• Audible has launched a cheaper 'Standard' membership plan
• It offers users credit for one audiobook a month and select access to Audible Originals and podcasts
• It's not as extensive as the 'Premium Plus' plan, but is designed to welcome new customers and casual readers

As the popularity of audiobooks grows, so does the competition, and Audible’s new budget-friendly subscription tier could be its one-way ticket to surpassing the best music streaming services, such as Spotify, in the audiobook race.

The Amazon-owned audiobook platform has rolled out its new ‘Standard’ tier, the $8.99 a month cheaper alternative to the ‘Premium Plus’ tier, which has a costly $14.95 monthly fee. As well as the US, Amazon announced that the Standard tier is available immediately in the UK (£5.99/ month), Australia (AUD$8.99/ month), Canada, Germany, and France, with testing underway in additional markets.

That said, audiobook access isn’t the only perk, and Standard plan members will also get ad-free streaming access to a select range of titles from the Audible Originals collection, in addition to over 200 podcasts from Amazon’s Wondery+ service, which is shutting down in the coming months. It’s a solid taster plan for first-time audiobook users, but there are a few differences to note.

With the new Standard tier, you’ll get credit to purchase one audiobook a month, which is yours to relisten to so long as you don’t cancel your membership. You can select more or less any title, which also includes the latest releases.

Though the Premium Plus plan also offers monthly credit for one book, it also gives subscribers unlimited streaming access to its extensive catalog of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals that are included in Premium Plus — the Standard plan is restricted to select few Audible Originals and Wondery+ titles as mentioned above. Standard members will also miss out on access to exclusive discounts on additional audiobook purchases.

As it is with most budget-friendly subscription tiers, Audible’s Standard plan simply scratches the surface of the full range of benefits in its Premium Plus tier. Though it may not be the perfect option for avid readers, it opens a door to welcome a slew of fresh customers and cater to different reading behaviors.

Bridging the gap with Spotify

Prior to the rollout of the Standard plan, Audible’s all-or-nothing membership wasn’t necessarily the best way to lure potential customers. As Audible’s Chief Financial & Growth Officer Cynthia Chu puts it, "The launch of our Standard plan reflects Audible's ongoing commitment to serving the diverse preferences and listening habits of story-lovers everywhere”.

She also added, "By expanding our membership options, we're maximizing access for lighter listeners while enabling publishers and creators to reach new audiences — a win-win that grows the entire audiobook category”.

The audiobooks realm has become increasingly competitive, which can be attributed to Spotify’s own audiobook offerings, which the company has doubled down on in recent years. With every Premium Individual plan, Spotify users have 15 monthly hours of audiobook listening, but any unused hours aren’t carried over to the next month.

If this isn’t enough for listeners, the only way to have more listening hours is to purchase the Audiobooks+ add-on, which was rolled out in July 2025, increasing your monthly subscription costs. On top of this, Spotify’s base plans are getting more expensive, and the company recently hiked its fees for the third time in three years.

• Spotify is adding audiobook charts into its app
• The charts will make it easier to discover new audiobooks
• All users in the US and the UK are getting the update

We've seen quite a few Spotify feature updates in recent weeks, and the latest to arrive is specifically aimed at audiobook fans: the Spotify app is now introducing audiobook charts, to make it easier to discover new titles to listen to.

"Similar to our Music and Podcast Charts, Audiobook Charts will be updated weekly, spotlighting the Top Audiobooks overall and by genre," says Spotify. "The rankings are based on listening behavior and engagement on Spotify."

This is a feature that everyone can access, both free and Premium users, though initially at least it's only going to be available to listeners in the US and the UK. Spotify hasn't mentioned a wider rollout, but it seems like the sort of feature that would be pretty easy to introduce in other countries as well.

To find the charts, you need to head to the Search or Browse page in the app, and pick Audiobooks — from there you should find Audiobook Charts. When I tried to access the new feature in the UK, there were five different charts available.

The updates continue

Having the charts inside the app should give you some extra inspiration when you're wondering what to listen to next — and of course it should also drive more audiobook sales as well, which Spotify won't mind.

"As we've proven with Music and Podcasts Charts, when content is easier to access, discover, and enjoy, the demand grows," says Spotify's Duncan Bruce. "We are delighted to now bring that to audiobooks."

Last month, Spotify also gave audiobook listeners a new feature called Page Match. It lets you scan the pages of physical books so you can sync up your reading in the real world with your audiobook listening in Spotify – letting you switch between different ways of reading as you prefer.

And before the turn of the year, there was another new feature: AI recaps for your audiobooks, so you can remind yourself of previous plot points. Spotify is clearly keen to keep pushing audiobooks alongside music and podcast streaming on its platform.

It’s been one heck of a ride for Cyberpunk 2077, having launched in such a state that Sony pulled it from the PlayStation store. But then a whole lotta work from CD Projekt Red, the big 2.0 update, and the stellar addition of the Phantom Liberty DLC (downloadable content), saw the game emerge from the reviews ashes like some neon virtual phoenix.

And, I for one, loved Cyberpunk 2077 in its renewed state, finally rolling the credits on it and the DLC after more than 100 hours in Night City. Sure, I still don’t think it quite hit the high notes of The Witcher 3 — one of my favourite games of all time — but I loved the somewhat immersive sim systems, the action, the character arcs, and a decent chunk of the story.

I also dived into the lore and watched Netflix’s Edgerunners, all of which made me dive deep into Cyberpunk 2077 across 2024 and 2025.

So now I’m left waiting for what's next, with a Cyberpunk sequel surely to be some years out; The Witcher 4 is likely to be CDPR’s next big project.

If you’re like me, looking for downright cyber punk to fill the Cyberpunk gap, I’ve got a recommendation for you…

No, it’s not another game or even a movie or series, but rather a book. Or in my case, an audiobook. And the book is Neuromancer.

Enter the matrix... but different

Now, big fans of a cyberpunk setting will likely be familiar with William Gibson’s 1984 book, which arguably turbocharged the genre. But while I heard the name in passing, I was a little ignorant about Neuromancer.

Then, when looking for something to keep my imagination busy while I’m walking or using the excellent Hydrow smart rowing machine, I stumbled across the audiobook version of Neuromancer on Spotify (it’s also available on Audible).

After tuning into a myriad of terms and in-universe slang, much like I did with Cyberpunk 2077, I was hooked.

Neuromancer quickly immersed me in a world of middle-future earth, where humans sport cybernetics, corporations have enormous power, cities sprawl across states, and pollution is rife, all framed against neon lights and visual descriptions of cyberspace.

For someone who’s watched Blade Runner, The Matrix movies, played all the Deus Ex games, Neuromancer could almost seem tropey, until you realise how much it inspired the genre; cyberspace in Neuromancer is literally called the matrix.

But its influence on Cyberpunk 2077 was clearly enormous. There are cybernetics and tech that allow one to ‘jack into’ cyberspace or hack electronics, there’s the option to have retractable blades in one’s hands, there’s a Night City (only in this case it’s part of a wider urban area), and there are corporations that have near-immortal leaders. And of course, there’s AI.

Thanks to the time I spent with Cyberpunk 2077, I could imagine with more vividness the scenes and tech being described by English actor Jason Flemyng on the audiobook version, making it easier to get immersed in the setting and the rather twisting story that progresses at quite a pace.

As pure imagination fuel, it’s great. But the narrative is also gripping, told from the perspective of washed-up hacker Case, who could easily be a compelling side character in a Cyberpunk mission.

So allow me to wholeheartedly recommend Neuromancer as a great stopgap between Cyberpunk 2077 and its sequel, or even the very cyberpunk-themed 2.5D game Replaced, due for release on April 14.

From cyberspace to actual space?

I also think Neuromancer gives us a hint at where Cyberpunk could go next.

Ok, spoiler warning for the ending of Cyberpunk 2077 and a chunk of Neuromancer.

If you choose not to let Johnny Silverhand take over V’s mind and body in one of the endings of Cyberpunk 2077, V will end up taking a shuttle up to the Crystal Palace, an enormous orbital space station, with what appears to be the goal of conducting a form of data heist.

In Neuromancer, the major action of the story happens in the large orbital space station of Freeside, where Case and a team are aiming to release an AI from the virtual shackles of the powerful Tessier-Ashpool family/organization.

With that in mind, I can totally see a portion of Cyberpunk 2 taking place in the Crystal Palace, even though it’s been strongly indicated that the game will have a main city to explore.

I feel CD Projekt Red has the creative chops and level design to make a really intriguing space station with all manner of systems to mess with and low-gravity to be played with; perhaps in the vein of some of Starfield's space stations, only a lot more interesting and with more dynamic interactivity.

Of course, this is just some fun speculation here, albeit enough to pull on a few excitement synapses in my brain.

But even if I’m well off the mark, do go give Neuromancer a read or a listen. And let me know in the comments below if you’re already familiar with it and what you’d like to see from Cyberpunk 2.

• Audible has launched a new reading tool that gives users the option to use text synchronization to follow audiobooks
• It's rolling out in the US now, and will be available in the UK, Australia, and Germany in the coming months
• Despite its accessibility focus, users must own both the audiobook and eBook versions of a title in order to use the feature

Amid the growing popularity of e-reading, Audible’s position as one of the best audiobook providers hasn’t budged, and now it’s redefining how you immerse yourself in your favorite audiobooks.

Rolling out to US customers today (February 18), and to those the UK, Australia, and Germany in the coming months, Audible's new ‘Read and Listen’ tool is a new way for you to follow along with audiobooks by combining reading and listening in the Audible app. Previously, the use of this feature was restricted to the Kindle app as part of the Whispersync for Voice tool.

Using text synchronization, Read and Listen gives you the option to read along as you listen to an audiobook, introducing another way to engage with and enjoy your favorite books — but it’s much more than that according to Audible’s Chief Product Officer, Andy Tsao.

"Audiobooks count as reading,” says Tsao in a press release announcing the feature. "But now at Audible, you can read with your eyes too. Read & Listen gives book lovers the best of both worlds. Whether you're learning a new language, studying for school, or lost in a story’s world, you no longer have to choose one format over the other".

As well as the new Read and Listen tool, Audible revealed that it’s been testing another feature that intertwines digital and physical reading, seemingly taking inspiration from Spotify’s audiobook upgrade that allows you to purchase physical books right from the app. As it stands, select customers in the US have access to Audible’s version of the feature, which includes direct links to physical book listings on Amazon’s site.

You can enable Read and Listen just with a tap of the toggle button, switching you between that and the standard ‘Listen’ mode, as well as packing hundreds of thousands of titles across a multitude of languages. This isn’t Audible’s only goal with Read and Listen — accessibility is another key factor, but it comes with a catch that I just can’t get past.

An accessibility feature, or new business model?

Read to Listen isn't just about giving book lovers more ways to enjoy audiobooks, but it also opens another door for those with accessibility needs to immerse themselves in new ways of reading just like the rest.

As Audible puts it; “Read & Listen serves as a powerful tool for differentiated instruction. Research indicates that simultaneous reading and listening improves comprehension and retention — benefits that are particularly valuable for students, language learners, and individuals with dyslexia, ADHD, or low vision.”

It all looks great on paper, but there’s a catch that I can’t get past — you need to own both the eBook and audiobook version of a title in order to take advantage of Read and Listen, which is a little back-handed.

Audible hasn’t shared the reasons behind this, and it could simply be that Audible hasn’t quite mastered the full potential of Read and Listen, and is starting small before expanding, but the obvious answer is that it’s a business model, as it means users will have to spend more money to buy multiple versions of their favorite titles through Audible and Kindle if they want a taste of what Read and Listen has to offer.

We’ve reached out to Audible for a comment on why this is the case, and we’ll update this story once we receive more information.

• Spotify is testing a new tool called Page Match that syncs your physical books with their audiobook versions
• Using your phone camera to scan the page of the book you're reading, Spotify will take you to the exact timestamp in the audiobook
• The feature is still in its infancy, but it will likely roll out to regions that support audiobooks if Spotify goes ahead with its release

Spotify is always evolving its audiobooks ecosystem, and it’s been testing a new tool behind the scenes, which involves syncing audiobooks with physical literature and vice versa – and it’s giving Audible a run for its money.

The new tool, called Page Match, will allow you to switch between a physical book and its audiobook version in Spotify – a perfect feature for keeping track of your page numbers, especially if you enjoy floating between physical and digital reading.

Though it’s not live yet and Spotify hasn’t shared any further details, Android Authority found a code reference to Page Match in the latest version of the Spotify app, as well as the line “match your progress from the book page to the audiobook – and back again”, summarizing its purpose. The outlet also shares that if this feature were to roll out, it would be available in regions where audiobooks are already supported.

On paper, it sounds like it could become one of the most valuable tools if you’re a frequent user of Spotify’s audiobooks, saving you loads of time needlessly searching for the page in a book that matches your progress in an audiobook – and the way it works is very straightforward.

