
We can't get enough of audiobooks - prostoalex
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jul/13/listen-up-rise-of-audiobooks-steven-poole
======
Wowfunhappy
I was very disappointed to see this article complain about Audible DRM without
mentioning the variety of DRM-Free audiobook providers.

• downpour.com

• libro.fm

• audiobooksnow.com

(The last of these has a handful of DRM'd books, so you need to check the
listing first, but the vast majority are DRM-free.)

While none of these retailers have as large a library as Audible, their
offerings are more than decent, particularly if you don't mind hopping between
sites sometimes. This isn't vodo.net, or even gog.com.

Note that like Audible, Downpour and Libro.fm have subscription plans, which
are all-but required if you want books at a reasonable price. Unlike Audible,
however, it's easy to game the system by subscribing and quickly
unsubscribing.

I know that Audible DRM is currently easy to remove, and that's great, but we
should support the true DRM-Free providers where we can, or they might
disappear. And if that happens, who knows what Audible will do.

––––––––––

Honorable mentions:

• audiobookstore.com sells DRM Free audiobooks, but they always seem to cost
much more than on other sites, even with a subscription plan. I've also never
found a book that was available here but not on one of the cheaper DRM-Free
stores.

• Graphicaudio.net offers DRM Free downloads if you don't mind paying a couple
dollars extra per title. But these are very much not normal audiobooks.

~~~
pixelperfect
> Unlike Audible, however, it's easy to game the system by subscribing and
> quickly unsubscribing.

You can do this on Audible without problems. I have an Audible library of 15
books that I accumulated over a few years through various promotions, never
paying more than 33% the normal cost of a subscription.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
I have a few issues with how Audible subscriptions work:

• The cancellation process requires many more clicks. If your process is to
subscribe → buy → cancel each time, this gets very annoying.

• You can't buy additional credits without outright changing your overall
subscription plan.

• If you cancel your plan, you immediately forfeit any unused credits.

~~~
cstejerean
So use your credits before you cancel? Also why do you need to buy more
credits? You can buy audio books directly for $ once you exhausted the
credits. I use credits for audio books that cost more than the price of a
credit and $ for audio books that cost less.

~~~
rando444
I've been in this situation before.

The unsubscribe process ends up taking hours of time because now you need to
find 1-5 books to get before you cancel.

It's also frustrating because they won't allow you more than 5 credits, so if
you have 5 credits, they will take your monthly payment and give you nothing
in return.

Worse still is if you click on the wrong thing on Amazon it will re-activate
your audible account automatically. I've had my audible account accidentally
re-activated multiple times and not noticed (my amazon email goes to a non-
primary email)

All in all I've made many payments with max credits and gotten nothing in
return, purchased a ton of books that I'm only partially interested in, and
actively cancelled the service at least 3 times (including being forced to
waste time shopping for books to complete the task every time)

If you don't see this as a consumer trap, it's because you haven't tried to
get out and stay out yet.

~~~
piva00
The limit on credits is what ultimately made me cancel Audible, I wouldn't
care if I could keep stacking them up for a year but I go through long phases
of not purchasing audiobooks so after a while I noticed I wasn't getting new
credits while paying a subscription and realised that... It's their business
model, like a gym, Amazon makes more money out of people not using their
credits than from using them.

------
theseadroid
An anecdote from me: Before I discovered audiobooks I rarely read non
technical books, especially fictions. I just couldn't find enough time to
finish books at a satisfactory pace. What's more, I couldn't enjoy many types
of exercises and because of that I just didn't exercise enough. I find the
activity of doing those types of exercises by themselves or even with music is
too low in information density, that I just became bored after a while.

Now with audiobooks I read many non technical books while I do those types of
exercises I couldn't enjoy before. If a book is not great I dont find it a
waste of time. The combination of audiobooks and exercising is the right
amount of information density for me to enjoy the moment. The result? I
exercise much much more now.

Also I started to use the local library for audiobooks. Comparing to the
effort of borrowing paper books or device restriction of borrowing ebooks,
borrowing audiobooks is just a much better overall experience.

~~~
kitten_smuggler
Not sure how you exercise to audiobooks, unless maybe its running or something
like that. Up-tempo music really helps increase my cadence. I've tried w/
podcasts and audiobooks and am forced to switch back or else just find myself
half-halfheartedly working out.

