a text to speech app on my Android phone, and a robotic voice would read books/documents to me.

As you could guess, this was not very engaging but I could grasp the content just fine.

However, there developed a bigger issue – to use the text to speech app I needed access to eBooks that were not protected by DRM. But nowadays most books come with DRM!

Even Google Play Books, that offers the ‘Read Aloud’ feature in its app, is unable to ‘read aloud’ many books as the publishers have not enabled this feature – it seems.

I was familiar with Amazon Audible Audiobooks earlier as well, but before their full-fledged launch in India, audiobooks were very expensive and even the monthly membership cost was quite high.

Amazon, being so sweet that it is, decided to offer monthly memberships at Rs. 199 for Indian readers with which we could download and listen to any one book per month from their platform.

This is a good deal considering that the same membership credit costs $14.99 USD abroad. So I instantly signed up for the Audible Membership. Have a look at Amazon Audible audiobook collection and signup from here. You get a free audiobook if you do!

The only issue now is, one credit is not enough. I finish an audiobook within a week. And I’ll have to wait for three more weeks to download another. I think I have some ten books currently in my wishlist!

I wonder why Amazon doesn’t allow us to buy more credits at Rs. 199 whenever we want.

I don’t know why buying individual audiobooks are so expensive – I am sure it takes more effort to think and write than to just read from a book. Hmm…

There are sites that list Audible audiobook deals & selections, but with my single credit, I am not able to listen to as many books as I want.

Nowadays I am reading non-fiction books, mostly about business, strategy, and marketing. Occasionally I read some biographies as well – I buy them when I spot a deal.

How about you? Are you reading books nowadays? Have you tried listening to audiobooks?

Destination Infinity

PS: Due to the COVID-19 situation, Scribd is offering their entire catalogue of Audiobooks & eBooks FREE for one month. You don’t have to submit any credit card details. Just make sure to sign up through the link in this post.

PS-2: The above link works and I have already signed up. Now I need to figure out how to create the time to listen to as many books as possible 🙂

PS-3: Amazon Audible has also come up with a free collection of audiobooks for kids & teens. They say it will be available for direct streaming (without having to create an account) until the schools restart. Click Here for details and Link.