The Great Big Audible Q&A
If you’ve been around here long, you know I’ve got a thing for good audiobooks.
I still love to be read to myself, and my kids just love an audiobook read by a skilled narrator.
Audible is one of my favorite place to get audiobooks, as they make finding and streaming audiobooks a breeze. I love how easy they are to buy, play, and bookmark.
If you’re looking for FREE audiobooks, you can find a list the RAR Community compiled of free favorite audiobooks and narrators from Librivox right here.
I prefer the Audible service for ease of use and sound quality, but you can find a lot of public domain classics for free on Librivox, if that’s better for your budget.
My favorite place for audiobooks: Audible
Because we have a list of Audiobook Favorites, I get a lot of questions about the Audible service itself.
This page is a collection of those questions and answers. If you have a question that isn’t answered here, your best bet is to contact Audible’s awesome customer service team.
Click on any of the following questions to go straight to the answer:
- Should I pay for an Audible subscription?
- How to get Audible books without a subscription
- How to make sure you’re not getting charged the subscription fee
- Does listening on my phone use data?
- RAR Audiobook Favorites
- How to listen to Audible books (with or without a subscription)
- How to play an audiobook for a family
- Good times and places for audiobooks
Should I pay for an Audible subscription?
Here’s the short story: you don’t need an Audible subscription to listen to audiobooks on Audible.
Audible is an Amazon company, and you can buy Audible books individually on Amazon, then listen to them in the free Audible app.
An Audible subscription gives you two main benefits:
- A credit. Each month you get 1 credit in exchange for your monthly membership fee of $14.95. You can use this credit on anything you please. I like to use mine on audiobooks that would otherwise cost me more than the $14.95 subscription fee.
- A 30% discount on other audiobooks. If you’re like me and you want to purchase more than one audiobook per month, you can do that at a discounted rate when you’re a paid subscriber.
That’s basically it. For me, it’s worth it. I save a boatload of money by making my expensive Audible purchases using my credits, and then I fill up my audiobook library by snagging deals and buying those a la carte (keep reading to find out more about that).
But you definitely don’t need to pay for an Audible subscription to get great books (and deals!) from Audible.
Here are some examples of the more expensive books I’ve used my Audible credits on:
How to get Audible books without a subscription
Even without an Audible subscription, you can buy as many audiobooks as you’d like individually, by purchasing them on Amazon – although you must do this on your computer – not mobile.
On the following screenshot, I would select “buy with 1-click” to purchase the book. (You can get a free audiobook by signing up for a 30-day trial, though, so you could always do that first, then cancel. Just don’t forget to cancel if you don’t want to be charged in 30 days!)
Once you’ve purchased them, download the free Audible app on whichever device you’d like to listen to the book on – your phone, computer, tablet, or (some versions of) Kindle.
Log in to the app using your Amazon sign-in, and you’re good to go.
How to make sure you’re not getting charged the subscription fee
Worried that you might get charged that $15/month Audible subscription fee? Just check in your account there.
Go right here –> audible.com/account-details and manage your membership from there.
You’ll see if you’re going to be charged for a membership and can cancel that at any time. Even if you cancel your membership, you get to keep all of your Audible books (they’re YOURS, remember?) and can listen to them with the Audible app, even without a subscription.
Does listening on my phone use data?
It depends. Downloading a book to your phone will use data if you aren’t hooked up to Wifi. But once the book is downloaded on your device, it won’t use data to play.
I always have whatever I’m currently listening to downloaded onto my phone, so that I can listen without using data.
To play only downloaded books in the Audible app, toggle to “Downloaded” at the top of your phone scree. These are the books that are downloaded to your device (they won’t use data when I listen to them.)
If you toggle to “All Titles” you can see all of the books in my account. You can click on any to automatically download one to your phone.
TIP: As soon as I’m done listening, I delete the book off my device.
RAR Audiobook Favorites
Do we have any audiobooks to suggest? You bet we do! You can find a whole list here.
How to listen to Audible books (with or without a subscription)
So you’ve grabbed an Audible deal and now you want to listen to it, right?
You need to download the free Audible app onto whichever device you’ll be listening on (your phone, tablet, kindle, or computer).
You can even download the app onto multiple devices, and Audible will keep the audiobooks synced up for you.
How to play an audiobook for a family
I’m pretty low-tech, believe it or not, so when I’m playing audiobooks for multiple kids, sometimes I plop my phone into a glass cup and call it good. The cup really does amplify sound quite well!
We also bought one of these Sony Boomboxes, and I really love it. It plays both CD’s and connects to the Bluetooth on my phone (so we can listen to all those Audible books on it!)
I’m not sure why it has mediocre Amazon reviews – I’ve used mine for a year and still love it. Sometimes it goes on sale on Amazon (I bought it for $68.)