~~~
throw0101a
> _Not sure how you exercise to audiobooks_

If you lift weights, there's a lot of waiting involved between sets. You can
listen to stuff while you're idle, and then hit pause as you're doing your
reps.

When you're just starting out you may only need 90s rest, but as you progress
to higher loads, that will rise to (say) three minutes, and then even longer
the more 'advanced' you get.

------
alltakendamned
Audiobooks just don't work for me, I would continuously zone out. I'm curious
if people listening to them a lot simply have the same thing going but accept
it, or if they are able to maintain focus on the spoken words better ?

Another issue I have with them is that I can't quite skim to a paragraph of
interest.

~~~
xtracto
Same thing happens to me, I have to really pay attention while listening to an
audiobook, otherwise I lose the thread.

Also, why are audiobooks 5 times more expensive than their dead-tree version?

[https://www.amazon.com/Leviathan-Wakes-James-S-
Corey/dp/0316...](https://www.amazon.com/Leviathan-Wakes-James-S-
Corey/dp/0316129089)

[https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9781478998938-leviathan-
wakes](https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9781478998938-leviathan-wakes)

That's crazy.

~~~
hombre_fatal
It's a production with actors. Sometimes expensive ones. It's surely along the
same continuum that explains why a 90 minute movie or season box set is more
expensive than the book it's based on that takes weeks to consume. Wouldn't
surprise me that consumers value it higher than "just a book."

Another way to look at it: that's 21 hours of content for $35. Doesn't seem
crazy compared to, say, going to the movies or buying a $60 video game that
might not even have 10 hours of gameplay.

------
olodus
Since they mention education but only seem to have mostly bad things to say
about audiobooks in that context (unless I missed something, I skimmed that
part) I would like to add how this has changed dyslexics relationship with
education and with books in general. My brother is dyslexic and before I think
he never read a book ever. This year he got a audio book he wanted as a
Christmas gift and he was super happy. That the library of Audio books is
expanding is a great thing. I do however agree with the article that the
prevelent use of closed formats could be very bad in the long run though. I do
think audible is a good deal but I don't like that they use closed formats.
There are however still libraries and the increase in audio books can luckily
be seen in their available stock as well.

~~~
ddebernardy
What surprises me with respect to dyslexia is how poor accessibility options
are in modern operating systems.

If I understood the research correctly, dyslexia researchers get material
improvements in reading speed when they increase the amount of space between
words and lines. The gist of the explanation given was that dyslexics
basically struggle to separate out the word they're trying to focus on from
the surrounding wall of text.

Put another way, while this is fine for normal readers:

    
    
        quick brown fox jumps
        over the lazy dog
        
    

Changing it to this makes it easier to read by dyslexic readers:

    
    
        quick  brown   fox   jumps
        
        over   the   lazy   dog
        
    

Perhaps OS designers aren't unaware of it (hint hint if you work on an OS); or
perhaps the research isn't as conclusive as I recollect. If the former, it
seems like a no brainer to throw in an accessibility option to enable this OS-
wide.

~~~
stordoff
Has there been any research/discussion about how this would work for non-
dyslexics (I know it would be an option, so not an issue; I'm just curious)? I
find myself wanting to go from "quick brown" to "lazy dog" in the second one,
even reading it slowly, and I'm not really sure why.

~~~
ddebernardy
Insofar as I can recollect, sort of, at least if you infer what happens when
the space between words or lines is too large. The gist of the issue for a
dyslexic reader, as I understood it anyway, is a focus problem.

Picture an ellipse of sorts over the word you're trying to focus on as you
read. A dyslexic person will struggle to get the ellipse on that word, and
instead gobbles up part or all of the text around it (parts of the words
before and after, and parts of the words above and below) - or not enough of
it? - leading to fatigue and slow read speed.

If memory serves me well:

\- By increasing the space enough, you make it simpler for a dyslexic reader
to focus on each word, improving reading speed. (Anecdotally I find web
typography more readable with slightly increased line height and word spacing,
so methinks it's not just dyslexic readers who benefit.)

\- By increasing the space too much, however, you make it harder for readers
(dyslexic or not) to follow the flow of text (words become disconnected, if
you will, as you've experienced in the second example), and that ends up
degrading the reading speed.

\- Every reader (dyslexic or not) has an optimal spacial arrangement.

You can kind of see the effect in action by increasing the line height,
kerning, and word spacing in an html document. Increase either of those three
too much and the text gets harder to read. Increase one or more of them
slightly above the default values and the text will be more comfortable to
read.

------
damontal
One problem I have with audible is that because I'm paying around $15/month I
feel the need to use my credits on books that cost more than this. So I miss
out on shorter books, plays, etc I'd like to read. I have a bunch of books in
my wishlist that are around $9 and I won't burn a credit on them.

I guess that's part of their business model... get you to spend money in
addition to your subscription.

