We can't get enough of audiobooks
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
• downpour.com
• libro.fm
• audiobooksnow.com
(The last of these has a handful of DRM'd books, so you need to check the listing first, but the vast majority are DRM-free.)
While none of these retailers have as large a library as Audible, their offerings are more than decent, particularly if you don't mind hopping between sites sometimes. This isn't vodo.net, or even gog.com.
Note that like Audible, Downpour and Libro.fm have subscription plans, which are all-but required if you want books at a reasonable price. Unlike Audible, however, it's easy to game the system by subscribing and quickly unsubscribing.
I know that Audible DRM is currently easy to remove, and that's great, but we should support the true DRM-Free providers where we can, or they might disappear. And if that happens, who knows what Audible will do.
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Honorable mentions:
• audiobookstore.com sells DRM Free audiobooks, but they always seem to cost much more than on other sites, even with a subscription plan. I've also never found a book that was available here but not on one of the cheaper DRM-Free stores.
• Graphicaudio.net offers DRM Free downloads if you don't mind paying a couple dollars extra per title. But these are very much not normal audiobooks.
You can do this on Audible without problems. I have an Audible library of 15 books that I accumulated over a few years through various promotions, never paying more than 33% the normal cost of a subscription.
• The cancellation process requires many more clicks. If your process is to subscribe → buy → cancel each time, this gets very annoying.
• You can't buy additional credits without outright changing your overall subscription plan.
• If you cancel your plan, you immediately forfeit any unused credits.
So what do you do if you're nearing the end of your subscription period, and there aren't any new books you want at the moment? You're forced to subscribe for an additional month.
> Also why do you need to buy more credits? You can buy audio books directly for $ once you exhausted the credits. I use credits for audio books that cost more than the price of a credit and $ for audio books that cost less.
So what do you do if you've already used this month's credit, and you want to buy a second book which is much more expensive to buy in dollars?
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I have run into both of these scenarios with Audible. Neither of them are the reason I don't use Audible—that would be the DRM—but I do find their policies frustrating. Downpour and Libro.fm make it significantly easier to buy what I want when I want it.
The unsubscribe process ends up taking hours of time because now you need to find 1-5 books to get before you cancel.
It's also frustrating because they won't allow you more than 5 credits, so if you have 5 credits, they will take your monthly payment and give you nothing in return.
Worse still is if you click on the wrong thing on Amazon it will re-activate your audible account automatically. I've had my audible account accidentally re-activated multiple times and not noticed (my amazon email goes to a non-primary email)
All in all I've made many payments with max credits and gotten nothing in return, purchased a ton of books that I'm only partially interested in, and actively cancelled the service at least 3 times (including being forced to waste time shopping for books to complete the task every time)
If you don't see this as a consumer trap, it's because you haven't tried to get out and stay out yet.
Not sure when the last time you used Audible was, but nowadays (or at least as of a few months ago) they offer to sell you more credits at a pretty decent rate (3 for $35) when you run out.
Non-tech people doesn't care about DRM in general, they prefer discounts, and here Amazon plays well.
I mean, is it ever? Outside of exceptional circumstances like Denuvo, and even that's usually temporary.
> Non-tech people doesn't care about DRM in general, they prefer discounts, and here Amazon plays well.
I could make a similar argument about data privacy. Does that mean we shouldn't bring it up?
But separately, isn't it a bit weird for the article to bring up DRM as a "dark side" of the audiobook industry, without mentioning that DRM-Free audiobooks are readily available?
Guess it exists a lot of time, just check google.
> without mentioning that DRM-Free audiobooks are readily available?
True. Also, lack of DRM-is-bad advertisement, plus many people don't know about deDRM.
Now with audiobooks I read many non technical books while I do those types of exercises I couldn't enjoy before. If a book is not great I dont find it a waste of time. The combination of audiobooks and exercising is the right amount of information density for me to enjoy the moment. The result? I exercise much much more now.
