Regarding Audible | Hacker News Reader

Regarding Audible

brandonsanderson.com

56 pointsdntbrsnbl9 comments

The issue with audible is that authors have to be there or they don't exist. Even if the pay is crap, you "have to" be on audible.

I don't see how any competitors could break their dominance as long as the authors give in this easily.

I listen to audiobooks quite a lof and some yeargs ago I moved to a different service (storytel, its a European thing). If they don't have a book, well I get it from another source that is definitely not owned by Bezos.

Maybe you can share those other sources, since quick search in storytel did not give most of the stuff I'm currently reading/listening at the moment?

I have been thinking about not selling my soul to Amazon, but the amount of books (and formats) is just so convincing. I usually read & listen at the same time, depending on time of day and being able to get everything from one place is just something that makes one problem less in crazy days, which seem to be the norm recently.

I have realised the no service will have all the books. So why not pick one that has more local authors and comes from a company that treats their workers and authors a bit better?

I personally use libro.fm. They have a lot of things that aren't audible exclusive, but not everything sadly. Also no non-English content

Thanks for sharing. It's indeed more on positive side of news about Audible. I'm also Brandon Sanderson reader.

oh! so there is an impact. somehow, every business tries to be a monopoly. govt shoudl simply restrict the "Exclusive" deals for small artists. they are not employed by Amazon, so why should Amazon be allowed to have that kind of power?

What are the alternatives to audible?

https://libro.fm. Every audiobook is DRM-free.

If you have a library card, see if your library supports Hoopla. It has thousands of professionally-recorded audio books (most by Recorded Books) that you can check out for free. And there don't seem to be queues which are often the case for library-associated apps. I recently went through the Patrick Tull recordings of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series via hoopla.

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