~~~
kss238
I wish someone would make a netflix for audiobooks. I'm guessing licensing is
an issue.

~~~
inanutshellus
Depending on where you are, this may be freely available to you right now
through your local library.

Talk to your local library about whether they're on Overdrive / Libby. If so,
you can listen to unlimited audiobooks, ebooks, magazines, and comic books
24/7\. It's fantastic. It's free. Yay public libraries.

~~~
pahool
Also, keep in mind that, depending on where you live, you may be able to carry
cards for multiple libraries. In California, for instance, many major public
libraries only require state residency. So, while traveling within the state,
pick up library cards for as many libraries as you can. When I was living in
California, I had library cards for Los Angeles County, Los Angeles City,
Santa Monica, San Jose, San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland, and I could use
the e-resources of any of these libraries.

Additionally, there is a plugin for Firefox called "Available Reads" that
allows you to enter your Overdrive account information for your various
library cards. Then, when browsing goodreads, the plugin will show you the
Overdrive availability of the books you are browsing at all of the libraries
at which you are a member, and provide links out to the catalog entry for
those libraries' copies of the ebooks/e-audiobooks.

------
mistercow
> Since the 1980s, cognitive psychology has consistently established that
> recall is indeed better after reading (printed) text instead of listening to
> it, a conclusion bolstered by a 2010 study (David B Daniel and William
> Douglas Woody), which found that students did worse on a test if they had
> listened to a podcast of a scientific article on child cognition rather than
> reading it.

I wonder if any of these studies allowed the subjects to rewind. I skip back
constantly when listening to audiobooks, because I zone out or get distracted.
If you were to study my comprehension while taking away that feature, I'm sure
I'd score lower than reading with my eyes. Conversely, if you had me read with
one of those apps that shows you one word at a time, and didn't let me rewind,
I'm sure I would score lower on that than on audio.

~~~
suzzer99
Same here. The 30 second rewind is key.

My 1-hour commute each way is mostly sitting in slow or stop & go traffic on
the same freeway. So 95% of my brain is available for comprehension. And I can
always rewind if I get distracted by actual driving.

I can honestly say that audiobooks on my commute have changed my life. For
whatever reason I just can't find a comfortable enough spot to read an actual
book for more than 30 minutes at a time - and even that feels like a chore. It
bothered me for 2 decades that I didn't read enough. Now I get 2 hours a day
where I am transported into another headspace, inspired, engaged. I actually
look forward to my commute.

The only downside is when I come down off Mt. Everest and show up at work - my
motivation to do my job is pretty low. :)

------
ivan_ah
Did y'all know macOS has a built-in text-to-speech system that is pretty
decent?

Go to System Preferences > Accessibility > Speech and set a keyboard shortcut,
then you can turn any piece of text into an audio book by simply selecting it
and pressing the text-to-speech keyboard shortcut. You'll need to set the
Speaking Rate pretty high for this to be useful.

It works great for news, blog posts, HN discussions, and amazingly powerful
proofreading tool for writers.

More info with screenshots here:
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mApa60zJA8rgEm6T6GF0yIem...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mApa60zJA8rgEm6T6GF0yIem8qpMmnaBFYOgV32gdMc/edit#)

~~~
vel0city
The Mac line has had text to speech functionality since the very beginning,
even being somewhat showcased at the first reveal of the Macintosh by Steve
Jobs. [https://youtu.be/2B-XwPjn9YY?t=208](https://youtu.be/2B-XwPjn9YY?t=208)

Although, I imagine the quality of the reader has greatly improved since 1984.

~~~
ivan_ah
> Although, I imagine the quality of the reader has greatly improved since
> 1984.

Exactly. I've tries a number of text-to-speech options before and found the
voicing to be almost unusable, but the Alex voice in macOS (at least since
10.5) is pretty good. It even does the right context-dependent thing for
polysemy cases, e.g. "I live in the mountains" vs. "I went to a live concert".

------
ibudiallo
I recently started recording some articles I wrote as audio. For the few I
have tested, it made a significant difference. Some readers went out of their
way to tell me how much they enjoyed the audio version.

Most people get distracted too quickly to finish reading an article. But with
audio, the story becomes the distraction that keeps them listening to the end.