Also I started to use the local library for audiobooks. Comparing to the effort of borrowing paper books or device restriction of borrowing ebooks, borrowing audiobooks is just a much better overall experience.
Cardio: stationary bike, jumping rope, stair climbing. Body weight: some for abs some for lower back. I learned and picked a few from the youtube channel Athlean X. I personally feel we need those exercises to combat the long hours we sit everyday. And stretching! It was so boring before audiobooks I never stretch, now I stretch before and after.
Feel free to experiment to find your own optimal routine, since we have different schedules and access to equipments. I guess the idea is with audiobooks experimenting can be fun too. Even cleaning the house is fun now with audiobooks :D
He recommends them after ever single workout and from doing this the last couple of months has done wonders from my experience.
His video on it.
The comments on it are pretty funny actually
There's a lot of waiting between sets as you get to higher numbers. See the book Starting Strength by Rippetoe, or /r/fitness.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rippetoe
He's highly opinionated (on a variety of topics), but his system is pretty good. Note: it's fairly boring, as it's the same five basic exercises over and over. But it gets results and having strength is handy.
Other than that, being able to do a 5K is also useful:
* https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-5k-not-the-marathon...
Humans really don't need that much activity to stay healthy: at some point it's diminishing returns.
NB Only slightly odd side effect is I now associate particular mountains with specific topics....
If you lift weights, there's a lot of waiting involved between sets. You can listen to stuff while you're idle, and then hit pause as you're doing your reps.
When you're just starting out you may only need 90s rest, but as you progress to higher loads, that will rise to (say) three minutes, and then even longer the more 'advanced' you get.
When I did run outside, I had a Garmin GPS Watch (before the Apple Watch was a thing) to force me to stay at my desired pace.
That being said. I can’t cycle without music. That is basically my only real cardio.
I also use those apps for ebooks, removing social media from my phone, and try to read a few pages here and there when I would have been scrolling mindlessly before.
Another issue I have with them is that I can't quite skim to a paragraph of interest.
Early on I did more light non-fiction and self-helpy things because I didn’t mind as much if I missed a line or two.
A recent favourite was The Calculating Stars written and narrated by Mary Robinette Kowal, a former puppeteer and long-time podcaster. Her performance was enthralling and fast-paced, so I listed at 1.0x.
Years ago, I attended a Pragmatic Marketing course and the speaker started off by saying he spoke really fast but once you got used to it, you would never be bored or find your mind wandering. I remember that to this day and when I'm speaking in public, I try to keep my pace up.
The problem is that the speed up "breaks" you. Once I started listening to podcasts at higher speeds, I stopped being able to listen to slower-paced podcasts at 1.0x without losing focus.
But, if I'm walking or driving, it tends to keep my mind more active, alert, and aids my concentration on not only the book, but the walking and driving too.
It depends on context though. If I'm driving and listening, my attention is good enough to follow light nonfiction. If I'm washing dishes or commuting, something more conversational like a podcast is better.
Incidentally, I'd be real interested in audiobooks as supplements to books rather than just alternative mediums. Take a book like Sapiens. I like to read a book like that, using my eyes. But.. if each chapter/topic had a conversation between ynh and colleagues, students or somesuch... It makes for a nice supplement. Read the books take on the paleolithic/linguistic revolution.. and then maybe conversationally talk about alternative possibilities or the history of the idea.
Not limited to college course based books (sapiens was "intro to world history," before it was a book). "Classics" could have book club-like companion audiobooks. I'm all in if someone want to make a companion audiobook to George Orwell's essays, for example.
When I try to listen to podcasts at home my mind usually ends up drifting. And I can't stand having earbuds with music or anything else in my ears when walking. Separates me from my environment too much.
I wonder if any audiobook apps support that kind of speedup feature?
It would be DRM if Audible locked the file to their player with a key pairing that only they knew and refused to provide the user or forbade them from accessing via usage terms.
Again, it's great that we now know how the encryption works, and everyone should go ahead and decrypt their books. But DVD's aren't DRM Free just because the encryption format was broken a long ago.
