I am taking a break from working on the blog because I am under going treatment for diabetic retinopathy and it is hard for me to keep up with it right now because it disrupts my eye sight. I am still reading books, but at a much slower pace and so I have taken to listening to more audiobooks and reading on my kindle because I can control the size of the font - small print it pretty hard on the eyes and there are very few (if any) books in large print for science fiction and fantasy books and none at all that I've come across for non-fiction. I am still tracking my reading on Storygraph, but I am going to take the pressure off myself with blogging for a while and will post less over the coming months. (It's an annoyance since I've only just started the blog!) So here's a break down of the audiobook providers that I've had dealings with.
Listening Books and Calibre Audio are by far the most economical for me - they are online audiobook libraries for people who have a disability or medical condition that makes reading print material difficult for them and have a good range of books. The only downside I've found is that they are limited in what they can give their members access to due to copyright reasons but they are far better than our local library who uses Borrowbox in that they have a lot of older publications on there, better access to non-fiction and allow you to stream from their website. Between them both you get access to a good range of books, but there is some over-lap with some titles. Listening Books is £25 a year and Calibre Audio is £30 or £36 a year (there is a discount if you have a yearly subscription or a £3 recurring
With Borrowbox, you have to download the books on to your computer, or phone and that can be tricky if you have an issue with the software that plays them, and with the computer, you have to know how to open the files to listen to them - this is problematic when you can't see properly, or just want to listen to something straightaway. They also take up a lot file space on your harddrive and with cheaper laptops not having a great deal of storage space on them these days, your harddrive can get full pretty quickly. Borrowbox is ok with e-books, but the selection is limited and most of the books you get access to are new releases, so if you want to read older publications most of the time you won't find the books on there.
Of the commercially available audiobooks providers, Audible is the best one I've found (unfortunately), for the customer because it is generally cheaper if you sign up to them, and they have a bigger selection. I'm not going to lie to people and say Libro.fm, Audiobooks.com, and Bookbeat are better value, because they aren't. What makes it the best option is access to the Audible Plus catalogue and the wider range of titles than the other providers.
Audiobooks.com act a bit like Audible, in that you have a monthly credit and can pick two additonal titles from their VIP selection, but I found that the VIP selection is not broken down into genres and subjects so it is difficult for me to find the books that I am interested in within the VIP selection, and they don't have a lot of the books that I want to listen to, so therefore it is not worth it for me to sign up with them. I would have considered it if the VIP selection was easier to navigate because it is the best one for the customer out of all the providers available other than Audible.
Libro.fm is great for Independent booksellers so if you don't mind not having access to the Audible Plus catalogue or the VIP selection offered by Audiobooks.com, and you can download your books, but it's expensive compared to Audible in that you only get access to one book per month on their basic plan.
Bookbeat is one I will never consider because instead of purchasing a book, it works on listening hours and you only get 20 hours a month on their basic plan. If you listen to a 20 hour book, that's it for the month, and if the book you listen to is more than 20 hours you won't be able to finish it in that month. You can only listen to more than one book a month if it is less than 10 hours so it is not worth it if you listen to a lot of audiobooks.
I have looked for an e-book library similar to Listening Books and Calibre Audio, but I have been unable to find one so unfortunately I am limited to Borrowbox and Kindle for e-books right now. The best e-reader device will have to wait for another day since this post is getting overly long and although I think Audible is the best commercial audiobook provider, my opinion of Kindle being the best for e-books is not. I dislike Audible's domination of the audiobook publishing world and only accept using it because of the situation with my eye sight. If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't be using it.