~~~
petercooper
I would also prefer to hear your tone of voice because it will tell me a lot
that your writing can't. For example, if you're saying something slightly
contentious (as is common in tech nowadays!) I would be able to tell if you're
joking, trying to provoke me, or are playing devil's advocate solely by your
tone and the framing.. whereas in the written form, it could be hard to tell.

------
Causality1
Many people decide they don't like audiobooks because they don't approach them
correctly. For example, pair your audio with your expectations of how you'll
listen. If you intend to listen while doing a cognitive task like working or
driving in dense traffic, leaping headlong into a brand-new series is likely
to make you lose track because you can't keep your focus on the words 100% of
the time. For those scenarios sticking with a lighthearted podcast or a book
you've read/listened to before is best, and save the new stuff for mowing the
lawn or riding public transportation.

If you have a hard time getting through the beginning of some audiobooks as I
have, I've found it useful to "prime the pump" by reading the first few
chapters of a book and then switching to the audio version once I'm familiar
with the names and setting.

~~~
Krasnol
Exactly. I use audiobooks mostly on tedious tasks daily. Like washing dishes,
feeding the washing machine, dryer, ironing, etc. Often I tend to bundle those
tasks together for a longer listening experience.

Other then that it's great for commute on trains, planes, taxis, or bike or if
you go somewhere where waiting is expected.

It takes some time to get into though. I have struggled with it in the
beginning so I started with a book I read already some time ago so it wouldn't
be such a big deal if I miss something. Now it became almost the only way I
consume books for entertainment.

~~~
kd5bjo
>I started with a book I read already some time ago so it wouldn't be such a
big deal if I miss something.

This is where I’m at in learning a second language. The audiobook will keep
marching onwards, so I won’t get road blocked by things I don’t know yet.
Because I already know the story, it’s never longer than a minute or so before
I manage to catch the plot thread again. It’s also been helpful to read along
with the printed book as the audiobook is running.

------
Ensorceled
I've been reading for more than 50 years and listening to audiobooks for the
last 30 or so. I find I get different things out of the two formats. When I
listened to Lord of the Rings (by the excellent Rob Inglis), there were all
sorts of turns of phrase and whole sections that I didn't remember from my
previous readings (multiple).

But this article is spot on for me, I can't listen to audio books where I'm
trying to learn something while doing anything other than driving. Some non-
fiction is also simply too dense to effectively learn from while listening, I
want to stop and reflect, re-read and make notes.

I started listening to "The Hard Thing about Hard Things" on Audible and
quickly abandoned it for the hard back. My dead tree copy has numerous notes
and a few dozen stickies as bookmarks.

------
reallydontask
Audiobook paired with a good set of noise cancelling headphones on an early
train is as good as a commute gets.

Your 20 second trip to the (home) office is not a commute. I do those too
sometimes :)

~~~
copperx
How do you deal with the excruciating slow speed of audiobooks? Even on 2x
speed I feel I can do twice as fast by reading with my eyes and get better
retention. Anything faster that 2x makes the speech unintelligible, but
reading fast feels like things get more coherent.

~~~
gfody
I’ve heard this a lot. I always listen at normal 1x speed and that usually
seems plenty fast as my mind gets busy with visualizing the scenes and
characters and filling in bits of detail and whatnot for realism. I wonder if
folks who speed it up have their minds similarly engaged or if they’re just
having a much lesser experience. To me it’d be like trying to watch a movie on
fast forward.

~~~
kd5bjo
Not necessarily lesser, but different. My brain doesn’t generally visualize
anything, but it’s good at building a semantic web that connects cause and
effect. If you ask me to describe the physical characteristics of a character
in a book that I read, I probably can’t, unless it has an effect on the plot.
But I have no real trouble keeping track of what’s going on in books like _The
Count of Monte Cristo_ where everyone has half a dozen names and different
motivations they’re willing to show to different people.

I also listen to things at 1x speed because I don’t care for the audio
artifacts from the speedup process, but I have to be in the right mood for it.
If I’m too energetic, the book won’t hold my attention and my mind will wander
to other things— I’ll mentally shut it off and have no idea what’s going on
when I try to resume the book.

------
JansjoFromIkea
For me audiobooks are a way more relaxing alternative to podcasts in that they
strip away the need to choose what to listen to for several times as long and,
usually, once I'm in the mood to listen to one I can stay in that mood for a
long time.

Listening to Robert Caro's gigantic history books a couple of years ago war an
extremely pleasant experience. Literally a month or two of no podcasts at all
and just this pair of extremely deep well written biographies.