Furthermore, Audible's usage terms do restrict you from decrypting your audiobooks! Whether you want to abide by them are of course up to you.
I’m glad it’s at least straightforward to do so now if it wasn’t in the past, even if it’s against the terms.
Secondly yes I am also at risk of zoning out but not enough to stop listening.
For example on the treadmill at the gym I have to make an effort to follow the plot sometimes, and other times it's so exciting I forget how long I've been there.
The other time I listen to audiobooks is when going to sleep. And then I do zone out, and fall asleep, that's the point. But it has happened that a book was coming to a conclusion or just so exciting that I end up staying awake for an extra hour or two just to hear it.
So it's not for everyone, just like reading isn't for everyone either. But oh man am I happy for audiobooks. I'm giving my old paper books away by the bag to make room.
I don't think fiction would work this way, too much of the plot depends on what happened on the last page. However non-fiction if you miss point B but get A, D, and part of C you are still better even if you never go back to learn what B was or fully grok C.
In any case, you may be looking for radio plays. It's sort of a niche these days but it probably takes better advantage of the medium than simply reading fiction does. (I find non-fiction audiobooks to be very hit or miss. You can't have any real dependency on maps, figures, code/equations, etc. and the content has to be simple enough that you can just go through it at a constant linear pace.)
It helps to only listen to books I am interested in, can learn from. I don't listen to fiction in general because it's harder for me to follow when someone else is acting out the characters.
I’ve had huge issues with zoning out, wearing down the skip back button, skipping back a minute every two minutes, relistening to the same part five times. But it’s gotten better and better.
Now I often have blocks of 20 minutes where I don’t need to rewind.
Also keep in mind that some styles of writing (and narration!) are harder to follow than others. It might be the book/narrator that’s the issue and not the medium
Talky video programs are sometimes OK. I can pay attention to them, at least, it's just that most aren't very good.
I can do the dedicated-listening thing to music but the point of podcasts is supposed to be that you can listen to them while doing something else—almost none are worth dedicated listening time. I can't manage that. I miss too much to follow WTF they're talking about, so it's just noise, and I have enough of that as it is and don't need more.
[EDIT] I also hate—hate—having the TV on as "background noise" so maybe that has something to do with it.
Also, why are audiobooks 5 times more expensive than their dead-tree version?
https://www.amazon.com/Leviathan-Wakes-James-S-Corey/dp/0316...
https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9781478998938-leviathan-wakes
That's crazy.
Unlike Audible, it's much easier to subscribe and quickly unsubscribe. So if you want to buy a book: (1) Subscribe for $15 to get one credit (2) Use your credit to buy a book (3) Unsubscribe.
BTW, libro.fm is DRM Free.
Another way to look at it: that's 21 hours of content for $35. Doesn't seem crazy compared to, say, going to the movies or buying a $60 video game that might not even have 10 hours of gameplay.
For physical audiobooks, most of the NYC publishers priced their audiobooks based on the number of CD's the book would go on. Longer books required more recording and more CD's in a box and would be priced higher. They sold, but not that well because the relative pricing was high. You could see physical audiobook sales crater once a book moved from hardcover to paperback. I did the data analytics and was able to determine the pricing formulas that audiobook publishers were using.
Actual printing of books does not cost a lot. the materials are cheap the processes are very efficient at large volumes. That is one reason why ebooks are not always cheaper than the print versions. the print costs are small.
Try listening with an increased playback speed. Make it slow enough that you can still comprehend the book, but fast enough that it requires constant attention to do so.
There are two other cases where I'll lose track while walking:
When I need to pay attention to something else like crossing the street, or passing other people on the sidewalk. Just use the skip back.
I have something on my mind that I need to process. Turn off the audio and think quietly while I walk. Sometimes it's just not a good time for books, but music is what I need.
I can't just listen to an audiobook while sitting around. I'll want to do something else, right away.
