Sourcing audio books: My year with Audible.com

I was paging back through some receipts last night when I discovered that I recently passed my one year anniversary with Audible.com. How the months fly by! I resisted signing up for Audible for years, but once I finally gave in and bought an account, my only regret was not having done it sooner.

First, the case for audio books. As someone who lives in a rural area, I spend a lot of time in my car. Most of this driving is ideal for listening to audio books: Deserted back roads and long stretches of boring highway. Listening to audio books while I drive, I can go through a book a month, sometimes more.

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Plus, the older I get, the more fond I become of audio books. Although my vision is corrected fine by glasses, I find that as the years pass, my eyes become more easily fatigued. After spending an entire day at the computer, the last thing I want to do is stare at more words, whether on a printed page or my beloved Kindle.

Audio books also introduce an element of performance that can - when done right - really bring a title to life in a way that reading words on a page simply cannot. As an example, I have listened to several audio book versions of books that feature multiple narrators (Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, Kathryn Stockett's The Help, and David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas) where they use a different narrator for each character. The performances and narrator choices for Cloud Atlas and Gone Girl were particularly well done.

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There are a lot of options for audio books, of course.

Your local library probably has a pretty good selection on CD. I feel like you can check them out, rip them to MP3, and listen to them on your iPod without feeling guilty (as long as you don't upload them to file sharing networks). And many libraries are also part of the Overdrive national network that allows you to "check out" audio books in a downloadable format directly from your library's website.

Used book stores often have tons of audio books for sale. You can buy them from iTunes and Amazon and a dozen other places. And then there are illegal downloads from file-sharing sites, of course. The less said about which, the better.

Libraries and used book stores never seemed to have the physical CDs for books I wanted to listen to, and the online library only allows a certain number of copies to be "checked out" at any given time, which results in long waiting lists.

Believe me, I tried all of those things. One thing they all have in common is a huge amount of inconvenience and aggravation. And between the hassle and the time spent, $16/month for an Audible account is a bargain. Their entire service is geared toward providing the greatest variety of books, and the easiest possible transactions.

In addition to having the largest selection around (if it's available in audio book format, Audible almost certainly has it), Audible's shopping and download process is easy and painless. And the listener reviews and comments can be very helpful (always check them before you choose a book… they will steer you away from non-audio book-friendly titles, abridged versions, and other pitfalls.)

Audible even has a "no questions asked" return policy. I recently took advantage of the policy for a book that I just couldn't get through. The return credit was available in my account with just a few clicks, and I was on my way with a book I liked better.

Audible also keeps your library archived - apparently forever - on their website. If you accidentally delete a file or simply buy a new computer, you can just download the book again from your Audible account.

They offer the files in several different formats as well, so if you change MP3 players or simply want a different file format, all you have to do is download it again. You aren't locked into buying an audio book in a specific file format, as you are with many other methods.

If you listen to audio books, you owe it to yourself to at least give Audible.com a try for a month or two. The experience is so seamless and painless, it's well worth the monthly fee!

Main image courtesy Flickr/aeroppon