~~~
icebraining
I just listen to podcasts in the order they get published. Alternatively, you
can pick a podcast that started long ago, and just binge on the archive - Mike
Duncan's work alone is enough to fill probably three or four months.

That said, I listened to the Power Broker, and fully recommend it.

~~~
alexhutcheson
I highly recommend binging the back catalog of Hardcore History[1] if you
haven't already. Yes, you have to pay for the older episodes, but it's a
tremendous amount of really great content. My favorite individual episode is
"Prophets of Doom": [https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-
history-48-prophe...](https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-
history-48-prophets-of-doom/)

[1] [https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-
compilati...](https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-compilation-
episodes-1-49/)

~~~
icebraining
Yeah, I've heard many hours of Hardcore History, but while it's certainly
good, Dan Carlin's style - both the writing and the speech - frankly tire me a
bit. There are too many times when it's too over the top. I much prefer Mike
Duncan's or Mark Painter's styles.

------
agotterer
Since the beginning of this year I’ve listened to 9 audio books. That is 9
more books then I read in the past 5 years. I like the idea of reading but
prioritizing time for it meant that it took months to complete a book, if I
completed it at all. Now I listen while I walk to work, do the dishes, drive,
etc.

~~~
drainyard
I know how you feel! I listened to "Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep" in
less than a week and finished "Game of Thrones" in 3 weeks because of audio
books. Before that I could barely finish a short book in a month, and a large
one like "Game of Thrones" would take me most of a year to be honest.

------
mlang23
I read a lot of audiobooks on YouTube recently. Fascinating how a service so
public can be so full of copyright violations. I guess I know now why upload
filters are the new big thing.

~~~
hombre_fatal
Though, sheepishly, trying to listen to audiobooks on Youtube is why I ended
up paying for Youtube at one point: so I could turn my phone screen off while
listening. Maybe Youtube knows this. ;)

~~~
mlang23
Yes, listeing to stuff while screen is locked seems to be one of the
motivations for teople to pay for a youtube subscription (apart from getting
rid of Ads of course). As a VoiceOver user, I dont care so much. Tripple-
tapping with three fingers will turn the screen off/on (screen curtain). This
at least saves a bit of battery. Interestingly, ads dont really bother me as
most audiobook providers haven't enabled ads anyway. You can easily listen to
10 hours of pratchett or dick without a single second of advertisment on yt.
If ads are enabled, they can lead to pretty hilarious situations. When I was
listening to an audiobook of GoT on YT recently, it contained quite a bit of
ads. Funnily, one of the ads regularily heard was an audible ad. And the book
was clearly stolen from audible. So in the end, YT was passing money from
audible to the ebook thiefs. How ironic. Oh yeah, but hacking videos are
apparently illegal now on YT. Go figure. Looks to me like yt is creating its
own pretty arbitrary law.

------
ghevshoo
Blinkist sounds interesting, even if it feels more like cheating than regular
audio books. I already feel a bit guilty saying I read book X, when I really
listened to it.

Their website doesn’t explain much and the reviews are vague as usual. Does
anyone have a personal reference for it, or know how it works? Is it real
people reading or a computer voice? I presume the shortened texts are using
something like [https://smmry.com/](https://smmry.com/)

~~~
shadeless
I have been using Blinkist on a daily basis for the past few months.

I'm pretty satisfied with the subscription as it's a great time-saver, in
15mins I either find out that:

\- the book is not worth spending hours of actual reading

\- I enjoy the summary and it makes me want to read the whole book

\- or I like the summary, copy the highlights into personal notes, and carry
on

Real people are both reading and summarizing the books, so it's much higher
quality than the automatic shorteners.

~~~
ganesh7
That.

And even without trendy 'blinkist' I used to take a similar approach by first
reading some prepatory materials before investing time to read the book.
Listening to an audiobook is just another way for me to complement but no
replacement.

I would not say this is fool proof.

You will never be able to get the "key takeaways" of every book by reading
some summary. Sometimes the key takeway might be the way a book is written,
how something is repeated while other things are left out that are most
valuable.

Likewise quotes that once meant nothing to you, you will only understand after
studying material by the other in depth, etc.

just some thoughts.

------
hi5eyes
graphic audio presents the stormlight archives

greatest listening experience.ever. epic fantasy on another level

~~~
abryzak
If you enjoy the Stormlight Archives I would also highly recommend the
Lightbringer series of books by Brent Weeks.