Sometimes I'll also listen to an audiobook while doing mindless chores, but the book needs to be extra interesting to make up for it, otherwise it's just not worth the distraction.
If a book is really interesting (usually something that I think is going to revolutionize my life) then I'll be listening to it every moment I can.
A little off topic but, I usually get the place I was walking, and the feeling of the book wired together in my brain.
If I understood the research correctly, dyslexia researchers get material improvements in reading speed when they increase the amount of space between words and lines. The gist of the explanation given was that dyslexics basically struggle to separate out the word they're trying to focus on from the surrounding wall of text.
Put another way, while this is fine for normal readers:
quick brown fox jumps
over the lazy dog
quick brown fox jumps
over the lazy dog
Picture an ellipse of sorts over the word you're trying to focus on as you read. A dyslexic person will struggle to get the ellipse on that word, and instead gobbles up part or all of the text around it (parts of the words before and after, and parts of the words above and below) - or not enough of it? - leading to fatigue and slow read speed.
If memory serves me well:
- By increasing the space enough, you make it simpler for a dyslexic reader to focus on each word, improving reading speed. (Anecdotally I find web typography more readable with slightly increased line height and word spacing, so methinks it's not just dyslexic readers who benefit.)
- By increasing the space too much, however, you make it harder for readers (dyslexic or not) to follow the flow of text (words become disconnected, if you will, as you've experienced in the second example), and that ends up degrading the reading speed.
- Every reader (dyslexic or not) has an optimal spacial arrangement.
You can kind of see the effect in action by increasing the line height, kerning, and word spacing in an html document. Increase either of those three too much and the text gets harder to read. Increase one or more of them slightly above the default values and the text will be more comfortable to read.
On the other hand, it's much easier to rip an Audio book, than remove DRM from an ebook.
I guess that's part of their business model... get you to spend money in addition to your subscription.
Talk to your local library about whether they're on Overdrive / Libby. If so, you can listen to unlimited audiobooks, ebooks, magazines, and comic books 24/7. It's fantastic. It's free. Yay public libraries.
Additionally, there is a plugin for Firefox called "Available Reads" that allows you to enter your Overdrive account information for your various library cards. Then, when browsing goodreads, the plugin will show you the Overdrive availability of the books you are browsing at all of the libraries at which you are a member, and provide links out to the catalog entry for those libraries' copies of the ebooks/e-audiobooks.
ACX/Audible pays 40% for exclusive royalties. So your $30 audiobook will get you $12 in royalties. Amazon makes $3 from your subscription or $18 if someone buys it straight up.
Even at a 25% royalty structure you're still looking at $7.50/audiobook which doesn't work well with an all you can listen/netflix style program as 2-3 books puts the store in the red. Some companies will offer 'all you can listen' but will cut you off if you listen too much.
To get it to work publishers would need to agree to a flat fee for unlimited listens for a period of time. Which doesn't seem likely at this point.
I dropped my subscription because my podcast list filled all of my audio time, and my physical books filled the rest of my reading time. But if I ever go back to audio books, Scribd is definitely my first choice.
Also, if you try to unsubscribe, they sometimes offer a much-reduced rate per-book :-)
You can sign up to Audible, pay the money, spend your credit, then cancel, all within 10 minutes. Then you can do the same thing again, immediately afterwards.
If your credit cost you less than $9, you should buy the title using a credit, not cash.
I'm surprised they've managed to convince so many people to think of it like it's Netflix, where you pay periodically for temporary access to the full library. Audible have never offered rentals, and their model is nothing like the Netflix model at all.
Also, arafalov's points about the 24 month subscription, and the don't-cancel discounts, are great tips.
I wonder if any of these studies allowed the subjects to rewind. I skip back constantly when listening to audiobooks, because I zone out or get distracted. If you were to study my comprehension while taking away that feature, I'm sure I'd score lower than reading with my eyes. Conversely, if you had me read with one of those apps that shows you one word at a time, and didn't let me rewind, I'm sure I would score lower on that than on audio.