If you want to switch from a physical book to an audiobook and continue your progress, all you have to do is scan the page you're reading with your phone’s camera. Spotify will then use optical character recognition (OCR) to read the text, which it will then match to the timestamp in the audiobook version. It also works the other way around, which audiobook competitors have yet to tap into.

For those of you who are primarily audiobook listeners, you’ll be able to use Page Match to switch from your digital to a paper version of the book you’re reading. Based on the code reference that Android Authority spotted, the outlet believes that Spotify will be able to tell you the exact page number in a book that matches your progress in an audiobook, which is a clever bonus.

Android Authority also provided a screenshot it sourced from the Spotify app in its coverage (see below), which shows how Page Match would work when scanning physical books.

An infant feature, but a bright future

It’s still early days for Page Match, but Android Authority’s insight into the tool does inspire confidence that it’s on the way. With that said, there are some minor hurdles to note.

So far, it appears that Page Match will only work if you unlock or own a Spotify audiobook first, and you will be prompted to do so before using the tool. Additionally, Spotify’s OCR may run into issues identifying book pages when you scan them. If this occurs, Spotify will ask you to scan a nearby page as an alternative. Frustrating, but also expected for a feature that’s fresh out of the oven.

Spotify’s dedication to growing its audiobook ecosystem speaks for itself, and given the rollout of last year’s Audiobooks+, AI recaps, and Follow Along feature, it’s evident that Spotify isn’t giving up, and as a result, it’s quickly catching up to Amazon’s flagship audiobook service Audible.

The Whispersync function on Kindle gives you the ability to switch between your Kindle eBook and its audiobook version on Audible. Sure, Amazon got there first – Whispersync launched in 2012 – but Spotify’s Page Match takes it one step further with its ability to match physical books to their digital companions – something that Amazon has yet to explore.

As someone who dips in and out of reading slumps, I have to admit that Page Match is convincing me to switch out the music for the literature for a bit – but we shall see how long I can keep that up for.

• Spotify now offers AI recaps for audiobooks
• It's in beta testing on the Spotify app for iOS
• You can catch up with titles in a few minutes

It's not always easy jumping back into the mid-point of an audiobook, especially if you're coming back after several weeks or months, but Spotify wants to help: it's introducing AI-powered recaps of everything in an audiobook you've listened to so far.

The feature works a bit like those "previously on..." recaps you see at the start of TV shows, and will "help you easily reengage with a story without needing to relisten", according to Spotify. All you do to activate them is tap the Recap button on the audiobook page.

The recaps will only go up to your current listening point, so there shouldn't be any spoilers. They're available once you're 15-20 minutes into an audiobook, and are then updated regularly as your listening progresses.

Spotify says the feature is now available in beta for the iOS app, for a "limited selection" of titles in English. Once Spotify has tweaked and refined the feature, and got some feedback from users, it'll begin rolling out more widely.

Kindle version when?

As per Spotify's announcement, it isn't using audiobook content to do any AI model training, and the AI doesn't replace the narration or any of the original content. It's just there to help you catch up – and maybe finish titles you previously abandoned.

It's likely to be useful if you're wanting to get back into an audiobook you previously abandoned, or if you fell asleep the night before with the audiobook still playing and aren't sure what's happened in the plot most recently.

Presumably the recaps – developed "in collaboration with our publishing partners", Spotify says – aren't going to hallucinate plot twists or imaginary characters, but if they do, that should be something that's flagged up during the beta phase.

This is something that would be useful for the written word too, if you're paying attention, ereader makers? An AI you can get recaps from, and ask questions of, about everything you've read in a book so far sounds incredibly useful, whether you're reading an e-book or need a companion app for your real book.

• Audible’s new “Ask a Question” feature lets U.S. listeners to the new Pride & Prejudice audiobook ask an AI expert any questions about the book.
• You can ask about plot, characters, or context without pausing playback.
• The beta feature is currently available for thousands of classic and public domain titles.

If you're enjoying listening to the drama of Regency literature but suddenly find yourself confused over whose cutting wit has embarrassed another character, Audible’s newest experiment has you covered.

The audiobook platform's “Ask a Question" feature is rolling out in beta in tandem with a new full-cast version of Pride and Prejudice, offering U.S. listeners the opportunity to ask an AI expert about the plot, characters, and even historical context and references while the audiobook keeps playing.

No need to pause, switch apps, or scroll through Reddit. The in-app tool that blends AI-generated responses with live listening.

You simply tap the “Ask a Question” button in the Audible app’s player while listening to a supported audiobook. Type your question, hit send, and within moments you’ll get a concise response based on both the audiobook content and external context. It's delivered quietly while the narration continues.

Though featured on Jane Austen's famous novel, the AI tool is arriving on many other public domain titles across the Audible catalog. So, you could be mid-ballroom scene, listening to passive-aggressive small talk, and ask what year it's happening, or confirm if this is the scene where Elizabeth changes her mind, with an answer provided before Lady Catherine de Bourgh finishes her sentence.

Audible says the tool is aimed at deepening immersion, not interrupting it. That's why the recitation doesn't stop when you send your question. Audible wants to keep you inside the velvet ropes of the novel, even when you need to look outside it for an answer.

AI annotations

It might seem like a small tweak, but the implications of this change are broader than simply a more flexible footnote. It’s part of a growing trend to make listening more interactive as a way of engaging people in content that isn't just podcasts. Audiobooks have always lived in a space between books and radio.

Unlike music, you usually don’t just let them play in the background. But unlike text, they aren’t searchable or skim-friendly. You can’t highlight a sentence or stick a bookmark on a particularly well-crafted sentence.

Ask a Question offers a kind of on-demand companion, but one that isn't intrusive. Classic literature often comes bundled with its own time-traveling baggage: unfamiliar slang, period-specific social rules, and entire plot arcs that hinge on inheritance laws you’ve never heard of.

Being able to ask, “Why is it such a big deal that he has no fortune?” or “Is this marriage normal for the time?” can turn a baffling story into a relatable parable. And Audible hopes the AI-powered nature of the responses will make them better and faster by keeping it all within the app.

The new feature follows other recent AI experiments from Audible. The company has released an AI-powered audiobook discovery tool named Maven, along with AI-driven narration and translation tools.

There are legitimate philosophical questions about whether these kinds of tools devalue reading. Whether AI has us outsourcing the learning we should do when reading old books, or the chance to come up with our own interpretations. That might be the case. But sometimes you just want to know who Charlotte Lucas married, and why, before the next chapter begins.

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Audiobooks have saved my sanity on many long commutes and have been great company while I'm cleaning or doing other chores. When the performance is good, it's easy to fall into the story. Audible wants authors and their readers to embrace AI as an alternative to human narration, but I am skeptical. Audible is offering publishers access to a fully integrated AI production pipeline. That includes auto-generating entire audiobooks with synthetic voices.

Their pitch is appealing on the surface: there are millions of books out there, and only a sliver of them ever make it into audio. Making audiobooks is expensive, time-consuming, and involves real people who need to be paid fairly for their time. An AI narrator is faster, cheaper, and a lot of people might not even notice it's not a human performing.

But "good enough" shouldn't be the standard for art, and audiobooks are very much an art form. Great narration adds depth, color, rhythm, and even new meaning to a text. It transforms reading aloud from words on a page you can hear to a real performance. Even if AI gets close in a technical sense, and I've heard AI audio that matches a human performance for at least a few minutes, we’ll still know the difference.

Human narration has nuance because it has context. The narrator understands not just the definition of the words they're saying, but the emotion and history behind them. They know the difference between a sigh of relief and a sigh of resignation. AI can approximate those sounds, sometimes amazingly so, but it's like a pet trick. A dog can cover its eyes, but that's not actually the dog feeling embarrassed.

The more AI voices fill our earbuds, the more we risk turning one of the most intimate forms of storytelling into something that feels robotic, flat, and eerily lifeless. It’s like auto-tuning a lullaby. It might hit the right notes, but it doesn’t sing.

AI narration needs

All of that said, I'm not against using AI for audiobooks in the right setting. Like any technology, it's about how AI narration is deployed, not whether it exists. There are so many books and new ones emerging all the time. If you’re an independent author with no budget to hire a narrator, or a publisher with a shelf of titles no one has touched in a decade, AI narration could breathe life into your books.

Synthetic voices don’t replace anything in those contexts; they just provide access. And an AI voice could supplement human readers with a multi-voice performance if you use the self-service version of Audible's AI narration platform. Using AI to supplement rather than replace all human voices feels like a better option to me.

One area I'm all in on for AI voices is translating texts. Audible has a beta test for AI-powered translation tools that could bring books to people unable to understand them in their original language. If there’s anything worse than a great book not having an audiobook, it’s a great book not being accessible in your language. Audible is starting the program by offering to translate English books into Spanish, French, German, and Italian.

The translation service can simply translate text and then give the new work an AI narrator, but what is more interesting to me is the speech-to-speech mode. That means an audiobook performed by a human in English could be replicated in a different language while sounding like the original performer.

The narrator of a bestselling English audiobook could now “speak” fluent Spanish in their own voice, introducing that story to new listeners around the world. That’s my favorite way to think about how to use AI. It can expand the reach of art without diluting its heart.

It's not quite the same as original, human narration, but it's a solution to a problem. That's how Audible should pitch AI audiobooks. We should absolutely use AI narration to make books accessible. But if it's possible to give it a human touch, that should be the first thought.

It's important not to lose sight of how this AI audiobook shift affects the performers who often build careers lending their voices to other people’s stories. If AI starts gobbling up midlist titles, budget-conscious publishers might see no reason to hire real readers anymore. AI doesn’t have to be the enemy. But it shouldn’t be the default.

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Audiobooks are a booming business, but it's impossible to imagine high-quality performers reading every book ever written out loud. To try to fill that gap, Audible, Amazon's audiobook arm, is testing out using voice clones produced with AI to speed up the process. The idea of a massive increase in books with an audio format has obvious appeal but immediately begs the question of whether they would be able to match a human performance, or whether it's worth pursuing even if they can.

The program, in beta in the U.S., is for a group of current Audible narrators to create voice clones using AI trained on samples of their speech. They will then be able to plug these AI replicas into their book recordings. The AI voice won't just be a plug-in for certain chapters and passages, either. Narrators can edit their AI voices to fix pronunciation, slow down or speed up the pacing, and then review the final production to ensure accuracy, just as they would in a live reading.

Audible suggested that AI voices will be present alongside human performances in a book, aiding rather than replacing the narrator. That means the narrators retain control over their AI voice, and they can audition their real and synthetic voices for reading projects. The exact payment system Audible will use for AI voices hasn't been completely worked out yet, but the beta offers a share of royalties on income from titles. How much narrators can expect to earn from AI-generated recordings compared to live readings is less clear. Plus, Audible mentioned that beta participants will be able to produce their AI voice for free, hinting that those not in the beta may have to pay a fee, or possibly a subscription, for the synthetic version of their voice.

"Audible continues to hear from members of our creator community who are interested in using emerging technologies to make more audio content available to listeners. There is a vast catalog of books that does not yet exist in audio and as we explore ways to bring more books to life on Audible, we're committed to thoughtfully balancing the interests of authors, narrators, publishers, and listeners," Audible explained in the announcement. "Narrators continue to maintain control of the projects they want to audition for, using voice replica or live performance, and will remain central to the production process."

AI bookworms

Assuming the beta test goes well, the option to add an AI-produced audio track will then be expanded to the authors, agents, publishers, and other copyright owners later this year. That suggests Audible is testing both the technical and political waters to see how the people involved in making an audiobook feel about the idea even before it becomes available to listeners. 

Still, even if you don't get an AI version of a current professional narrator, AI-generated voices are spreading thanks to improved synthetic voice cloning. For instance, ElevenLabs now offers AI versions of the voices of James Dean, Burt Reynolds, Judy Garland, and Sir Laurence Olivier for its Reader App, which can read out everything from books to websites.

Amazon clearly wants to show that it is focused on ensuring that the people involved in the project are happy. However, the company was more cavalier with its self-published audiobooks, adding AI voices through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). Authors could turn their books into audiobooks read by entirely synthetic voices with mixed reviews of their quality. There are now tens of thousands of titles on Audible with AI-generated voices. Professional narrators have complained about how it degrades their work and casts aside quality for cheapness even as it reduces their opportunities. The lack of a filter for AI-read books hasn't helped matters. If Audible is going to navigate through these issues and assuage the writers and narrators, along with their fans eager to hear the books, the company will need to listen closely.

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As well as everything else you can listen to on Spotify, you can now also listen to audiobooks too: there's a huge library of books to work your way through, and they can be accessed right alongside your music and your podcasts in the same Spotify apps you've always used.

As with podcasts – added in 2015 – Spotify has worked hard to make the introduction of audiobooks as seamlessly as possible. You can browse through and search for audiobooks specifically and separately, and they're kept in their own section of your library once they've been bought and downloaded.