I won't spoil anything besides saying that the series has a number of really
memorable plot twists and a very interesting magic system.

Simon Vance does a fantastic job narrating the audiobooks and I'm eagerly
anticipating the fifth and final book of the series which is due for release
in October.

~~~
tpetry
It‘s a very good series! The shadow series of him is very great too.

------
kilroy123
I feel like I'm the only one who doesn't like audio books. I also feel it's
faster to just read a real book, and I retain a lot more information when I
read.

~~~
Ronsenshi
You're not the only one. I don't dislike audio books, but compared to text
it's just not as immersive. When reading a a good text book I get transported
into it. I visualize whatever author wrote and eventually it's not even
reading - it's more like a flow of information.

With audio books I don't get that - which is OK for some types of books, but
definitely not something I'd pick for fiction.

~~~
arethuza
I listen to audiobooks a _lot_ and I generally love them but sometimes I do
miss the ability to easily skip back and re-listen to a particular short
section again - yes you can skip back a fixed amount easily but that takes you
to a random point in the text.

Local, sentence/paragraph level, navigation in audiobooks is really bad.

~~~
jplayer01
This is something I've noticed with podcasts as well. The tools and players
available are atrocious and I don't understand why everybody puts up with
them.

~~~
SyneRyder
Which players have you tried?

I find the players have lots of microfeatures I wouldn't even have thought of
- like if I've stopped playing a podcast in Pocket Casts & pick it up a couple
of hours later, it rewinds a few seconds so I get the context of what I was
listening to again.

Pocket Casts is nowhere near as good since the NPR acquisition, and probably
not as good as Overcast or Castro or any iPhone clients, but I definitely
wouldn't say it's atrocious.

~~~
jplayer01
All of them. And most of them are glorified radios. The few that do expose
functionality for navigation and bookmarking within a podcast episode (beyond
rewinding or FF by x seconds), they make it _way_ too unintuitive to use and
make you use too many clicks to use it. And there's almost no functionality
around saving and organizing the episodes you've listened to. Hell, most
podcast apps don't even provide a way to check your played history in a sane
way (if at all). Where in the fuck is the Evernote of podcast apps? I want to
tag episodes, organize them into folders, link different episodes, bookmark
certain spots of an episode, _tag the bookmarks_ , add comments/notes at
certain times AND TAG THESE AND ORGANIZE THESE, etc.

~~~
SyneRyder
Okay, I admit - that is an absolutely brilliant idea. What you've described is
exactly how I use Pocket with blog posts (highlighting, searchable note
taking, tagging) but for podcasts. Count me in.

I know Overcast made some attempts at timecode bookmarking & sharing snippets,
but I don't think their approach is the solution. (I'm on Android so I've
never got to try it.)

[https://www.cultofmac.com/622288/how-to-share-podcast-
clips-...](https://www.cultofmac.com/622288/how-to-share-podcast-clips-with-
overcast/)

~~~
jplayer01
Yeah. That interactive, metatextual layer is missing for me for podcasts. I
have a decent process (that I'm still refining) for saving and organizing
websites/articles/books/pdfs/notes, and if I'm looking for something, I can
find it reasonably quickly, but podcasts are this blackhole where information
and context go to get lost.

> [https://www.cultofmac.com/622288/how-to-share-podcast-
> clips-...](https://www.cultofmac.com/622288/how-to-share-podcast-clips-..).

Okay, that feature is pretty damn cool. Add that to my must-haves in my dream
podcast app.

------
Japhy_Ryder
I'm not usually an 'audiobook' guy, but, currently listening to How to Change
Your Mind by Michael Pollan, which is read by him. He's an excellent
speaker/reader and it's nice to hear him read it exactly how he meant it to be
read.

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Pandabob
I've been a fairly heavy user of Audible until this spring when I started to
go back to regular, physical books. If you're reading books with lot's of
graphs or pictures in them, the Audible experience is kind of subpar. Also,
the experience of "browsing" audiobooks is kind of clunky and there's
effectively no way to search the book.