Good times and places for audiobooks
Anywhere you please! We get this question a lot, so I’ll share a few places where we listen to audiobooks in my home:
- At the table with coloring books/drawing/Lego/play dough, etc
- During quiet time in their own bedrooms
- In the car
- With headphones, while doing chores (I love listening while I clean or make dinner)
- While folding laundry (you just need a speaker or to use my glass cup trick to amplify sound – I get all my big kids to help with laundry doing this!)
- During breakfast or lunch, to keep the squabbling to a minimum
- Outside while doing yardwork
- On the treadmill or when going for a walk
Sometimes we listen as a group; sometimes we listen on our own. We get in so much more reading than we would otherwise, though, by including audiobooks into our normal routines.
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Thank you for this FAQ page. My MIL just gave us her two iPods. One is a 2G and the other a 4G. Neither can download apps. How do I go about getting the audible books on them?
Thanks-
Lacey
Well, at long last Audible launched a deals page: https://www.audible.com/ep/audiobook-deals That will help find the Daily Deal AND whatever sales they are running. I’ve seen membership sales recently too, so you might be able to get introductory offers less than $14.95/month!
The audible channels that comes with the Amazon Prime membership is $60/year worth according to Amazon but the audible subscription (Amazon too?) you talked about in this post is $180/year. What is the difference? Do I get to borrow unlimited audible books in both cases? If you can explain the difference, it is much appreciated.
Question- I have an audible subscription. Love your audible deals list and have signed up. However, I have read I should use my credits for expensive books and just buy the inexpensive ones, like the ones listed in your list. Makes sense but I haven’t been doing that. Is that what you recommend? Where is a list of books to buy with the credits? Thanks so much!!!
Any advice on how to listen to audible (from an iPhone) while in a car with kids? This would be for an older vehicle which doesn’t have updated sound system and I’m unable to “plug my phone in” to the speaker system of the vehicle. :-) Thanks!
I was going to take our Bluetooth speaker along in the van recently because we were in the middle of our audio book but I husband informed me we actually have a place I can plug my phone in (I didn’t know this for 2 years!). We have a Bose speaker (upfront investment) and it has a long battery life and great sound quality. Would work well in the van.
Is there a way to preview the sound of the book readings on Audible.? I find there are certain books that I don’t like the way they are read orally when I purchase an audible book.
Amy–if you head to the book’s page on Amazon and make sure the audio version is selected, you can usually hear a sample.
One thing I have discovered to find deals on books I am looking for specifically is to put them on my audible wish list. We use Sonlight and I sit down once and put all the books I can find on my wish list. Once when I saw an email sent from Sarah listing audiobook deals, I looked at my wish list and realized the discount was listed right there next to the price! A $25 book was dropped to $2!!! I plan to check my wish list more frequently now. Dropping $2 was so much easier than deciding when the $25 was going to be more valuable than the time it took me to read the book aloud. We read our Sonlight books during meals, so listen to audiobooks frees me up so I can eat when I’m hungry! LOL!
Thanks for this great tip! And three cheers for mama getting to eat too!
You mentioned in the post that you download the audio books onto your phone, where you play them there without using data — just saved to your phone. This makes me wonder if the audio books can similarly be downloaded onto the computer. Specifically, I’d like to be able to download the audio book and then burn it onto a CD so that my child can play it in the CD player. I’m not big on Wi-fi, especially for children, and my child likes having access to his audio book CDs to play them whenever he likes. We’ve had issues with library copies being scratched (thus leaving out whole sections of a story sometimes), and sometimes our own copies have gotten scratched and don’t play properly as well. This is especially an issue with our beloved Winnie the Pooh collection read by Peter Dennis. My child has the whole darn thing memorized… yeah, it’s been played quite a bit. And I see that the second set of that collection is currently on your Audible deals page. So it occurred to me that if it’s possible to download and burn onto a CD, I could just make a copy for him to use with his CD player, and still have the original file on my computer in case something happens to his CD copy. Would this work? I don’t want to spend $20 on a new set each time it gets scratched up. But what can I say? He simply can’t get enough of those stories. It truly is a fantastic collection – highly recommended!
It does look like burning to cd is an option for some devices/software. Here’s an article to start with: http://audible.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/9246/kw/burn%20cd But I would recommend reading more about your specific device and asking questions on the Audible help site.
Hi, is it possible to buy an Audiobook as a gift and send it to there email
Thanks,
Leona Good
Here’s information about Audible Gift Certificates: http://audible.custhelp.com/app/browse/session/L3RpbWUvMTUwNzI0MzUxMy9zaWQvdHRrX1NydW4%3D/c/3086
Kind of like the Canadian question but any tips for getting good audio book deals internationally? I’m in Australia and the deals generally aren’t available here that are there for US.