There are some familiar tools available when you start listening too. You can listen offline, save your place with bookmarks, and adjust the playback speed as you listen. What's more, Spotify Premium users now get a selection of free audiobooks included  in their subscription.

Here's everything you ever wanted to know about audiobooks on Spotify.

When did Spotify launch audiobooks?

Audiobooks were added to Spotify for US users in September 2022. They were then made available in the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand in November 2022, and in Canada in March 2023. At the moment, Spotify audiobooks aren't available on the streaming service in any other regions.

According to Spotify, users had been requesting audiobooks for years, and 300,000 titles were made available at launch – within a year, that was up to 350,000 titles, so there's new content being added regularly. Spotify has also promised that more features and functions are coming in the future.

"We've been testing, researching, and listening to figure out how to create the most seamless experience on Spotify," said Nir Zicherman, Spotify's Vice President and Global Head of Audiobooks and Gated Content, as Spotify audiobooks launched.

"Our hope is that users who find audiobooks in their apps starting today feel that the user experience is obvious – that audiobooks fit in perfectly with how they already use Spotify."

How much do audiobooks on Spotify cost?

You'll find audiobooks across all kinds of price points on the Spotify platform, from free upwards, so you can pick and choose depending on your budget. Note that buying audiobooks works separately from a Spotify Premium subscription: audiobooks are one-off purchases handled separately, whether or not you pay Spotify a monthly subscription fee as well.

However, Premium members do get 15 hours worth of audiobooks for free each month. These books can be chosen from a large selection, though it's not the entire library. The offer is live now in the UK and Australia, and is coming to the US in the next month or two.

That puts Spotify on a more even footing with Amazon's Audible, which includes audiobooks in its subscription fee (though with Audible, once you stop your subscription, you lose access to your content). Purchases are handled independently of any shared Family or Duo subscription, too – everyone's audiobook purchases are kept separate and aren't shared between users.

In terms of US currency, paid-for audiobooks start at just a few dollars and can go as high as $40 (that's roughly £32 / AU$62). Prices do fluctuate, though, with special deals coming and going – so if you've got your eye on a specific audiobook then we'd recommend waiting a few weeks to see if you can get it any cheaper.

How do you buy audiobooks on Spotify?

Open up the Spotify app on mobile, desktop, or the web, and you should see an Audiobooks link somewhere quite prominent (usually at the top) – it'll be alongside Music and Podcasts & Shows, so you can quickly get to the type of content you want.

You can also just use the search function as normal to look for audiobooks: you can search for specific titles or genres, and as you type out your search you'll see an Audiobooks filter button appear underneath that will narrow down your results.

The hundreds of thousands of audiobooks on Spotify cover all kinds of categories and genres, so you should be able to find plenty of titles that match your reading tastes. As you make purchases, you'll get recommendations from Spotify about what else to listen to.

Click or tap on an audiobook to see more information about it: a description, user reviews, how much it costs, the running time, and who narrates it. Audiobooks can be saved to your library too, even before you've purchased them.

Select Get or Buy to download an audiobook, and – if necessary – purchase it. Purchases are always handled on the web, so if you're in the desktop or mobile apps, you'll be redirected to a webpage so you can enter your payment details.

Once that's done, the title shows up in your library and it's ready to listen to. Any titles saved to your library that haven't yet been purchased will have a padlock icon next to them, which disappears when you actually buy the audiobook on Spotify.

When purchasing audiobooks, Spotify will default to any payment methods you've used before or that you use for your subscription, but you can change this if needed. You also get a confirmation email for every audiobook purchase you make.

Does Spotify offer any free audiobooks?

Right now, there's a small selection of free audiobooks on Spotify, so you can start listening without spending any money. It's also worth noting that every audiobook has a free preview you can listen to, available on the individual listings pages. You may well see a free audiobooks section on the home screen of the Spotify app, but if not you can search for "free audiobooks" as well.

As far as we can tell, based on lists of "best free Spotify audiobooks" that people have posted online, the selection of free audiobooks varies by country and varies over time too – it's a good idea to keep checking inside the Spotify apps or even searching for specific titles to see what's being offered free of charge.

The process of adding a free audiobook to your library is the same as when you purchase an audiobook on Spotify, only no payment details are required, and no money changes hands. The new title will be available in the audiobooks section of your library.

As we've mentioned, Spotify Premium users can access 15 hours' worth of 'free' audiobook content per month – though considering you're paying a monthly fee for Spotify, it's not exactly free.

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Spotify is apparently seeking to diversify its content with a new pilot program where subscribers can pick up free audiobooks.

As revealed by The Wall Street Journal, the streaming platform is currently “working with some of the largest publishers in the US'', hashing out the details of how it’ll all work. The report states users will be able to listen to a maximum of 20 hours of content a month at no extra cost. It’s unknown what books will be present at launch as the list is still being finalized, although it’s "expected to be broad”. 

The platform first began offering audiobooks back in September 2022, giving users access to a library of over 300,000 titles from horror writer Stephen King to journalist Malcolm Gladwell. Since then, that number has grown to over 350,000.

Right now, Spotify audiobooks operate on a “pay-per-download basis” meaning you’ll have to buy each title on top of having a subscription. If this pilot program garners enough interest, this type of content could become a major pillar on Spotify alongside music.

Availability

The program will, according to the report, only be available for a limited time. The company apparently wants to first “gauge customer interest” before committing to anything. 

It’s unknown where this test will launch. However, the Wall Street Journal claims the free audiobooks will “roll out over time to a group of English-speaking countries”. More specifically, the United States, Canada, Australia, as well as the United Kingdom. 

It is worth mentioning Spotify audiobooks are available in Ireland and New Zealand too, but the Wall Street Journal report doesn’t mention whether or not the two nations will receive the free content. We reached out to Spotify, asking if their latest endeavor will roll out to other countries. This story will be updated at a later time.

Analysis: Misplaced priorities

As the Wall Street Journal points out, “audiobooks, like podcasts, represent a burgeoning market”; one that’s “popular among listeners”. Of course, this could require the platform to refocus its resources away from music streaming. Embracing non-music content runs the risk of alienating users if the recent price hike wasn’t enough.

But is the streaming giant willing to take on other titans like Audible at their own game? Audible offers a 30-day free trial where people can receive a ton of goodies: a free audiobook token, unlimited access to original content, plus “offline access to any [on-device] titles”. Spotify, on the other hand, has yet to deliver on the long-promised Hi-Res/Supremium tier to music fans. One might think the service should get its priorities sorted out first before expanding.

Be sure to check out TechRadar’s list of the best music streaming services for 2023. 

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Dolby Labs has further extended its reach by partnering with Amazon's Audible, to introduce Dolby Atmos content to its library.

Want specifics? Audible (which still offers a seven-day free trial) is debuting more than 40 titles mixed in Dolby Atmos' excellent immersive spatial audio, including The Little Mermaid, The Sandman Act III and the music-oriented podcast, Maejor Frequency. 

Audible in Dolby Atmos is another emphatic reason to invite a Dolby Atmos soundbar into your life – particularly if you're considering one of Amazon's new Fire TV Omni QLEDs with eARC for Dolby Atmos passthrough. 

The move also follows the launch of Atmos podcasts on also-owned-by-Amazon Wondery last year, and is irrefutable proof that Dolby is seeking to propagate not just the music and movie streaming markets, but audiobooks and podcasts, too.

According to both companies, the Dolby Atmos Audible collection includes feature-length productions, soundscapes, podcasts and live performances. 

Opinion: hard to explain, but so easy to enjoy 

What exactly does Dolby Atmos do for the listener? It does plenty. With Dolby Atmos, sound stems in the mixing process can actually be placed in a three-dimensional space. 

You can read about the time I visited Dolby's flagship London Atmos mixing suite (a 9.1.7 delight, where sonic articles in Elton John's Rocket Man both tickled the back of my skull and presented themselves as tangible green spheres in the room) for more information if you like… but that's another story. 

With this in mind, consider The Little Mermaid, which will include a "magical underwater soundscape and original music," on Audible, said Dolby's vice president John Couling, adding that "sound placement can now be used as a new element to draw audiences even closer to their favorite podcasts, audio narratives, and stories with Dolby Atmos." 

I believe that, as with Apple Music Sessions in spatial audio, Dolby Atmos has huge potential in the audio-only realm. One of the reasons for this is that when one of our senses is no longer needed (in this case, sight) we can close our eyes to find our other senses hone in, becoming more focused and finely tuned – as I learned during a blindfolded Pitchblack Playback session at L-Acoustics' fantastic 18.1.12 system last year. 

And if you're an audiophile who's never given Ammersive a go for stunning spatial audio story curations, I'd thoroughly recommend it – just give Buried Alive a miss if you're of a nervous disposition.

Ultimately, Amazon's adoption of the Dolby Atmos spatial audio special sauce in Audible is both exciting and further proof that immersive overhead audio is not going anywhere.

If you're an audiobooks fan, Apple has just given you a taste of the future by launching its first batch of AI-narrated books. But while the move is a fascinating one with big implications, the narrators' robotic tones show that much-loved human voices will be around for some time yet.

You can find the AI-voiced audiobooks, which use text-to-speech translation, in the Apple Books app by searching for 'AI narration'. This brings up a list of romance or fiction books (both free and paid for) that come with the description "narrated by Apple Books". 

Apple Books offers two types of AI voice – a soprano called Madison and a baritone voice called Jackson – which both have an American accent and currently speak in English-only. You can get a taste of what they sound like by tapping the 'preview' button under one of the Apple Books-narrated titles.

Right now, there's undoubtedly a robotic, artificial quality to both of Apple's AI voices. You won't be mistaking them for warm, expressive tones of popular narrators like Stephen Fry or Julia Whelan anytime soon. But while the uncanny valley remains a tough obstacle for AI narrators to cross, they're undoubtedly on a fast-track to our ears.

Naturally, Apple says its AI voices have been developed to make audiobooks "more accessible to all". But they also make the multi-billion dollar audiobook industry more accessible to tech giant. And the new Apple Books feature is just the start of a fierce battle with the likes of Amazon and Spotify for our audiobook-loving ears.

Voicing concerns

For now, we'll mostly see AI narrators restricted to books from smaller independent publishers. This could spark an explosion in the number of audiobooks available to readers on all devices, as digital narration opens up a new market to publishers and authors who'd previously been unable to afford the leap from print to audio.

But pushback from larger publishers and voice actors could also slow down the rise of robo-narrators. Amazon's Kindle e-readers officially lost their text-to-speech powers several years ago, even if there are workarounds in the accessibility menus. That decision was at least in part down to copyright issues and audiobooks being legally considered as distinct pieces of art.

The Amazon-owned Audible has also written at length about which narrators suit different kinds of books and how publishers choose the right ones. Its blog says that "the most important aspect when it comes to audiobooks is that the voice matches the tone and genre of the book". This is somewhat difficult to achieve if, like Apple Books, you only have two voices.

Audible also says that "experienced voice actors are able to differentiate pretty easily between vocal characteristics by playing with pitch, intonation, volume and accents", And this is certainly where AI voice actors need to do some intense vocal training, and perhaps also take some night classes in emotional mirroring.

But the new Apple Books feature is clearly just the start of an inevitable boom in AI voice technology. And the really big moment for audiobooks might be when AI can, rather than robotically reading a script, convincingly impersonate a famous voice actor – a leap that may not be too far off, based on recent showcases from the likes of Amazon. 

Fake empire

After all, deepfakes aren't just restricted to frighteningly convincing videos of a synthetic Morgan Freeman or Tom Cruise – AI-powered voice tech is also developing fast.

Viral web apps like Uberduck let you generate speech in the voices of past presidents or cartoon characters, while last year Amazon showed off a mildly terrifying new Alexa skill that could read out The Wizard of Oz to a child in the voice of their grandmother.

With the likes of Google Wavenet also pushing the tech forward, AI voices are only going to get more convincing. For now, the barriers to widespread adoption in audiobooks will likely be more legal and ethical, rather than technological. But Apple Books' artificial narrators are the sound of our synthetic future – and in the not-too-distant future, famous voice narrators will likely copyright and license their own voices, too.

For now, the evidence in Apple Books suggests these AI voices are currently best-suited to non-fiction and factual works, rather than emotive storytelling. For novels, just like movies, we're still some way off artificial actors being able to convincingly tug our heart-strings without ruining the suspense with a robotic inflection or flat note. But a torrent of AI audiobooks is definitely coming, regardless.

Spotify has begun rolling out audiobook support for users in the US. 

An entirely new section of the Spotify app will grant subscribers (Premium or otherwise) access to a catalog of more than 300,000 audiobook titles, with each book available to purchase or preview via web pages outside of the app itself. 

Purchased audiobooks will sit alongside music and podcasts in users' libraries, Home recommendations and in Search, while not-yet-purchased titles will appear with a lock icon over their respective play buttons. Audiobooks will be available in the Spotify app on both mobile and desktop. 