My 1-hour commute each way is mostly sitting in slow or stop & go traffic on the same freeway. So 95% of my brain is available for comprehension. And I can always rewind if I get distracted by actual driving.
I can honestly say that audiobooks on my commute have changed my life. For whatever reason I just can't find a comfortable enough spot to read an actual book for more than 30 minutes at a time - and even that feels like a chore. It bothered me for 2 decades that I didn't read enough. Now I get 2 hours a day where I am transported into another headspace, inspired, engaged. I actually look forward to my commute.
The only downside is when I come down off Mt. Everest and show up at work - my motivation to do my job is pretty low. :)
Go to System Preferences > Accessibility > Speech and set a keyboard shortcut, then you can turn any piece of text into an audio book by simply selecting it and pressing the text-to-speech keyboard shortcut. You'll need to set the Speaking Rate pretty high for this to be useful.
It works great for news, blog posts, HN discussions, and amazingly powerful proofreading tool for writers.
More info with screenshots here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mApa60zJA8rgEm6T6GF0yIem...
Although, I imagine the quality of the reader has greatly improved since 1984.
Exactly. I've tries a number of text-to-speech options before and found the voicing to be almost unusable, but the Alex voice in macOS (at least since 10.5) is pretty good. It even does the right context-dependent thing for polysemy cases, e.g. "I live in the mountains" vs. "I went to a live concert".
It's about what you'd expect it to sound like... almost unbearable. But maybe the updated Siri voices are better, I haven't tried it for a few years.
When I look in `/System/Library/Speech/Voices` and run `du -sh *` I see Alex.SpeechVoice is 877MB so godda be something wav-like in there.
Most people get distracted too quickly to finish reading an article. But with audio, the story becomes the distraction that keeps them listening to the end.
It seems that some neural pathways are way shorter over audio ( i guess because we have perfect hearing from birth , unlike vision ), so that the "effort" to read, comprehend and store !text! information is much less.
I guess that's the reason we still have classes in schools. Orally teaching is very very old.
If you have a hard time getting through the beginning of some audiobooks as I have, I've found it useful to "prime the pump" by reading the first few chapters of a book and then switching to the audio version once I'm familiar with the names and setting.
Other then that it's great for commute on trains, planes, taxis, or bike or if you go somewhere where waiting is expected.
It takes some time to get into though. I have struggled with it in the beginning so I started with a book I read already some time ago so it wouldn't be such a big deal if I miss something. Now it became almost the only way I consume books for entertainment.
This is where I’m at in learning a second language. The audiobook will keep marching onwards, so I won’t get road blocked by things I don’t know yet. Because I already know the story, it’s never longer than a minute or so before I manage to catch the plot thread again. It’s also been helpful to read along with the printed book as the audiobook is running.
But this article is spot on for me, I can't listen to audio books where I'm trying to learn something while doing anything other than driving. Some non-fiction is also simply too dense to effectively learn from while listening, I want to stop and reflect, re-read and make notes.
I started listening to "The Hard Thing about Hard Things" on Audible and quickly abandoned it for the hard back. My dead tree copy has numerous notes and a few dozen stickies as bookmarks.
Your 20 second trip to the (home) office is not a commute. I do those too sometimes :)
I'm not sure why this is done - whether it is to make the video easier to follow for non-native speakers, or to give a more 'authoritative' feel (slower speech = more confidence etc?), but I find such videos unbearable to watch at x1 speed.
So for me it's not about rushing and not enjoying the experience. It's about listening to it at a speed which is bearable: and hence enjoyable.
It's to stretch the videos that are just under 10 minutes to longer than 10 minutes so they can add mid-roll ads.
Whenever you're wondering why the video is too long, or why the author is somewhat rambling around the point, or why they include those "like and subscribe" sections in every video (sometimes at the beginning, because you'd close the tab otherwise), the answer is always to find that sweet spot that accommodates the ads. It's also why channels tend to upload videos of similar length, regardless of the topic. Sometimes they have to cut the script short, other times they have to find a way to lengthen it.