Im in Australia and have hit and misses with the audio book deals. Sometimes I have clicked over from Sarah’s site and bought the book from amazon.com and it has all worked well. Sometimes it says that the book isn’t available to Australians. Then sometimes it lets me buy the book and then it never appears in my audible library. That seems to be happening more and more so I think I just need to only use the audible site and stay away from amazon. It makes me sad that we can’t get any of the special prices though.
I would definitely try contacting Audible customer service if you have been paying for books and not receiving them. We have found them very helpful and responsive.
Would someone please recommend some quality headphones for kids? My children (ages 3 – 12) listen to audiobooks daily on their iPods. We’ve been using Sony brand headphones and I keep having to replace them.
Thanks!
Have you ever tried to return an Audible? I usually check out from the library or Hoopla because of the “I don’t like the narrator’s voice” syndrome.
Narrators can make or break a book! We have had excellent customer service with Audible–especially using the chat feature on their website.
I wonder why you don’t mention libraries for audio books. They are ALL FREE!!! You can download them onto any device with apps like Overdrive or you can get your audio books on CD if you’re like me and have young kids without devices and a CD player is just easier.
So glad to hear that you are listening via your library collection, Tara! We are BIG library users. At the very top of the post, Sarah shared our favorite picks from Librivox too–another free service!
We are definitely interested in the Audible deals— Thank you!!
How can you tell if the book on Audible is unabridged or abridged?
You have to find that information on audible.com. The deals that I share are always unabridged, unless I add a warning to it (I haven’t actually shared any abridged versions yet).
Great information. You have inspired me to get some Audable books. So far we have just been using the library for books on tape / CD. I am also low tech and going to try the tea cup amplifier tip. :)
Thank you for the info! How do you listen in the car if you can only listen through the audible app? I also have an old Sansa mp3 player…I am guessing that won’t work either? I am not a tech junkie. Lol ;)
I know people who plug their phone into a bluetooth speaker in the car. We don’t actually listen in the car right now because the sound system in my 12-passenger van isn’t so hot, lol. ;) I think there are adaptors to hook your phone up to the speaker system in your car, if you don’t have a USB port. (None of our cars have USB.)
Our car has neither bluetooth or an auxiliary jack to plug the phone into, so we purchased what is called an FM transmitter. You plug it into the headphone jack on your device, and then it transmits it as an FM radio signal. You then tune your car radio to whatever station you’ve chosen, and you can now hear it all through the car stereo! I purchased a battery operated one, but if I was going to buy another one, I’d get one that plugs into the cigarette lighter so you don’t have to worry about batteries going dead. The upside of the battery one is that we can use it in the house as well. I can plug it in to the device and each kid can go in their room and tune in on their clock radio.
I was wondering if you could explain a little more how getting these deals in Canada works. There is no Whispersync available in Canada yet, and I am a little confused how to buy the book on Amazon.ca then go to audible?…perhaps one of your Canadian subscribers could illuminate me?
As a Canadian subscriber, I’d also love to figure this out!
I’m hoping one of them will come tell us! I think it can be tricky to find *just* the right Kindle version of a book that will give you the audio book upgrade with the narrator you’re wanting.
Hello! I’m Canadian and I use the Kindle/Audible deals all the time, and I do all of it through Amazon (I don’t go to the audible site unless I want to download a hard copy to my iTunes)
BUT there are a couple of tricks. You HAVE to be on a web browser, you cannot do this from the Amazon app.
The other trick is that you need to be on the US site, Amazon.COM as opposed to Amazon.ca
Your login info is the same for the Canadian/American sites, and the accounts are linked so if you’ve already bought a Kindle book on the Canadian page, it should still recognize that you own that Kindlebook when you’re on the American side.
So, head over to Amazon.COM, find your book, and buy the Kindle version FIRST.
THEN, after you own the Kindlebook it will recognize “hey! You have this in Kindle format!” And the price for the Audible book will change, and then you are able to purchase the Audible version.
Yes it’s two separate purchases but it doesn’t matter because there are no extra costs (shipping, etc etc) it’s just an automatic “one click” purchase.
I hope that helps!! :)
Thank you, thank you! This was so helpful!
We love Audible in our house too and I am so grateful to you and your team for sharing the deals. We too are low-tech and use a mug that the handle broke as our “speaker.”
One feature that I love is the Kibdle/Audible seamless integration (called whispersync)
I only have the kindle spp on my phone (no audible app).
When I download the kindle book, then adds the audible narration, a little headset will appear on top of my ebook cover in my kindle library, meaning I can now switch between reading or listening to the book (and it will keep my spot in either version)
Really cool!
Thanks for the tip, Sarah! I didn’t realize you could listen just through the Kindle app!
Thank you for this SUPER helpful post! I have purchased ((SEVERAL)) audio book deals from your affiliate links… and I always told myself I’d take time “one of these days” to figure out how to actually PLAY them. You just saved me tons of time! I was actually pleasantly surprised to see all the goodies I had squirreled away in there. :)
Woot!
Thank you for all the questions answered! Super helpful!