Listeners can download purchased content for offline listening, and Spotify's automatic bookmarking feature will save their place so they can easily pick up where they left off. Speed control is also included, giving users a variety of options to speed up or slow down the pace of an audiobook. 

"We’re excited to launch audiobooks with a brand-new user interface that’s geared specifically [towards] listening to audiobooks and fits them seamlessly alongside the music and podcasts you already listen to and love," Spotify executive Nir Zicherman said in an interview accompanying the announcement. 

"This is just the beginning of Spotify’s audiobooks journey. We’ve been working to create a seamless audiobooks experience, and we’ll continue to build and innovate on this in the future," Zicherman added. 

As mentioned, audiobook support is limited to Spotify users in the US for now, but Zicherman alluded to the company's plans to launch the feature in additional markets during his aforementioned interview on For the Record. 

Spotify's move into the audiobook space doesn't come as a surprise. The music streaming service has been experimenting with the medium for several years, and it's long-term intentions were laid bare following the acquisition of audiobook platform Findaway in November 2021.

Spotify executives will be hoping that the platform's full-scale expansion into audiobooks dents the popularity of rival services like Audible, Blinkist and Scribd, while also giving Spotify the upper-hand over arch-rival Apple Music. 

In the US, at least, Spotify now exists as a one-stop-shop for music, podcasts and audiobooks – a combination we've not seen before in the streaming industry. 

With a library of over 200,000, finding the best Audible books can sometimes be a little bit harder than it seems thanks to the massive number of possible choices. To help you make the most of those free audiobook tokens, we've got a top list right here with some suggestions to make that decision a little easier or simply give you an idea of the best Audible books currently available.

• Browse Audible's top 100 best-selling books

Rated our best audiobook site, Audible currently has the biggest audiobook library available online with over 200,00 books, original series, podcasts and much more. You'll literally find anything in its vast repertoire of audiobooks - fiction, travel, history, politics, or even self-help. That's a lot to browse, which is why we've curated this list of 20 of the best books on Audible right now. You can listen to them online or offline, wherever you are. We'll also keep adding to this page, so pop back when you're ready for more recommendations. 

It costs $14.95 / £7.99 / AU$16.45 per month to subscribe to Audible. You'll get a host of benefits - but you don't need a membership to listen to the best Audible books. You can also order titles through your Amazon account, or you can run a handy 30-day free Audible trial to see whether it's right for you. 

Is Audible free with Prime?

No, Audible membership is completely separate to Amazon Prime membership. However, Amazon Prime members can often enjoy certain Audible benefits, including access to some of the best Audible books for free. Prime members should look out for special limited-time offers and discounts on Audible subscriptions too, particularly on Amazon Prime Day (which is usually in July, but may be delayed this year).

Best Audible books to download today

If the finale of Game of Thrones left a hole in your life, fill it with epic fantasy comedy instead. Saturday Night Live star Kate McKinnon and her sister Emily Lynne have created a hilarious 10-part series that pulls in many of McKinnon's SNL pals, as well as A-listers such as Meryl Streep and GoT's very own Peter Dinklage.

• Buy from Audible now for $29.95 / £27.49 / AU$41.73
• Listen to a sample:

When Ronan Farrow broke the Harvey Weinstein scandal in The New Yorker, it sent shock waves around the world and kick-started the #MeToo movement. Catch and Kill reveals the long and rocky journey he took to get the truth out, and the many intimidating tactics used to try and stop him doing so.

• Buy from Audible now for $29.65 / £19.99 / AU$30.38
• Listen to a sample:

Since it was released at the end of 2018, the enormous popularity of Michelle Obama's self-narrated memoir shows no sign of waning - which is why it's still in our list of the best Audible books. Documenting her inspirational journey from the South Side of Chicago to the White House, it's an intimate glimpse into the life of the former First Lady.

• Buy from Audible now for $35.71 / £31.99 / AU$48.62
• Listen to a sample:

Best known for his quirky, whimsical travelogues, Bill Bryson has now turned his attention inwards with a fascinating exploration of the human body. It's packed with nuggets of information, from the disgusting to the hilarious. Bryson's soft, Midwestern narration is soothing. According to some reviewers he may lull you to sleep, but this Audible book remains a best-seller across the globe.

• Buy from Audible now for $20.72/ £18.99 / AU$28.87
• Listen to a sample:

Louis Theroux's wry, self-deprecating style comes to the fore in this engaging account of the documentary-maker's unlikely rise to success. If you're a fan of Theroux's awkward yet insightful encounters with larger-than-life characters, from racist US militias to Joe Exotic and Jimmy Savile, there's plenty for you here.

• Buy from Audible now for $15.26 / £13.99 / AU$21.26
• Listen to a sample:

Horror master Stephen King needs no introduction, and this chilling collection of four novellas – Mr. Harrigan's Phone, The Life of Chuck, Rat, and the titular If It Bleeds – intrigues and terrifies in equal measure. Stand by Me and The Shawshank Redemption both started life as King novellas, so it's a format with huge potential.

• Buy from Audible now for $27.27 / £24.99 / AU$37.98
• Listen to a sample:

Star Wars fans will love this intimate portrait of life inside one of the series most enduring characters: C-3PO. Anthony Daniels endured many hours inside a claustrophobic metal suit to bring the iconic golden droid to life. In this Audible book he provides a backstage pass, shedding light on the processes and personalities involved in the blockbuster movie franchise. 

• Buy from Audible now for $28.00 / £25.99/ AU$39.50
• Listen to a sample:

There's only one Elton John, and his first and only official autobiography packs 72 years of incredible stories and life-changing experiences into just under 12 hours of enthralling listening. Fittingly, it's narrated by Taron Egerton, the actor who portrayed him in the smash-hit movie Rocketman.

• Buy from Audible now for $15.26 / £13.99 / AU$21.26
• Listen to a sample:

Kiley Reid's striking debut novel Such a Fun Age tackles themes of social justice head-on in a tale of racial profiling, privilege, and identity. The story revolves around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.

• Buy from Audible now for $14.95 / £12.99 / AU$19.75
• Listen to a sample:

Drawing on expert insights from criminologists, scientists, and military psychologists, Malcolm Gladwell provides a thought-provoking exploration of how we engage with strangers, and the role that can play in starting conflicts. After nine hours of listening, you may completely reappraise the way you see the world.

• Buy from Audible now for $34.90 / £31.99 / AU$48.62
• Listen to a sample:

If procrastination is the bane of your life, Jeffrey Gitomer's bluntly titled Get Sh*t Done could be one of the best Audible books for you. Its simple goal: make you more productive, by providing the strategies you need to achieve your goals and be more profitable.

• Buy from Audible now for $13.99 / £12.89 / AU$19.49
• Listen to a sample:

The 2016 presidential election put Trump in the White House, an outcome that few around the world thought possible at the start of the campaign. Throwing petrol on the fire of political debate that has raged ever since, MSNBC personality Rachel Maddow gives her take on the role that Russia played in the election, in Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth.

• Buy from Audible now for $34.90 / £31.99 / AU$48.62
• Listen to a sample:

By telling her warts-and-all journey from underground hip-hop clubs to the top of the music industry, Sophia Chang hopes to inspire more young minds to do the same. She doesn't pull any punches in the process, and The Baddest Bitch in the Room is so packed with explicit content that Chang has also produced a second, toned-down version for younger audiences.

• Buy the explicit version from Audible now for $29.95 / £27.49 / AU$41.73
• Buy the clean version from Audible now for $29.95 / AU$41.73
• Listen to a sample:

An ideal way to introduce a younger audience to the global Potter phenomenon, Tales of Beedle The Bard is a bite-sized listen, with a similar run-time to a kids' movie. This is easily one of the best Audible books for children of the year. 

Of course, the rest of the much-loved Harry Potter book series is on Audible too: you can pick between Stephen Fry, Jim Dale or J.K. Rowling herself as your narrator for those.

• Buy from Audible now for $14.95 / £12.00 / AU$20.20 (free for members)
• Listen to a sample:

The second kids' title in our best Audible book round up is the latest hilarious tale from best-selling author and comedian David Walliams. Slime introduces us to the Isle of Mulch, home to many deplorable adults who like nothing more than to make children's lives a misery. Up steps Ned: a boy whose special slime power could liberate Mulch once and for all.

• Buy from Audible now for $8.72 / £7.99 / AU$12.14
• Listen to a sample:

5 best Audible books of all time

There are multiple ways to engage with Douglas Adams' seminal cult classic on Audible, from the BBC radio adaptations – complete with music, sound effects and full cast – to the full-blown audiobook experience, narrated by either Stephen Fry or Martin Freeman. We recommend Fry's version. 

• Buy from Audible now for $13.08 / £11.99 / AU$18.22
• Listen to a sample:

Stephen Fry has made quite a name for himself as an audiobook narrator. This incredible 72-hour bundle of all four Sherlock Holmes novels, plus five short story collections, is sure to sate your appetite for detective fiction, as well as Fry. As a lifelong Holmes fan, he has also recorded exclusive personal introductions to each title.

• Buy from Audible now for $82.77 / £79.99 / AU$124.90
• Listen to a sample:

Following the huge success of the TV adaptation, Margaret Atwood's dystopian feminist masterpiece from 1985 has won a whole new audience. This new version is narrated by Elizabeth Moss (who plays Offred in the series), which gives it a contemporary twist.

• Buy from Audible now for $34.90 / £31.99 / AU$48.62
• Listen to a sample:

A favourite of English literature students the world over, F. Scott Fitzgerald's seminal 1925 work The Great Gatsby is given a new lease of life thanks to expert narration from A-list star Jake Gyllenhaal. Journey back to the decadence and opulence of the Roaring Twenties, and enjoy this classic cautionary tale that cuts to the heart of the American Dream.

• Buy from Audible now for $14.95 / £11.29 / AU$17.56
• Listen to a sample:

Famously still unfinished in book form, with the next instalment eagerly anticipated, George R.R. Martin's epic fantasy saga A Song of Ice and Fire has captured the imagination of millions. All five of the books so far are available on Audible – for over 200 hours of listening pleasure in total. From 33hrs 45min (A Game of Thrones) to 48hrs 53min (A Dance with Dragons)

• Buy from Audible now for $29.44 / £26.99 / AU$41.01 each
• Listen to a sample:

• Browse Audible's top 100 best-selling books
• ^ Back to the top

We all know Audible can be an expensive service, but thankfully there are always a few Audible promos and discounts you can take advantage of to get you up and running with a respectable library in no time.

Right now's a fantastic time to be checking in as Audible has just posted an awesome tie-in deal for the upcoming Amazon Prime Day event that offers new customers an extended three month trial. Previously, the trial only lasted a single month and this Prime Day Audible deal is also for the (usually) pricier Premium Plus subscription tier, meaning you'll get free book tokens as well as unlimited access to the Audible Originals library.

There's also an existing promotion for UK customers that lets them bag their four months of Audible for £3.99 right now, with a total saving of £16 overall. This is an old pre-Prime Day deal that's pretty good but it's worth noting that UK customers can also take advantage of that extended three month free trial right now, which might be a better option for you.

If you're already signed up, then Audible deals and discounts on monthly membership fees tend to be pretty rare. Don't fret though, there are still some great promos available all year round on gift memberships and on books in the Audible daily deals section. To see what's available this week, simply scroll down to the Audible promo codes section further down the page.

Audible discounts available now

We've got a really in-depth breakdown of what's included with an Audible membership, as well as frequently asked questions in our Audible price and membership guide. If you're still on the fence, then you can also check out the 30-day free trial of Audible, which we've also broken down with a detailed Audible free trial guide.

Audible promo codes

While there are currently no promotional codes that will get you free membership months on Audible, there are some great free giveaways and bonuses to be had, including free access to over 300 kids audiobooks. We've listed out the best Audible offers down below, including where to get the Audible daily deal.

Audible promo codes: how to save money

Audible promo codes tend to be pretty rare, so often the best savings are to be had around one-off membership promotions (such as the one included at the top of this article) or by getting a discount in the Audible deal of the day.

Most of the Audible membership discounts tend to revolve around new subscribers, so if you're an existing member it's extremely unlikely that you'll be able to knock some cost off next month's bill. Existing members, however, do have access to the audiobook deals section on the Audible site, where Audible tends to put up sales on a fairly regular basis. This Audible discounts can run anywhere from 10% to 30% discounts to $5 audiobook deals, so they can be a great way to save a little bit of cash on the side when used in conjunction with your 30% off flat storewide membership discount.

Other excellent Amazon services

If you've already got Audible but still want to save some cash, Amazon has a load of other excellent subscription services that you can check out for free. Everything's covered here, from movies, music, books to TV, and you're sure to find something of interest.

Most of these subscription services run a 30-day free trial, with a few even offering up to 6-months for free. All of these will require your card details to sign up to but remember you can simply cancel your subscription immediately and still get full access for 30-days - giving you a lot of time to check out the service without incurring any cost.

