Audible Review: The Pros And Cons – 2

As I have highlighted the basic information of being a member of Audible in my previous review, the real deal is discussed here, my unbiased take on Audible including some juicy tips.

The Pros of Becoming an Audible Member

• Value for Money: Audio books are much cheaper in Audible than Amazon or anywhere else as mentioned above.
• Variety: Whatever you can find in Amazon (as we all know that Amazon is one giant store), you can find it in Audible—this I’m referring to audiobooks. I can’t say so for other rival sites.
• Environmental Friendly: Audible only offers downloadable audio programs which in turn reduces drastic carbon impact on the environment. It’s not a physical goods hence no fuel is required for shipping and hoarding for space.
• Accessibility: People who are always on the move would appreciate greatly as they wouldn’t be deprived from their reading pleasure. I travel quite a fair bit myself both locally or overseas so to be able to continue my reading pleasure even in the most crowded place is a God-sent.
• Credibility: Unlike some membership sites, Audible—an subsidiary Inc of Amazon.com—values their customers. Should there be any discrepancy on any matter, it’s dealt with accordingly and fast. This may not be applicable to you, but Audible takes great care of their affiliates.
• Support: Excellent, friendly, and responsive support team who would reply to your ticket in a matter of hours.
• Rating and Review: Until a year ago, anyone with an Amazon account can easily write a review without having to make a purchase, which is why I rarely regards those reviews to be trustworthy. Unlike Audible, from the conception (I think), you’ve to be a member first before penning down your view on your purchase hence the reviews are less likely to be skewed.
• Formats: This is probably one of my favorite draws that keeps me a member for this long. Audible has this enhanced audio feature which makes listening to the audio much more enjoyable as it’s in the clearest, cleanest premium-quality audio format available. Of course, they do have the regular formats but why would you want to download those if you can get the best at no extra cost to you; only unless you are on 56k modem or have dated devices that aren’t compatible.

Two Cons of Audible.com

Limited Access for Non-US: It’s not a con per se, depending which country you are from. I found this out when I changed to a non-US shipping/billing address. But there’s a way to work around it which I will elaborate shortly. But first, should you choose not to go that route, here’s what you will encounter.

The downside of it is the limitation of downloading certain audio books in certain countries due to publishing rights restrictions. Not sure if you will encounter similar situation if you reside in any part of Europe using Audible.com instead of Audible.de, or Audible.uk or Audible.fr. Anyhow, one good example is Under the Dome by Stephen King where I couldn’t have access to then.

We’re sorry. Due to publishing rights restrictions, we are not authorized to sell this item in the country where you live.

So how many audio books are we talking about when it comes to availability for sales? To certain extent is great especially for some books you are eager to get your hands on.

Let’s take the best seller category (as of today) for the last 7 days all categories. The difference is 14 audio books lesser of the 20. This is incredibly unbelievable when I first became aware of it. A little upset but not paranoid.

Of course, this won’t affect you at all if you’re residing in US. It didn’t occur to me then (while living in Los Angeles) I would have lesser selections. Should that made known to me, I’d still be a member with Audible any given day no matter which country I’m in.

It’s really not a deal breaker for me even if I never got around to the “backdoor.” Because if I can’t get my hands on those audio books I want, and if I really insist of having them no matter what the cost is, I can get them easily via Amazon—only much dearer that’s all.

Furthermore, there are many other books to select from. I can’t possibly read all of them given the fact I have only 40% of books available to me and that still amount to tens of thousands of audio books, I can’t possibly read all of them even I signed up for the platinum plan, right?

Getting The Same Privilege As Any USA Residents

Now if you want to get the full swing of things happening in Audible if you reside outside US, here’s how you go about it (crossing my fingers that Audible won’t get to read this).

As you need to have a valid address when you enter your credit card billing/shipping address, you can’t change much of that fact. But once you became a member, change that address to an US address (including telephone number). Once done, you can gain the same access as any US residents. Wolah! So you see, it’s not a really a con after all depending how you’d want to go about it but format size is…

Format Size: There above I gave high praises about its enhanced premium-quality format and here I’m complaining about its format size. Quality and size are two different things.

Unlike audio books that come in CD, the file of each audio is really big—some go as long as 8 hours and the smaller file I’ve encountered is 4-hour long. This isn’t a big issue however if I do need to re-listen to certain part of the audio I’ve no way of “bookmarking” (rating it in iTune/iPod/iPhone) that particular section but to listen from the beginning of that file.

My Verdict

To be able to sustain my voracious reading appetite, cost pays a big factor in my decision before everything else. Hence Audible is the surest way to go. In additional, there are more advantages which I go in more details as to why audio book outweighs physical book or ebook.