Warren Huart does this end of the video, and I now really appreciate it when he and others do it. I mostly watch YouTube on my Samsung TV, and it takes forever to navigate through the YouTube app's onscreen menus with my remote control to find the Like button. If they don't talk for long enough at that point, I get kicked out of the menu and dumped into an ad & another autoplay before I get time to click their like button.
If the YouTube algorithm has any sense (probably not), a Like after someone has just watched the entirety of a 20 minute video at normal speed should have more weight than someone who clicks Like in the first 2 seconds of clicking play.
If we use walking as an analogy, sometimes people really do need to slow down and smell the roses, but certain speeds of walking for certain body types/fitness levels are just genuinely awkward/painful...
It's one of the reasons I prefer books to audiobooks - I can slow down and enjoy the speech/intricate descriptions, but virtually skip over 'functional' words.
Mind you audiobooks have less filler than natural speech so they’re a little more information dense than someone shooting from the hip.
I find the best way to enjoy them is on a nice run where the situation holds me captive and I can’t retreat into a more distractive media.
In my experience audiobooks can’t keep my attention, not fast paced enough, and I pull out my phone. As soon as that happens I no longer hear/process the audiobook.
But if I’m running it’s juuuust perfect enough to keep my attention and sort of embed the ideas into my subconscious even if I’m not actively listening.
It’s a lot like speed reading in that way. With speed reading I always felt like I was rushing and had no idea what I’m reading. But ask me questions and I could recap the information back flawlessly.
However, I purposefully avoid speed reading fiction because it detracts from the experience. You get the info, but you lose the feel.
Besides commuting you can do other things like house chores.
For me audiobooks have opened reading in a whole new way. I used to think that I was dyslexic, but I've since discovered that the right term is subvocalization. I was slow reader as a kid and never grew out of it. So reading is really slow for me, I've tried to work on it, but in the meanwhile I might as well be listening audiobooks.
I also listen to things at 1x speed because I don’t care for the audio artifacts from the speedup process, but I have to be in the right mood for it. If I’m too energetic, the book won’t hold my attention and my mind will wander to other things— I’ll mentally shut it off and have no idea what’s going on when I try to resume the book.
If I really pay attention, I can sometimes 'hear' fragments of words and individual words - it's like a partial subvocalisation (something like "I listen 1x speed plenty fast visual fill detail"). If I deliberately slow myself down (as I often do if I'm particularly enjoying a certain section, or if a section is particularly intricate), I subvocalise as normal, but at the same time I lose the visual aspects of picturing a scene. I start to hear the prose, but lose the visualisation.
I guess we both get what we want our of the experience, but at different speeds.
Also, different audio systems read at different speed. Have you tried pocket at 2 or 2.5 x? Still too slow?
Audible's 3x is intelligible even for a non-native speaker like me. Smart Audiobook Player's 3x is atrocious.
That'll get you all the way up to 3x. It's fantastic.
One of the ways I find books is to think of something I'm interested in then go to https://hackernewsbooks.com/ and search for recommendations. The best books I've read recently were ones I can across on HN. If I find recommendations then I'll go on audible and search for an audiobook version. I don't always find them, maybe 1/10 are available, but it's been a useful tactic in general.
Listening to Robert Caro's gigantic history books a couple of years ago war an extremely pleasant experience. Literally a month or two of no podcasts at all and just this pair of extremely deep well written biographies.
That said, I listened to the Power Broker, and fully recommend it.
iirc the History of Rome was really good at keeping the intros, exits, sponsored content and all that stuff as minimal as possible though, I definitely binged it but even then the fact that it was originally presented in these 15 minute chunks made it kind of exhausting at points.
You need to get onto the LBJ ones! Not quite as good but it's pretty damn good.
[1] https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-compilati...