If you're interested in the Audible free trial then you've come to the right place. We're here to answer any questions you might have about what's included, who's eligible, and give tips on how to score free content on Audible. 

Details on the Audible can lean towards the opaque side, with many of the features being hidden behind small print and various promotional material. Luckily however the Audible free trial is always running, so if you're not ready for that big commitment then you'll still be able to check everything out at your own pace. 

Right now's a fantastic time to be checking out Audible too as the service has just released an extended free trial as a tie-in for the yearly Amazon Prime Day sale. For a limited-time only, new customers can get a full three months of the (usually) pricier  Audible Premium Plus plan on the house at no cost. This free trial not only gets you unlimited thousands of titles in the Audible Originals library, but a book token per month that's yours to keep forever.

With so many people getting cheap Amazon Kindles in the end-of-year sales too, it's a great time to be checking out the new Audible service. We've also gone to the trouble of including some great tips on how to save money with Audible overall, and any caveats you need to be aware of when signing up for the Audible free trial.

Audible Prime Day deal now live

Audible free trials: how to sign up

Is Audible free?

Audible is not free, even for Amazon Prime users. It operates on a monthly subscription basis, costing $7.95 / £7.99 per month at the entry-level subscription tiers. However, some content can be scored for free, depending on which tier of subscription you choose. If you subscribe to the new Premium Plus plan, for example, you'll receive one free book token per month, as well as get the usual free access to the core Audible Originals for one month. 

Using that monthly book token, and the free trial, you can effectively get yourself one free book on Audible, although you can only do this once because the free trial is only available once per account. Bear in mind also that Audible will also roll on your free trial to a paid account once it expires, so definitely don't forgot to cancel it before your 30-day Audible free trial is up.

Audible free trial: what's included?

With the standard 30-day free trial you'll receive:

• Audible Plus trial
• Unlimited access to the new Audible Originals catalog (over 11,000 titles)
• Free access to the Audible app (Windows, iOS, Android, Amazon devices)

• Audible Premium Plus trial
• One free audiobook token when you start the trial
• Unlimited access to the new Audible Originals catalog (over 11,000 titles)
• Free access to the Audible app (Windows, iOS, Android, Amazon devices)
• Offline access to any of your titles

Currently you can take a free trial on both subscription tiers for Audible, but as you can see, the more generous of the two is the higher-tiered Audible Premium Plus trial. With the Audible Premium Plus free trial, you'll have access to one audiobook in total - not a lot, but enough to give you a little taster of what Audible's about, plus a nice little freebie that you can keep after your trial is over.

All free-trial tiers will have 30-days of unlimited access to the Audible Originals selection, which currently has over 11,000 titles of varying genres - both fiction, non-fiction, and even podcasts too. This library is ever-expanding too, which makes the new fairly wallet-friendly Audible subscription plans much better value than the previous free book token system.

If you decide to continue your subscription after your free Audible trial has ended, you'll still be entitled to free audiobooks as part of your subscription if you opt for the Premium Plus tier. This tier is more akin to the traditional Audible subscription plans from last year, with one free audiobook per month, or up to 12 in a single upfront purchase.

Who's eligible for the Audible free trial?

All new users are eligible for the free trial, simply create a free Audible account and you're good to go.

Currently, the free trial is only available to non-existing users only. So, if you're already an Audible subscriber or have already redeemed your free trial on your account, then you will not be eligible for another free trial.

Will Audible extend my free trial?

If you're already signed up for an Audible free trial, you won't be able to get an extension - once you're in, you're in. If you want to keep getting Audiobooks, you'll have to start paying a membership.

However, Audible does sometimes offer a three-month trial - rather than just 30 days - so if you're dead set on saving money, and not in a rush, you could wait for the next time that promo appears. 

We last saw the three-month Audible trial in April - you could get three months for just 99p. However, this only ran for around a week, so you have to be quick when you see it. These longer Audible trial promotions tend to run every couple of months, so it's unlikely another one will crop up for a while - but we're always on the lookout, so bookmark this page and check in regularly for the latest Audible free trial news.

What happens when my Audible trial is over?

Audible will roll your membership onto a paid tier after your 30 days are up, so if you're planning to cancel your subscription, make sure you do so before the trial period is over. If you do choose to do this, you'll still have access to all your existing audiobook choices, so it's very much an opt-out friendly service if you're that way inclined.

Also, if you cancel your subscription immediately after signing up for the free trial, you'll still be on the free trial for the remaining 30 days. If you're concerned about forgetting to cancel then don't worry - there's absolutely no risk with canceling immediately.

If you do choose to roll over to a paid subscription, you'll automatically be enrolled on the membership plan of the particular chosen trial tier, which start at $7.95 / £7.99 per month. Sometimes there are special offers that will bundle in several months for the price of one, however, right now there's nothing on the cards unfortunately.  

If you'd like a detailed overview of membership plans and what's included you can visit our Audible price and membership guide.

Other excellent Amazon services

While you're here, it's worth us telling you about the other great free Amazon service trials that are available right now. Whether you're interested in books, music, or video, there's a huge array of available services that Amazon is hoping will fill your every need. There's too many to cover in one article, but we've provided some handy links just down below so you can check them out yourselves.

• Check out our excellent Amazon Prime free trials article right here.

Editor's Note

• Original Scribd review date: February 2022
• Rebranded in November 2023
• Launch subscription price: $9.99 / £7.99 / AU$14.99
• Current price: $11.99 / £10.99 / AU$14.99

Updated: February 2024. Scribd, when it originally launched, was a subscription hub for ebooks, audiobooks, podcasts, magazines, sheet music, various documents, slides and even the odd recipe. The platform has undergone a full overhaul, however, and has been broken into three different services. Everand is now the app for ebooks, audiobooks, podcasts, magazines and sheet music. Scribd is exclusively for documents – so whitepapers, court filings, some scientific research, recipes, etc. All the presentations have been moved to SlideShare. The three platforms are still owned and run by Scribd Inc and you need only one subscription to access all three. The monthly subscription has gone up in the US and UK, but remains unchanged for Australia, and the extensive Everand library makes it worthwhile. In lieu of this overhaul, we’ve redone our original review, concentrating on Everand, but also touching upon Scribd and SlideShare too.

Scribd with Everand: One-minute review

Scribd began life as a document-sharing platform in 2007, but it grew from there to become an ebook and audiobook subscription service to rival Kindle Unlimited and Kobo Plus. In November 2023, however, the platform underwent a full overhaul, and parent company Scribd Inc separated the mainstream offerings like ebook and audiobooks from the documents and presentations that littered the service. The original Scribd has now been divided into three new platforms – Everand housing all the ebooks, audiobooks, magazines, podcasts and sheet music, Scribd is now the home for documents only (think whitepapers, court filings, etc), and all the presentations have moved to SlideShare.

The good news is that the one subscription gets you access to all three, and the price in some regions is still the same as before. For this review, I’ve concentrated on the mainstream Everand service, but it all works exactly as it did previously.

As before, there’s quite a decent library of ebooks, audiobooks, magazines, podcasts and sheet music on Everand, with the app looking pretty much the same as the original Scribd. The only difference is some minor changes to the color schemes to differentiate between the three divisions of the old Scribd platform.

Compared to Kindle Unlimited and Kobo Plus, Everand has a more extensive selection of titles in its library but only if you take both ebooks and audiobooks into consideration. However, as with Scribd previously, there’s still more audiobooks than ebooks on the platform, although the number of titles has increased significantly compared to what I saw when I first reviewed it in 2022. 

The headline here is the addition of Originals on Everand – titles written exclusively for Scribd Inc by some well-known authors like Magaret Atwood and Stephen King.

While Kindle Unlimited offers magazines to its US subscribers, other markets aren’t able to access those, and Everand can fill the void. However, the number of magazines is limited compared to what you’ll find on Readly. And while podcasts are a great addition to Everand (something you won’t find on Kindle Unlimited or Kobo Plus), several are available for free on other platforms. Still, they add value to the subscription.

There’s no native ereader integration with the Everand app, but you can use it on a desktop or a handheld device like your phone or tablet – apps are available for Apple and Android users. Owners of Onyx Boox ereaders – which run on Android and give you access to the Google Play Store – can download it for use on e-ink slates like the Onyx Boox Tab Mini C or Onyx Boox Page.

Scribd with Everand review: price and availability

• More expensive than Kindle Unlimited in some markets
• Monthly subscription of $11.99 / £10.99 / AU$14.99
• 30-day free trial

A monthly subscription to any of Scribd Inc’s apps – Everand, Scribd or SlideShare – will cost you $11.99 / £10.99 / AU$14.99. That’s a touch more expensive than Kindle Unlimited in the US and UK, but costs the same in Australia. 

Signing up for only Everand gets you access to the other two, or vice versa, adding value to the subscription if you’re a student or researcher, but the variety in the Everand library alone makes it better value than either Kindle Unlimited or Kobo Plus, but this is only if you take full advantage of both ebooks and audiobooks.

That said, if you already use an Amazon Kindle or Kobo ereader, you might be better off with the ebook subscription service associated with your chosen brand if you want to read on the device.

You can subscribe to Everand from anywhere in the world – you’ll just have to pay the equivalent of the US pricing if your country doesn’t have an official version of the site or application. Plus there’s a 30-day free trial available to test the waters before you commit to paying for the service when you sign up via either Everand or Scribd. Strangely, SlideShare offers a 60-day free trial, which might be the better option to test the waters for longer.

Scribd with Everand review: Content library

• Lots of audiobooks
• Limited ebooks compared to audiobooks
• Decent collection of magazines and podcasts

Like I mentioned at the start of this review, there’s a lot on Everand. As versatile as it looks on paper, the individual libraries of each type of content is limited, although I found far more titles I’d like to read and listen to on Everand than I did on Kindle Unlimited and Kobo Plus.

Let’s start with ebooks. While there’s a lot here to keep you occupied for a very long time, you could be disappointed if you’re looking for something specific. A couple of missing examples I found were David Graeber’s The Dawn of Everything and Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn Trilogy. Fans of Brandon Sanderson, though, will be glad to know that several of his other titles are available on Everand, including his “secret project” books from his Kickstarter campaign.

What’s interesting about Everand, though, are the original titles. Started in 2019, the Scribd Originals program (called so they came into being before Everand was launched as a separate platform) was a way for authors to reach new audiences, but these are written exclusively by some well known writers like Magaret Atwood, Stephen King, Paul Theroux and Simon Winchester. Most of these are short stories or essays, and several are in audiobook format, but there are some very interesting titles amongst the Scribd Originals, none of which you’ll find anywhere else.

The number of audiobooks on Everand is much more impressive than its ebook collection, just as it was when it was still called Scribd. Some titles that don’t have the ebook versions on Scribd can be found in audiobook format instead. For example, Neil Price’s Children of Ash and Elm and Mary Beard’s SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome are only available as audiobooks. Another example of the deficit of ebook titles is Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen series – all 10 are available as audiobooks but none as an ebook. It's the same with Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries too – the first seven are available in audiobook format only. 

Some of these missing ebook titles used to be available as user-uploaded documents in PDF format – likely from questionable sources – on the original platform, but those are no longer on Everand, having moved to the new Scribd.

When it comes to magazines and newspapers, you’re not going to get as extensive a collection as on Readly, but there are some very good options on Everand, like Time, Marie Claire and National Geographic. There are some obvious big names missing too, like Reader’s Digest and Cosmopolitan, although you can find a few individual articles from the missing mags. Despite the missing titles, the magazine stand does cover several genres including news and current affairs, tech, and lifestyle, with the News Rack including access to The Guardian, NPR, The Independent and Futurity. Some of TechRadar’s sister magazines can be found on Everand, including Kiplinger, Digital Camera World, Classic Rock, T3 and APC.

There’s a pretty decent collection of podcasts across several genres as well, like Grounded with Louis Theroux, Day X, Revisionist History and Criminal. Practically every one I searched for, I found on Everand, however they’re also available for free on Apple and Google Podcast services.

I’m not certain what sheet music is doing on Everand – I think it should be on Scribd with other documents – but if you’re a keen musician, you could strike gold and that alone might be worth the subscription cost for you. There’s a lot of sheet music, from Disney songs to Broadway, Mozart to Frank Sinatra, even Beyonce, Adele and Taylor Swift.

Scribd content library

With all the mainstream items now on Everand, Scribd has gone back to being what it started out as – a repository of user-uploaded content, specifically documents like whitepapers, some research papers, court filings and the like. 

The documents are categorized into several genres, including wellness, technology, business, religion and politics, and their usefulness will depend on what precisely you’re after. Each document can be rated by the user with a thumbs up or a thumbs down, and this becomes important when you’re looking for authenticity on a platform that can have some dodgy content from questionable sources.

