I’ve been hearing commercials, mostly on various podcasts, for Audible for years now. Seriously. Years. And it didn’t really snag my interest until a few weeks ago. The basic spiel is that you pay $15 every month in exchange for an audiobook. Now, what’s obvious to the routine purchaser of audiobooks, is that that’s a good deal. Have you priced audiobooks lately? Any typical novel can cost between $20 and $30. A very long novel can run anywhere from $30 to $50. If you normally buy an audiobook every month, Audible’s an excellent idea. I, however, normally never bought any. For some reason I thought reading only ‘counted’ if I actually read the words myself. Having them read to me by a professional narrator seemed…somehow like cheating, as far as reading goes. (I’m not going to try to make that make sense.)
I’ve got an ever-growing list of books I want to read, either recommended by friends or written by friends, and I started to wonder how (or even if) I’d ever get around to them all. I decided to give Audible a try because the time I spend driving, doing chores, and working out amounts to quite a few hours every week. It seemed like a way to chisel into that impossibly long list of books. And, not surprisingly, it’s awesome to fill those spare hours with stories. So now I’m hooked. Three weeks in and I realize I’ve already become that aforementioned routine purchaser of audiobooks. The thing I never realized, during all those years of Audible commercials, is that once you sign up, the list prices actually drop. Many of those novels lose $10 in price once you sign up. I’m racking up a weighty wishlist of still-$30 books to use my $15-book-credit when each new month rolls around, and buying more affordable titles in the meantime. The only downside is that instead of chiseling away at the list of books, I’m actually just adding more and more to it.
Kelly Horn 