Audible Without Amazon

I love audiobooks. So many of my hobbies are screen-focused that my eyes have run an LED marathon by 6 PM. And what do I turn to when I’m exhausted, bored, and barely able to open my eyes?

Audiobooks.

Long commute/solo drive?

Audiobooks.

Cooking dinner/doing dishes?

Audiobooks.

Want to practice new accents for a Dungeons and Dragons campaign?

Audiobooks.

As non-drug drugs go, Audiobooks can be an expensive habit. You can tear through a 12 hour book in a couple days if you get really into it, and most audiobook prices start at over $30. The numbers add up.

For a long time, I’ve been in an on-again, off-again situation with Audible. $15 a month isn’t too bad, particularly if I pick long books (like, average of 22 hours long) and pause or cancel my membership once my backlog starts to pile up.

And the Libby app is nice… but even in a huge county, the selection isn’t all I would hope, and the wait times are discouraging.

But while shopping at the wonderful Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill a little while back, I learned something fantastic: I can get the Audible experience without paying Amazon.

Introducing, Libro.fm. This site uses the same model (pay $15 a month for one credit, good for any audiobook in collection), but it partners with local booksellers. 15% of the profit from a sale goes to your local bookshop. I don’t have much mind for business, and I wish that percentage was higher, but I’m pretty excited to weaken Amazon’s monopoly on the audiobook business while supporting bookstores I care about.

So, I just signed up and I’m pretty psyched about it. Amazon has a long history of killing competition with convenience. And I’d love to see some other companies come along to make shopping local as convenient as possible.