Most of the content on the new Scribd document platform, however, is good and could be useful depending on the subject. I found books on metabolism that were interesting, plus something on modern sewer designs that I never thought would hold me attention for longer than a minute. There are textbooks and test papers, even court filings against Donald Trump.

And, as I’ve already mentioned, you don’t pay extra to access Scribd – it’s included in the Everand subscription. Any document you save via Scribd is added to a common saved list that’s accessible via any of the three apps, but if you select a document via the Everand app, you will be redirected to the Scribd app. So if you do use all the Scribd Inc apps, you will need to download them all on your preferred device. If you only use the web browser option, then they open in a new tab.

SlideShare content library

As with Scribd, SlideShare is also niche, now home to the presentations that were previously uploaded to the original Scribd platform. There are a wide range of slide shows and decks to choose from, including business templates, guides to social media platforms, case studies in education and a heck of a lot more.

You can download an entire presentation if you need it offline, or you can choose specific slides from a deck to download. The uploader’s username is displayed against each presentation, plus the number of slides in each, how many views they’ve had and how long they’ve been available on SlideShare.

The presentations aren’t editable, although it might be possible to find the odd template that might allow you to do so after downloading for offline access.

Interestingly, when viewing SlideShare on a web browser, it gives you the option of signing up to all three apps to get a 60-day free trail, which doesn’t seem to be available via the other two. So if you really are keen to try Everand, it might be a good option to sign up via SlideShare.

Scribd with Everand review: user experience

• Mobile apps are easy to use
• Clunky browser interface
• Formatting issues on some ebooks

Everand, Scribd and SlideShare can be used on a desktop browser, on a phone or a tablet, with apps available for both Apple and Android operating systems. Signing up is easy and there’s a 30-day free trial for you to road test the service before you need to cough up the monthly fee (60 days if you sign up via SlideShare).

Apps for all three on any platform are identical, so I’ll stick to Everand for the sake of this review. Using the app on mobile or tablet is quite easy and intuitive, with browsing the library made easy thanks to sections for different genres and categories. The different content types are neatly arranged on the top of the app and there’s even curated lists for anyone keen to find a new story to get lost in. 

When you find something you want to read or listen to, you just have to save it by tapping on the bookmark icon. You can even download items for offline reading or listening and, in theory, there’s no limit to how many you can download at a time. I didn’t go beyond downloading five items at a time, but I have seen some users complain that Scribd Inc throttles how much you can download in one go.

Audiobook quality – based on the titles I listened to – is great, but if your device goes to sleep due to inactivity, the narration will stop unless you use the app’s sleep timer functionality (the crescent moon icon). Audiobooks require the screen to be on at all times for it to work nonstop.

Ebook quality, for the most part, is great but I did find some that had formatting issues – not the kind you’d expect from a page trying to automatically adjust to screen sizes. I found a number of them with just one word on a line or large chunks of empty space after a paragraph (with the next one starting on the subsequent page).

Note that the Everand app itself doesn’t have a dark mode option, but if your device settings is selected for dark mode, then all content will appear on a black background with white text.

Reading magazines is a mixed-bag experience – none of the covers can be viewed full-screen and you can only read one article at a time, no scrolling through the whole issue here. That said, each article is nicely formatted, with any accompanying imagery placed very well to avoid weird line and page breaks, no matter what screen size you’re viewing it on.

The browser experience, however, isn’t as great as on mobile or tablet. The interface is easy to navigate, yes, but it’s just too clunky to be a smooth experience. That said, we reckon most users would prefer to read (or listen) on a handheld device, so the online interface shouldn’t really be too much of an issue.

The one drawback that could be a deal breaker for some potential subscribers is the lack of ereader support. If you already own a Kindle, then Amazon’s ebook/audiobook subscription service will be a lot more convenient for you. It’s a similar case with Kobo users – where Kobo Plus is available, that would seem like a better option. 

However, as I’ve mentioned earlier, Onyx Boox ereaders with access to the Google Play Store will be able to open the Android version of the Everand app so you can read (or listen) on an ereader. Scribd Inc will probably have to go through licensing red tape to partner with some of the best ereader brands out there, but if that can be wrangled, then Everand might have a fighting chance to compete with Kindle Unlimited in terms of popularity.

Should I subscribe to Scribd with Everand?

Whether you should subscribe to Everand (or Scribd and SlideShare) is not an easy question to answer. If you’re an avid reader and don’t already subscribe to an ebook/audiobook subscription service, then Everand might be worth considering, particularly if you primarily do your digital reading on a phone or tablet. Considering you get access to a very diverse range of content types could just make that subscription price worth it.

In fact, it’s great for audiobook lovers who don’t already have an Audible subscription (which is cheaper in some markets but more expensive in others), considering there’s more audio titles than ebooks. 

Having access to magazines and podcasts on the same platform is great too, but Readly has a better magazine collection (if that is your area of interest), and the podcasts can be found on other platforms for free, so it’s up to you to decide if they add value to your subscription cost.

If ebooks and audiobooks are your main goals, then at the time of writing, Kindle Unlimited has an extensive library of ebooks and offers you the convenience of reading on a Kindle device or on the Kindle app. You’ll also need to remember Everand won’t get new releases on its platform on day one.

Unlike any other subscription service of this kind, however, your Everand membership gets you some exclusive content in the form of the Scribd Originals, but there aren’t too many of these, but it’s possible this might grow. And if you take into account both ebooks and audiobooks, then the Everand library is arguably the best, but only if you enjoy both reading and listening to stories.

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[First reviewed February 2022]

Spotify's catalogue is set to expand, as the company has announced that it plans to acquire audiobook platform Findaway.

As well as having a library of over 325,000 titles, Findaway also distributes audiobooks to different platforms, and pairs authors with narrators – which means Spotify audiobooks could become yet another revenue stream for the streaming service.. 

Speaking to The Verge, Spotify's head of audiobooks Nir Zicherman said that the acquisition will "accelerate the addition of an audiobook catalog onto the platform so that users can effectively get all of the audio content that they want all on one platform".

As well as bringing more audiobooks to Spotify subscribers, Zicherman said the company is focusing on "democratization" by allowing more people to create and publish audiobooks.

Spotify has experimented with audiobooks in the past, releasing celebrity-narrated public domain classics and a Harry Potter audiobook in 2020 - but this acquisition shows that the company is hoping to vastly expand its offerings, much like it branched out into podcasts a few years ago.

If audiobooks prove as popular as podcasts on Spotify, the acquisition could be very lucrative indeed - the company announced that podcast ad revenue increased by 627% year on year in July 2021, with podcast listening increasing by 30%.

According to The Verge, Findaway shares in author's royalties, so when a user buys a Findaway-distributed book on Spotify, the music streaming service will make money, and will also take a cut of the revenue. 

It sounds as though you'll be able to buy individual audiobooks on Spotify, but we wouldn't be surprised if the company announces a new subscription tier to cater for spoken word content specifically in the next few months.

What about Spotify HiFi?

We've had a number of announcements from Spotify in recent weeks - including the ability to block other users on the platform - but we haven't had the one announcement we've been waiting for: a Spotify HiFi launch date. 

Recently, we've seen several signs that Spotify HiFi is close to launch. We've seen screenshots of the Spotify HiFi logo in the app as well as a Spotify HiFi onboarding video leaked by a Redditor.

According to a Spotify blog post, the new service will be available "later in 2021" – and it will be available as an upgrade to Premium. However, the end of the year is fast approaching, and we still don't have a firm release date.

Spotify HiFi was revealed earlier this year, and will allow you to hear your favorite songs in lossless, CD-quality audio. Spotify is one of the few big streaming platforms that doesn't offer lossless audio, and the move could help it close the gap between its services and rival platforms like Apple Music, Amazon Music HD, Tidal, and Deezer. 

Although HiFi won't include truly hi-res audio streams like Apple Music and Amazon, CD-quality audio at 1,411kbps will be a big improvement on Spotify's current offering of 320kbps.

Lossless audio formats have more detail and data than their lossy counterparts. That means hearing new details in songs you’ve never heard before that otherwise might’ve been cut out when the data was compressed. It should also sound a bit wider and more immersive, though, a lot of it will depend on which headphones or speakers you use, too.

We still don't know how much Spotify HiFi will cost, but we think it will be more than the basic Spotify Premium price of $9.99 / £9.99 / AU$11.99 per month. 

In contrast, Apple Music and Amazon Music HD both offer hi-res audio at no extra cost to its subscribers - and while Spotify does have a superior music discovery platform and more user-friendly interface than its competitors, we're not sure how many people will opt to pay extra for HiFi when they can get true hi-res audio from Spotify's biggest rivals.

• Read our guide to the best music streaming services in 2021

The best audiobook sites are worth considering if you're an avid reader but can't always have a book in hand everywhere you go.

While it's hard to beat the feeling of a paperback in your hands, physical books aren't always practical. You can't read a book while you drive your car to work or prepare dinner, and the shelf space needed to house them all can get out of hand quickly. There's also the expense. If you like to read a lot, the cost mounts up quickly, with new paperback releases often starting at around $10. Even if you buy second-hand, you come back to the problem of storage space.

Audiobooks, on the other hand, are much more convenient. You can download titles anytime you want, as long as you have Wi-Fi, and can listen to them almost anywhere. All you need is a phone or tablet with enough space to house your downloads - no shelves required.

Finding the time to sit down and read is something that so few of us manage to do. Audiobooks make consuming books easier than ever - while audiobook subscriptions and services often make doing so more affordable.

Soak up some Dickens in the bath, swoon over Jane Austen while doing the grocery shop, or even recoil at Harlan Coben on the school run (no one needs to know). Your luggage will also be especially grateful when you go on vacation, as you don't need to take up crucial flip-flop space with mountains of heavy books.

With so many audiobook sites available, it can be hard to know which is best. So, we've done the legwork for you. We've tried all the top audiobook sites and services and put together this list of our top picks. So, no matter what you're interested in reading (or, rather, having read to you), or whether you want a free service or a subscription, there is something on this list for you. Take a look at our picks below.

The best audiobook sites 2026

Audible is unquestionably the biggest name in the audiobook space and our top pick for the best audiobook site. In addition to its giant library of more than 200,000 audiobooks and podcasts, which covers nearly every category you can imagine, Amazon's platform gives you access to hundreds of Audible Original titles you can’t find anywhere else.

Audible subscriptions work using "credits". Each month, you get one credit you can use to obtain an audiobook for free, regardless of its price. A US$14.95/£7.99/AU$16.45 per month plan gets you a single monthly credit, but you can upgrade to two credits per month. If you run out of credits or purchase a slightly cheaper “credit-free” subscription, your membership still grants you access to plenty of free titles and offers you heavy discounts on paid Audible titles.

The great thing about Audible is that if you don’t like an audiobook you’ve purchased, you can exchange it free of charge. Also, if you aren’t entirely sure Audible is the right service for you, you can cancel your subscription for free in the first 30 days. Audible books work on more or less any device, including products running iOS, OS X, Android, Windows, and Amazon Alexa.

Google Audiobooks may not be as established as Audible, but it's a worthy competitor. The key difference between Google Audiobooks and Audible is that the former isn't a subscription service. Instead, Google sells audiobooks individually, so you don't need to pay a monthly fee to access its affordable prices.

Our price comparison of a handful of best-seller titles showed that Google Audiobooks consistently prices audiobooks equal to or cheaper than a single credit monthly subscription with Audible. That means if you only listen to around a dozen titles a year, Google's offering will probably work out cheaper.

Its selection of titles is smaller than Audible’s, but there are still thousands of audiobook titles available through the Google Play store. As you'd expect, you can listen to audiobooks from Google on any Google OS device, such as Android and Chromecast products, but there’s also a Google Audiobook app for Apple products.

The best way to listen to a Google audiobook is through Google Home or a device that supports the Google Assistant tool because the service works with various voice commands that allow you to jump chapters or adjust playback speed without pressing a button.

If you want access to a library of books without spending a dime or signing up for a subscription service, LibriVox is probably the best audiobook site for you. Unlike the other audiobook services on this list, LibriVox lets you download and listen to audiobooks for free - no catch.

How is that possible? Well, LibriVox only offers public domain titles, typically based on novels or non-fiction works written decades ago, long enough for their copyright protection to have expired.

This means LibriVox has a smaller collection than its competitors, and its library mostly consists of older books, but if you want to listen to classics, you can't go wrong with this service.

Another unique thing about LibriVox is that some of its titles are read and recorded by volunteers who make community submissions from anywhere in the world. Plenty of LibriVox audiobooks are read out by celebrities or authors, too.

LibriVox isn't as convenient as Audible and Google Audiobooks, but you can download MP3s or stream recordings in your browser or use a handful of apps created by third-party developers to access the LibriVox library on your smartphone.

If you're looking for a more affordable service than Audible but with more modern choices than LibriVox, then it's worth considering Kobo.