I will say that the audio version of The Economist is pretty great. If an
article has pictures or graphs in them, I can just open the article from the
app and listen to it simultaneously. I hope more magazines/newspapers would
add similar functionality to their offering.

~~~
DanTheManPR
I'm always reading/listening to two books at once, one audio-book, and one in
a visual format. A lot of technical or older books aren't available in any
electronic or audio format, and so I want to always be in the habit of reading
visually so that I can accommodate those.

------
AlchemistCamp
Listening to books is just too slow. For the right kind of book with a slower
narrator, I _might_ be able to listen at 2x or 2.5x and still understand it.
But why not just devote my full attention, read it at 8x and probably have
better recollection than from passive listening?

Other books require more work and I probably read at 1x speed with frequent
pauses and re-readings. I'd never understand those if they were audio.

The one time I might go for an audio book is when outside exercising or
commuting, but that's when I listen to music or podcasts.

~~~
KUcxrAVrtI
Have a try to synthetic speech books, I use espeak to create my audiobooks at
1000wpm for non-technical books.

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tus88
I am really surprised at how popular they are. I listen to a lot of podcasts,
but when I want to read, I read. Listening to someone else read a
book....doesn't feel right to me.

~~~
rorykoehler
Reading is tiring. I spend all day looking at text at work. Audio books are an
escape from that. They free me to do something else too. I use them in the
following scenarios: strapped into the decompression machine at the chiro,
stretching at home and winding down for bed with the lights off to stimulate
melatonin. I couldn't read a book in any of those situations and they cover
100% of my book consumption. I didn't read books at all before audio books (at
least not since I was a child, except for studying purposes).

I agree that a good narrator makes a huge difference.

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malhotra_chetan
Totally relatable. Plus somehow I have noticed that I work out for more time
while listening to audiobooks when compared to working out with blasting
music. I use this service called auditus.cc to convert all my epubs. And the
fun thing is the reading voices available are pretty varied so if I start
getting bored from one voice, I make sure I use another one next time.

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durnygbur
Not only audiobooks. Do you have „radio theatre”? In my country we have it -
it’s an awesome form.

~~~
simcop2387
It's one thing that I love to get a hold of from the BBC, things like the
HHGTTG radio play and others are just fantastic. I'm not fully aware of a lot
of others but there's some podcasts like Welcome to Nightvale and the other
productions that the group does that are also wonderful. I think that's where
a lot of those kinds of things have ended up because it can reach a much
larger audience and is easier to fund because of that (from ads and from sales
and donations depending on how they do it).

~~~
durnygbur
In Poland there is a special division of the public radio (Teatr Polskiego
Radia) producing the auditions. Hard to find a weak or uninteresting
production. Unfortunately not many new are appearing recently. Some commercial
radios tried to copy the form and produce something similar but it was nowhere
near the artistic and quality level of PR’s (ended up with something loud and
vulgar).

------
zxcb1
The trend reminds me of McLuhans literate and tribal man

[https://www.nextnature.net/2009/12/the-playboy-interview-
mar...](https://www.nextnature.net/2009/12/the-playboy-interview-marshall-
mcluhan/)

------
djohnston
I didn't start using audiobooks until this year, but they've markedly improved
my ability to fall asleep quickly. It used to take at least an hour, and now
I'm usually out within 30. Except when I get to the climax :p

------
qrbLPHiKpiux
They have to be done the right way. There’s a known talk radio show host who
also writes books. I tried one of his audio books and it was not read by him,
but by someone else. I couldn’t continue with it and got the print version.

------
raehik
I love audiobooks (and anything media that comes with audio too) for learning
languages. Inflection and hearing what's written is hugely beneficial to
understanding, and it's much more memorable for me.

------
BooneJS
I started buying audiobooks during my time in the Bay Area with round trip
daily commutes of 2.5 hours.

Now I’m in a car for just over 3 hours a week and I’d rather lounge around
with my e-ink Kindle.

------
Simulacra
I am hopelessly addicted to audiobooks. I’m much too hyper active an attention
deficit to read these days, Unmedicated by the way, seems like an interesting
idea worth pursuing

------
ajairaj
For me audio books are great when I listen to a book which I have read long
time ago. This way I can revise my favorite books, and I wont worry if I miss
some sentences.

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timwaagh
i personally dont like them very much as they tend to force the pace and you
might miss quite a bit. im a slow reader who tends to process everything.
unless its boring then i just skim. you can't really do that with audiobooks.
plus they are quite expensive.