Their website doesn’t explain much and the reviews are vague as usual. Does anyone have a personal reference for it, or know how it works? Is it real people reading or a computer voice? I presume the shortened texts are using something like https://smmry.com/
I'm pretty satisfied with the subscription as it's a great time-saver, in 15mins I either find out that:
- the book is not worth spending hours of actual reading
- I enjoy the summary and it makes me want to read the whole book
- or I like the summary, copy the highlights into personal notes, and carry on
Real people are both reading and summarizing the books, so it's much higher quality than the automatic shorteners.
And even without trendy 'blinkist' I used to take a similar approach by first reading some prepatory materials before investing time to read the book. Listening to an audiobook is just another way for me to complement but no replacement.
I would not say this is fool proof.
You will never be able to get the "key takeaways" of every book by reading some summary. Sometimes the key takeway might be the way a book is written, how something is repeated while other things are left out that are most valuable.
Likewise quotes that once meant nothing to you, you will only understand after studying material by the other in depth, etc.
just some thoughts.
a) Is it real people/computer voice? It's real people (seems like pretty good speakers thus far.) b) The shortened texts are well written. They don't appear to be computer generated.
I'm still not sure I'll get a paid subscription. I find it a good way to ingest certain types of information -- psychology & personal development books always seem bloated with case stores like "When Bob first visited my office he seemed anxious and depressed...." that I'm generally impatient with (just get to the point!). But after listening to several in a row, my mind starts to wander. Not sure why.
And in some cases, I find the resulting summarizations vacuous. I don't know whether that's because the underlying material was equally vacuous or whether something was lost in translation. (Obligatory reference to Monty Python's Summarize Proust Competition: http://www.montypython.net/scripts/proust.php)
greatest listening experience.ever. epic fantasy on another level
I won't spoil anything besides saying that the series has a number of really memorable plot twists and a very interesting magic system.
Simon Vance does a fantastic job narrating the audiobooks and I'm eagerly anticipating the fifth and final book of the series which is due for release in October.
if its not too intrusive, what do program you use to listen to the files? syncing between devices?
With audio books I don't get that - which is OK for some types of books, but definitely not something I'd pick for fiction.
Local, sentence/paragraph level, navigation in audiobooks is really bad.
"Stopped"
"Go back to where Lisa enters the cave"
"Rewinding"
"....."
I find the players have lots of microfeatures I wouldn't even have thought of - like if I've stopped playing a podcast in Pocket Casts & pick it up a couple of hours later, it rewinds a few seconds so I get the context of what I was listening to again.
Pocket Casts is nowhere near as good since the NPR acquisition, and probably not as good as Overcast or Castro or any iPhone clients, but I definitely wouldn't say it's atrocious.
I know Overcast made some attempts at timecode bookmarking & sharing snippets, but I don't think their approach is the solution. (I'm on Android so I've never got to try it.)
https://www.cultofmac.com/622288/how-to-share-podcast-clips-...
> https://www.cultofmac.com/622288/how-to-share-podcast-clips-....
Okay, that feature is pretty damn cool. Add that to my must-haves in my dream podcast app.
I will say that the audio version of The Economist is pretty great. If an article has pictures or graphs in them, I can just open the article from the app and listen to it simultaneously. I hope more magazines/newspapers would add similar functionality to their offering.
Other books require more work and I probably read at 1x speed with frequent pauses and re-readings. I'd never understand those if they were audio.
The one time I might go for an audio book is when outside exercising or commuting, but that's when I listen to music or podcasts.
Here's Terry Pratchett's "Good Omens": https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b04knthd
Here's a list ordered by date: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/categories/drama?sort=-availabl...
I don't know if these are geo-blocked.
I try to bring my kids to quality SF and this could be much easier than the actual Dune books, as they are not quite easy.
https://www.audible.com/pd/Dune-Audiobook/B002V1OF70?qid=156...
https://www.nextnature.net/2009/12/the-playboy-interview-mar...
Now I’m in a car for just over 3 hours a week and I’d rather lounge around with my e-ink Kindle.
I agree that a good narrator makes a huge difference.