Kobo is a Toronto-based company known for producing a slick range of e-readers. Just as Kobo’s physical devices rival Amazon in the ebook space, the Rakuten Kobo store is competing with Amazon’s Audible in the audiobook space.

Kobo's model is fairly similar to Amazon's - but more affordable. Its subscription costs US$9.99/£6.99/AU$12.99, a bit cheaper than Audible, depending on your region. As part of the subscription, you get one credit a month to purchase a paid audiobook, but there are plenty of included titles, too.

Again, like Audible, you can purchase standalone titles through the Kobo store, but buying Kobo titles without a membership is typically more affordable than Audible, but title availability depends on your region.

If you’re worried that the Kobo audiobook range might not be extensive enough for your tastes, you can always try it out for free, as subscriptions begin with a 30-day free trial period.

Downpour works like Kobo and Audible. It’s an audiobook subscription site that, for a membership fee, gives you a recurring monthly credit you can use to purchase almost any audiobook in the Downpour collection. According to Downpour’s own statistics, over 80% of its titles can be obtained with a single credit.

No matter where you are in the world, a Downpour subscription costs $12.99 per month, putting this service in the middle of Kobo and Audible in terms of pricing.

Downpour is brought to you by Blackstone Audio, one of the biggest independent audiobook publishers in the USA. Blackstone has around 30,000 titles in its back catalog, so Downpour members have an enormous selection of works to choose from, including the latest bestsellers.

The Downpour purchasing system is a bit more basic than other paid audiobook subscription services, however. While you can listen to audiobooks on mobile devices, you can only buy them through a desktop browser - making it less convenient than Audible if you want to buy and play titles on the go.

• We've also rounded up the best YouTube to MP3 converters

Spotify wants the monopoly on your ears. First, it introduced the world to the concept of all-you-can-eat music streaming, and then recently started scooping up exclusive rights to podcast stars. Now, it appears it's exploring the potential of Spotify audiobooks, too.

A number of free literary listens are headed to Spotify, and while all are in the public domain (meaning the contents can be accessed for free anywhere, being out of copyright), Spotify has still invested in its own original recordings of the works, including attaching some big-name stars to the project.

The exclusive narrations include Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, read by David Dobrik, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, read by Forest Whitaker, and The Awakening by Kate Chopin, read by Hilary Swank.

Other titles headed to Spotify include Jean Toomer's Cane, narrated by Audra McDonald; Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, narrated by James Langton; Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, narrated by Sarah Coombs; Nella Larsen's Passing, narrated by Bahni Turpin; and Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage, narrated by Santino Fontana.

• Spotify bags one of Apple Music's best features 
• How to get Spotify for less by sharing with a friend
• Spotify Wrapped 2020 launches to remind music lovers of a year we'd rather forget

Audio expansion

Not only will Spotify by offering the books themselves, but each will be accompanied by an educational talk by Harvard professor Glenda Carpio. The series 'Sitting with the Classics' will offer "a deep-dive on each book, exploring the history and breaking down the narratives and themes for a modern audience."

Spotify admits that the collection is its attempt to test the waters of the audiobook space before considering a more substantial investment, but it's a market worth exploring – the audiobook business was worth an estimated $2.7 billion in 2019, a figure that's likely grown due to new lockdown entertainment habits forming.

The audiobook space is currently dominated by Apple's Books and Amazon's Audible, but Spotify's heavy investment in podcasting shows that it can make waves in established places if it puts the effort in. The convenience of having your music and podcasts in one place is already proving fruitful for Spotify (22% of its active users tried a podcast in the third quarter of 2020) – keeping them glued to Spotify for lengthy audiobooks seems the next natural progression.

• Spotify could be considering a subscription package for podcasts 

In a supportive gesture to bored kids and parents struggling to homeschool, free audiobooks are now being given away by Audible on their stories page. 

Offering over 300 free audiobooks in six languages, parents are sure to find a wealth of homeschool material available throughout the stories website. Of course, it's not just homeschool books that are available here - there's plenty to entertain also. All this is completely free, and Audible has stated: "For as long as schools are closed, we're open" - which means everything should be available for the foreseeable future.

Categories that are currently free include littlest listeners, elementary, tween, teen, and literary classics - and include such titles as Winnie-the-Pooh, Beatrix Potter, and Alice in Wonderland. The six languages that are currently available are - English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Chinese Mandarin.

To check out what's on offer simply head to the Audible stories page - sign up isn't currently needed to access these free audiobooks, and you can listen on whatever device you please - laptops, mobiles, and tablets are all catered for.

Other great free Amazon offers

If you're an avid audiobook listener but more into the adult genres then you can still capitalise on Audibles' excellent 30-day free trial - a great proposition if you're cooped up inside and want to indulge your imagination for free.

Audible was rated our best audiobook site in 2020, where we praised its vast selection of titles, excellent multi-device support and wonderful array of exclusive titles. Currently there are over 200,000 books on their store page, ranging from the hottest new releases to old-school literary classics - both for fiction and non-fiction. There's something for everyone on Audible, whether you're brushing up on your history, learning how to bake the perfect cake, or catching up on your favorite wizard's adventures.

If you're not into audiobooks, then Amazon has some other great free offers across the whole Prime range. If you're a real bookworm for example, then you could check out Kindle Unlimited - where you can get access to over a million books absolutely free for two months. Maybe you're more into blasting out some tunes as part of the lockdown catharsis, head on over to Amazon Music Unlimited and get unrestricted, ad-free tunes free for three months. 

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Books are great! Reading is excellent! Stories are amazing! But eyes get tired, more so than our ears, which are so used to putting up with the squall of modern life that they can basically listen away for days without a care in the world. And that’s why the Audible audiobook subscription service is so appealing.

For a monthly fee, you get all-you-can-eat access to its library of audiobooks and exclusive podcasts. As you’d expect, it’s available in app form, through a website and as a feature in parent company Amazon’s ereaders. But did you know that Audible works with Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant and its Amazon Echo smart speakers too?

Well, it can. Here’s how to link up your Audible and Amazon Echo speakers, and have your audiobooks be read out to you with just a flick of your tongue.

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Setting up Audible

Since Amazon owns Audible, the Alexa voice assistant and the Amazon Echo speaker family, getting them all to play together nicely is actually very simple. All it really takes is to sign in here with your Amazon account on the Audible website and, voila! The two are magically entwined via the power of the internet. 

If you’re new to Amazon or Audible, you simply set up an Amazon account at the same URL and follow the steps listed to pull the two services together.

All new sign ups to Audible get to trial the service free of charge for 30 days, after which you’ll be charged at £7.99 / $14.95 / $16.45. Individual audiobooks can also be purchased, and are yours to keep forever, though they tend to be quite pricey, so the monthly subscription is probably the most affordable way to jump onboard. US audiobook lovers can also try a number of premium Audible membership options, which include credits for lifetime ownership of a set number of audiobooks a month.

Alexa voice commands for Audible

Once you’ve got your accounts linked and Alexa set up on your Amazon Echo speakers, you’re then free to make all manner of requests of the services via voice commands – as well, of course, as using the Audible app to control playback if you’re feeling a bit shy. Here’s what you can say to your Echo speaker, and what that results in, according to the Audible support page:

It’s worth noting that if you use Audible on another device, such as your tablet, Kindle or smartphone, so long as your devices are connected to the internet, your place in the book will be synced. So, after a long commute listening to War and Peace, you can pull those headphones out at home and jump straight in with your Amazon Echo at the exact point you left off at.

There are very few things that Audible on an Amazon Echo speaker can’t do – clips and bookmarks aren’t supported (though your last-read position, as mentioned, is synced across devices), you can’t check reading stats and badges, and you can't jump to individual Audible Channels (which are primarily news reports from big newspaper publications). But those small limitations aside, it’s a very well-realised service.

So sit back, relax, and curl up with your favorite reads, hands-free.

• Read more: Make the most of your Echo with the best Alexa Skills and commands

If you're a fan of the Alien film franchise, you've probably been lamenting its demise ever since James Cameron's Aliens hit cinemas way back in 1986. The films since that classic sequel have...not been good. To put it mildly.

Things could have been oh so different though – acclaimed sci-fi author William Gibson wrote a script for the divisive Alien 3 that was never produced, but has lived on in infamy as having actually been rather good. That version of Alien 3 may finally be getting the recognition it deserves, and it's all down to audiobook subscription service Audible.

The Amazon-owned service is, according to Bloody Disgusting, working on an audiobook version of William Gibson's script as part of the franchise's 40th anniversary celebrations.

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Fan service done right

It's not looking like a simple cash-grab either, with the production set to include the voice work of Michael Biehn. Fans of the series will recognise him as Corporal Hicks, a fan-favorite character who is cruelly...sidelined when the silverscreen version of Alien 3 kicks off.

William Gibson's version of the story gives Hicks a much larger role, with it focusing on the survivors of Aliens, including Ellen Ripley, holed up in something like a space commune, where they learn about the threat of a corporation looking to make an army of the evil Xenomorph creatures.

Audible is lining up the Alien 3 audio play for a May 30 release, and can be pre-ordered now. If you can't wait for that, Gibson's script has also recently been turned into a comic book series – you'll have to do Michael Biehn's cool-as-ice voice in your own head though.

• Best audiobook sites 2019: easy listening for avid readers

Owners of Amazon Alexa devices now have a new skill to try out: Choose Your Own Adventure audiobooks.

Choose Your Own Adventure was a wildly successful genre in children's books, starting in the 1970s. Instead of reading a linear narrative, readers would be prompted to make key decisions throughout the book and jump to respective pages to see what endings their choices led to.

Now, publisher Chooseco has adapted two of its Choose Your Own Adventure stories – The Abominable Snowman and Journey Under the Sea, both by R.A. Montgomery – into interactive Alexa audiobooks.

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Through a partnership with Amazon-owned Audible, the new Alexa skill uses Amazon's voice assistant to guide you through the audiobook, allowing you to vocalize your choices – something that Chooseco has wanted to do with their books for years, but found too difficult in a standard audiobook format.

The recent surge of smart speakers and improved voice functionality in everyday devices opens up whole new possibilities for the way users interact with stories – while this specific skill only has two books so far, we could easily see this growing into something far larger.

The Choose Your Own Adventure skill is now available on all Alexa-supported devices.

Talk me through it

Given the wide reach of smart assistants in the world today, it's easy to forget how nascent the technology still is. Companies and users alike are still figuring out what voice-enabled gadgets are useful for, and what they're likely to be used for in the future.

It's not the first step Amazon has taken in the direction of interactive fiction: back in 2018 it even worked with Bethesda to release a tongue-in-cheek Elder Scrolls port – Skyrim: Very Special Edition – that you play entirely through your Amazon Echo.

With the rise of interactive movies like Netflix's Bandersnatch too, could this be the next big trend in storytelling?

• The best Alexa skills and commands: everything your Echo can do

Via SecurityBaron

Between your Snapchat pout and your quest for inbox zero, finding the time to read through a lengthy novel can be difficult. Audiobook subscription service Audible has been helping people listen along to digitized tomes for years now, but today it's got a special treat for Sonos speaker owners.

The connected Hi-Fi gear will now let you play Audible audiobooks directly through the speakers.

Simply add the service to the Sonos app (or cast from the Audible app itself) and you'll be able to jump straight into the book of your choice.

Alexa on the way

The app lets you jump between chapters and fast forward and rewind 30 seconds, but those using the Alexa-enabled Sonos One speaker will soon be able to talk to the device in order to get their tales told.

With all your data stored in the cloud, bookmarks are automatically carried over to the Sonos speakers, meaning you can carry on directly where you left off when jumping from another Audible-enabled device.

Audible costs a monthly subscription fee of £7.99 / $14.95. Sign up through the Sonos app as opposed to the Audible app itself or through its owner Amazon, and you get two free book tokens, as well as a copy of Miles: The Autobiography of Miles Davis.

• The Sonos One is a smart speaker worthy of all those smartypants books

Google has launched an audiobooks service in the Google Play Store that allows you to purchase individual books and listen to them on a frankly staggering range of devices.

The audiobooks will work on Android, iOS, Chromecast, as a web-based application and in any device with Google Assistant. That last one is particularly interesting, as Google’s voice assistant is becoming fairly ubiquitous.

This means you’ll be able to listen to your audiobooks on a vast array of first and third-party smart speakers like the Google Home range, plus Android Wear-powered wearables. It's also coming soon to Android Auto, so you can be entertained while driving, and the service will remember where you are in your novel so you can transition from one to the other without restarting the chapter.

Smarter speaking from your smart speaker

Google is putting the same level of computer learning that you’ll find in its other features into the audiobooks service, allowing you to interact with your books so that rather than just ‘Track 12’ showing up on your dashboard's display, you’ll get the chapter title, and with the Google Assistant interaction, you can ask for pertinent information about the book like the author’s name.

Smart speakers are well known for their timers, and Google Play audiobooks takes full advantage of this, allowing you to set a countdown timer for when to stop reading, so if you want to delegate the reading of your child’s bedtime story to your Google Home, you can. Although there’s nothing to stop the little nipper from requesting more stories.

