Audiobooks: Fitting Reading In the Crevices

Can audiobooks legitimately be used to help a busy mom who wants to read physical books, actually read books? Come along with me on a short journey to discover some answers!

This post is somewhat outside my comfort zone and expertise to write, since I strongly prefer physical books. I've been easily distracted by auditory input for most of my life, and have difficulty understanding and paying attention to a speaker unless I'm taking notes or performing an activity directly related to what is being said. However, my husband is a big fan of audiobooks to supplement his reading habit.

Have you met a bibliovore before? Now you know someone who's married to one! 😆

What is an audiobook?

Taking the word apart, an audiobook is a voice-recorded version of a book. In the days when most of my (intended) readers were children, audiobooks were on cassette tapes and, later, CDs. Now, they're accessed through apps, so not in physical media. Maybe sometime I'll post about the human attention span related to the advancement of technology...

Can you listen to audiobooks for free?

Short answer: It depends on where you look.

Long answer (mostly from Bookriot): there are at least 6 paid and 8 free options, depending on the features you would like associated with your audiobook habit. All but one of these are associated with apps or other internet sources.

Where to get audiobooks I have to pay for

1. Kindle app. This is a service through Amazon (separate from Prime) and costs $10/month in the US. This one is popular because it is both flexible and comprehensive. You can have 10 books of your choice in the app at any one time. Some book options you can get through Kindle are . . .
2. Audible app. This is an audiobook-specific service through Amazon and costs $8/month up to $150/year. Recent changes for the better include an upgrade for every plan from 1 "free" (i.e., included) book/month to constant access to a discounted library of thousands of books. More expensive plans do include the "free" books that aren't really free. 
3. Scribd. I hadn't known before that this was the first site devoted to online publishing (2007); audiobooks were added in 2014. For the entire platform--including journals, sheet music, and other materials conducive to learning--the monthly cost is $9. While audio quality and overall quantity of written material are less than Audible, it's overall a better deal for most users.
4. Libro.fm app. This was founded to help brick-and-mortar bookstores compete with Amazon. In its business model, the subscription cost pays partly for the audiobook and partly for a donation to a bookstore of your choice. The account itself is free; you pay monthly ($15) or individually.
5. Kobo app. This service costs $10/month for access to one audiobook; additional books cost roughly that much extra (1 book per credit per $10).
6. Downpour app. This has a smaller library than Audible (as do most of the non-Audible services listed in this post) but is also cheaper at $13/month. Its biggest draw for me is the ability to listen to books later or earlier in the year, depending on busy seasons of life (e.g., academic semesters for a professor).

Where to get audiobooks I don't have to pay for

1. Libby app. This is a part of Overdrive, which is being phased out over the next few months. Libraries pay for actual borrowing of audiobooks or ebooks. If your library uses this service, you can have access to their audiobooks. You can use both Android and Apple products (iPhone/iPad) with Libby. (Thank you, Beth, for updating my knowledge about Libby and Overdrive!)
2. Hoopla app. This is another library lending service, allowing you to "check out" a finite number of audiobooks/ebooks/other digital media per month.
3. Librivox app. This is quite distinctive in that it uses volunteer readers to record chapters of public-domain audiobooks. Given that copyright generally extends to 70-ish years past the death of the author, I am quite curious to see the library of available titles.
4. Nook app. This allows you to read or listen to books specifically from Barnes & Noble.
5. iTunes and Google Play. These are free, but you pay for audiobooks within each app that you want to listen to.
6. Library! 'Nuff said.

What are the pros and cons of audiobooks?

I asked three of my audiobook-aficionado friends to gain insight on this question. Admittedly, I prefer making rubrics, or lists with point values, but for a blog post a paragraph form makes more sense.

One pro of audiobooks is that it allows the ability to multitask. It feels very satisfying to plow through (recorded) pages of a book at the same time as one is completing chores or exercising. (Clinical side note: I don't recommend trying to complete a more cognitively demanding task while listening to an audiobook, because there is a lot of research showing that this type of multitasking, particularly using multiple sources of media at once, is basically just switching attention back and forth repeatedly, costing your brain precious energy and making you less efficient at each task you're trying to do.)

Another pro is that the accent of a good reader can bring a story alive. One of my books-in-progress is a set of reflections on the use of the Charlotte Mason method. A central component of this educational method is the use of narration of "living" books--that is, books with realistic vocabulary, sentence structure, illustrations (if applicable), and a personal interest of the sole author in the subject matter. As an example, if you're learning about a 19th-century Scottish perspective on 12th-century British culture, an audiobook such as Ivanhoe read by someone with a true-to-life Scottish accent (who knows how to pronounce names and places) can put your imagination into the setting of the story.

A third pro, for some, is the ability to progress faster through books, period. The child of someone I know doubled her reading pages by listening to an audiobook on double speed while reading along with the same book. My husband uses this technique for easier books to maintain attention for longer reading sessions. Listening only to the book on 2x speed--although this matches my actual reading speed pretty closely--drives me slightly batty, but it might work for you.

Now for the cons. One is a corollary of the second "pro" above: when unfamiliar names of places or people don't make sense when one is listening to the audiobook, one needs to get the physical book from the library. Sometimes, too, I've heard a word pronounced for the first time on audiobook, and it takes me a while to understand what it's referring to--in cases of words that I've seen only in print and developed my own internal pronunciation for.

Another con is the cost. While the slight majority of audiobook options above are free, the higher-quality recordings with more features (like saving progress for a mom of a little who can listen to 3-5 minutes at a time, if that) generally come at a cost. I'm cheap, so anything I purchase needs to be an investment, in my head at least.

Finally, learning preferences can make a difference. Despite what you may read elsewhere, the educational literature has debunked the popular conception of "I learn best in my primary learning style" like auditory, visual, or kinesthetic. That said, using a mix of content delivery modes does make for more effective learning. Simply hearing something on audiobook doesn't guarantee retention even for someone whose preferred style is auditory. Seeing the text as well as hearing it helps things stick.

My final decision

Those of you who know me in person will not be terribly surprised at my twofold decision:

1. Keep physical books as my primary go-to and accept the consequent slowness of my reading progress compared to what I'd like it to be.
2. Sign up to be a LibriVox reader so I can expose myself and others to public-domain books!

All told, however, working on this post has helped me become much more aware of the audiobook options out there. Have you learned something new today? Are you still firmly in the "audiobooks rock!" or "never-audiobooks" camp? Let me know in the comments!