Talking of family, one of the things that sets Google’s offering apart from Amazon’s Audible is the family sharing feature. With Audible, you’re able to share an audiobook with one other adult in your Amazon Household. With Google, you can share with up to five other people in your family.

We asked Greg Hartrell, Google Books Product Manager, about Google's definition of family, if you had to be biologically related to them, he had this to say:

“We don't have an opinion on the various definitions of families. You set up a family account by going to Google Play, the head of the household puts on a payment instrument, and up to five people can get added to that family account. And since there are many definitions of a family, we hope that people use that experience to have their family enjoyed their audiobooks together.”

So if your family happens to be your book club, that looks like it’s all part of the plan. That’s not the only differentiator, and the next is probably going to be the most appealing for those that aren’t regular readers but want to dip their toe in to the world of audiobooks:

“This is an a la carte model with prices below list,” continued Hartrell, “making it affordable and easy to try, and there's no commitment meaning that you can listen to as many or as few as you want without a subscription.”

Available titles in the US include Ready Player One ($6.99), Fire & Fury: Inside the Trump White House ($8.99), Murder on the Orient Express ($4.99), Lincoln in the Bardo ($8.99), 1984 ($5.99) and The Girl on the Train ($6.99). 

Okay Google, why now?

It makes sense for Google to be getting into audiobooks now, with Google Assistant looking set to live within all sort of smart home devices, and as Hartrell puts it:

“The audio publishers association in America published a statistic that the sales of audiobooks have grown double digits year over year and that's growing faster than any other book format.”

In the smart speaker market, Google managed to release the Home range long after Amazon’s Echo range hit the shelves and still became a major competitor. It will be interesting to see if it can do the same with audiobooks.

• Want to learn more about Google's latest smart speaker? Check out our Google Home Max review

If you like having your literature read out to you, keep your eyes on the Google Play Store, as it looks like a dedicated audiobook section is on the way – and if you're quick you might be able to get a hefty discount on your first purchase when the changes go live.

You can already get a limited number of audiobooks through the Google Play Music app, but it's not really a fully fledged service. As spotted by 9to5Google, an audiobook banner has been added to the Play Store, though for now the new section doesn't seem to have been activated.

Offering a clearer way to browse and buy audiobooks would help Google in its ongoing rivalry with Amazon, which owns Audible and recently added audiobook support to its Kindles. From smart speakers to cloud storage, the two companies have a lot of overlap these days.

Changes to Play Books

Thanks to some digging by the folks over at Android Police, we also know that the Google Play Books app is about to be upgraded with audiobook support. Audiobooks and ebooks will be split into separate tabs, according to changes made in the app's code.

All that remains is for Google to flip the switch on its end and you'll be able to feed your audiobook obsession through Google Play. There's no official word on when that's going to happen or exactly what it'll look like, though it shouldn't be too far down the line.

With the likes of Spotify also improving support for audiobooks, it's a category that Google needs to keep pace in if it wants to offer a complete selection of digital products through its store. As always, you'll be able to pay for audiobooks with a few clicks or taps.

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So many books, so many words. So few eyes, so little time. Looking to help you more efficiently take on your 2018 reading challenge, Amazon has just announced Audible audiobook playback is expanding to a wider variety of its Kindle ereaders.

The first generation Kindle Oasis, and the regular old Kindle, can now access Amazon's audiobook service direct from the devices themselves, and playback content. This includes the Audible storefront, and is facilitated by connecting up to Bluetooth-enabled speakers or headphones, as neither device has a headphone jack.

It's an interesting reveal, considering only the June 2016 Kindle device previously has had any mention of Bluetooth functionality. Audible support was a key unique selling point of the 2017 Kindle Oasis, it's worth noting.

250,000 spoken tales

The Audible store is now the go-to stop for digital audiobook content, offering 250,000 professional audiobooks for purchase. Amazon has continued to invest in the area too, commissioning its own new readings of stories – so you can see why it'd be keen to recoup the costs by making access to the service more widely available.

You may well feel a bit miffed if you've bought the new pricey Oasis specifically for this feature, only to find the older ones will support it too with their next software update.

Still, for existing Kindle owners, you can't knock a top feature upgrade like this. Though neither device has previously offered this kind of audio support, Amazon has confirmed that the Bluetooth functionality was already present in each device – it's just a matter of a software update being needed to flip its switch to "on".

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Not everyone’s got the time to read these days, a trend which is prompting something of a return for oral storytelling – just not in the traditional sense.

With audiobooks becoming increasingly popular and accessible thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones, ebook giant Kobo has finally decided to take on Kindle's Audible audiobook service, integrating an audio player into its free iOS and Android apps along with access to a range of audiobooks.

The Canadian company says audiobooks can be purchased as a one off or, as with Audible, users can opt for a monthly subscription at a cost of US$9.99/£6.99/AU$12.99 a month.

Listen up

Subscribers to the audiobook service will be provided with a credit each month, which can be exchanged for any title from the 1.5 million-large catalogue, no matter the actual price of the book.

And like Amazon's Audible, there's a 30-day trial period before the payments will kick in, unless you cancel the service if you’re not happy with it.

Additionally, customers can earn Kobo Super Points on their subscription fees or purchases that can be redeemed for any outright Kobo purchase, with the minimum points required being 2,400.

Once a title is selected, the built-in audio player will give users control over the speed of narration, with an automatic switch-off timer option for those who listen to stories at bedtime.

The service launches today in the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand.

• Want to keep reading in the digital format? We help you figure out which Kindle you should buy.

Still catching up on all that holiday reading you put off? If you own a Sonos system, you may be able to catch up on your book backlog (booklog?) as easily as listening with the inclusion of audio books on the smart speaker.

Sonos is teaming up with leading nonvisual book purveyor Audiobooks.com to allows audio book subscribers access to over 100,000 spoken books from their speaker system. The program has been undergoing beta testing late last year, and is now available to the public.

To get started, you'll need to open the up the Sonos controller app (available for iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows) and scroll down to "Add Music Services." From there, you can just select the newly added Audiobooks.com logo and boom - now you have access to your verbal library on your Sonos speaker! 

Of course, you'll still need to be an Audiobooks.com subscriber, which allows users to download one audio book a month, starting at $14.95 (about  £12/AU$20).

Aural tradition

Amazon-owned competitor Audible used to be a part of the Sonos ecosystem, but eventually dropped support for the feature, leaving audio book fans to rely on workarounds to get their spoken word fix on Sonos until now. Coincidentally, Amazon Echo owners can still access Audible content on their smart speaker - surprising no one.

Audiobooks.com is no stranger to venturing beyond smartphones and tablets. The service is also available on Android Auto, CarPlay, Apple TV, and select General Motors, Jaguar, and Land Rover vehicles. Sonos has also supported a variety of audio apps, to include the likes of Bandcamp.

That said, the service does still support a standard iOS and Android app, so unless you're really all about hearing Tina Fey narrate her Bossypants memoir throughout your home, you can still opt to enjoy the service with a traditional set of headphones (and most likely any other Bluetooth-enabled speaker.)

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Would you be as happy sharing a well-written chunk of Dickens prose as you are a YouTube clip of kittens doing something cute? The Amazon-owned Audible thinks so, which is why it's introducing a new feature today to make it easier to share 45-second clips of whatever you're listening to.

As Wired reports, the audiobook emporium is calling the new feature Clips and sharing said clips is as easy as tapping on a button in a corner of the mobile app. There are options to trim and tweak the audio to get it spot on, and users can then save the clip for their own use or share it with the wider world.

For the time being, all you get is a link to the Audible site where the clip can be played: there's no clever audio embed feature yet, which might limit its appeal. However, if you're desperate to share a line of beautifully crafted prose then the option is now there.

Grin and share it

It's possible to add your own notes and commentary to the clip, so the feature set is fairly standard as far as sharing anything online goes - as all you get is a single URL, it works everywhere from Facebook to SMS.

You don't have to share what you save of course - you could just use the new service as a clever bookmarking tool - but Amazon obviously wants to extend its audience reach to grab the attention of new members as well as highlighting brilliant audiobooks in its library.

Will Audible's Clips be able to out-meme the GIF and the Vine? It's too early to say, but if you're an existing subscriber keep your eyes out for the feature appearing in the official mobile apps in the very near future.

If you'd like to give Audible a try, why not sign up to a 30 day free trial? You'll be able to choose from a choice of over 200,000 audio books and enjoy a great book while driving, exercising or just leaning back at home and relaxing those tired eyes.

• Get your 30 day free trial at Audible

Read a lot of ebooks? Amazon customers may soon have access to more than 600,000 titles for a monthly subscription fee, a deal that could be right up your alley.

GigaOM reported that Amazon may be planning to become the Netflix of ebooks as revealed by mistakenly leaked product pages advertising a new subscription service called Kindle Unlimited.

The pages in question were first spotted by publishers and readers on the Kindle Boards early Wednesday, although most of that evidence vanished from Amazon's website as quickly as it first appeared.

Thankfully, Google has come to the rescue, allowing those cached pages to be called up from the great beyond for further scrutiny ahead of Amazon officially launching the all-you-can-eat ebook subscription service.

Freedom to explore

One such screenshot touts "unlimited access to over 600,000 titles and thousands of audiobooks on any device for just $9.99 a month," which sounds a lot like what competing ebook subscription services Scribd and Oyster already offer. The price in straight conversions comes out to about £6 and AU$11.

For the moment, available Kindle Unlimited content appears to be flush with titles already available through the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, which allows Amazon Prime subscribers who also own one of the company's tablets to "borrow" one ebook free each month.

Conspicuously absent from the test pages, however, are major publishers like Simon & Schuster or HarperCollins, both of whom already offer titles to Amazon's subscription-based competitors.

One web page entitled "KU Test," which is still live at the time of this writing, displays a total of 638,416 available ebook titles, plus another 7,351 Whispersync for Voice-enabled audiobooks, which could offer Amazon a competitive edge over rivals.

• Check out our review of Amazon's Fire TV while you're here!

Penguin is preparing to offer audiobooks free of digital rights management (DRM) technology, allowing consumers to play them back on any digital device of their choice. Penguin will be closely monitoring the trial to see if the sales of DRM-free audiobooks helps to boost what is currently a flagging market for the publisher.

TechRadar spoke with Penguin Group Digital Director, Genevieve Shore, today who informed us that the DRM-free audiobooks initiative has the potential for “stimulating the audio book market which has been static for some time now.”

Shore added that “there will initially be over 200 audiobook titles released without DRM and we are currently converting them to the right format, so they will trickle out onto eMusic.com in the next two to three weeks.”

Another Penguin spokesperson told us that: “While there are no titles live as yet, but we’re looking at around 250 titles. Our bestselling titles such as Oprah Winfrey’s bookclub pick The New Earth, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love Michael Pollan’s ‘In Defense of Food'."

DRM no thanks

In terms of costs to the consumer, eMusic.com will provide a subscription-based service with different scaled levels of costs, depending on how many titles the user wants to download over a given period.

The Penguin initiative follows the lead of Random House’s experiment with selling DRM-free audiobooks online.

The Random House trial with eMusic last year encoded audio books with digital watermarks in order to monitor sharing of said files via online P2P file sharing networks. Ironically, the scheme discovered that pirated copies of audio books being shared via torrents were ripped from DRM-encoded digital downloads and CDs.

Penguin’s chief executive Marjorie Scardino told the Financial Times last week that, while she still thought it vital to protect intellectual property, "I don't think we can be worried about every incursion from electronic selling and electronic use. We have got to think about what the future is going to be and look at how to experiment with it."

Let’s hope more companies take such a forward-thinking approach to DRM and online content distribution.

Amazon has upped the stakes in its attack on Apple's iTunes. In a move intended to boost the company's audio download offerings, Amazon is to acquire digital audio books provider Audible.com for $300 million (£150m).

Amazon has been steadily building its digital music store to compete with Apple's iTunes. In January it gained a significant advantage over Apple when it became the only service to sell music from all four major record labels without copy protection, after signing up Sony BMG.

Apple no more?

But that's not the end of the story. Since 2003, Audible has maintained an exclusive agreement with Apple whereby it offers over 20,000 audiobooks for sale and download to iPod and iPhone owners via the iTunes Store.

Now that Amazon has acquired the company, speculation is rife that the Apple deal is over. It's thought that Audible's audiobooks will now be available only on Amazon's own MP3 download store.

"Audible.com offers the best customer experience, the widest content selection and the broadest device compatibility in the industry," said Steve Kessel, Amazon.com's senior vice president for worldwide digital media. "Working together, we can introduce more innovations and bring this format to an even wider audience."

Amazon has quickly grown from being an online bookseller to a provider of practically any product you might desire. The deal between Audible.com and Amazon is expected to be finalised by the second quarter of 2008.