When people set their watches for Prime Day, they’re usually thinking ahead to all the fantastic tech deals they can snap up. And, fantastic as those tech deals may be, people don’t often consider the offerings from Amazon’s other platforms like Audible. This Prime Day, you can snap up three whole months of an Audible subscription for absolutely nothing.
3 Months of Audible for Free This Prime Day
As far as I’m concerned, this is the best Prime Day deal going in this year’s sales event. “But Joe, you’re just some schmuck, why are you so enthused about Audible?” I pretend to hear you ask even though you’re probably not.
Well, here’s a transcript of a conversation that I have at least once a month:
“What do you do for work then, Joe?”
“Ah, I make audiobooks.”
“Oh, wow! So do you narrate them then?”
“Nah, I just edit all the audio down and make it ready to be released.” It’s here that they usually become significantly less interested. But suffice it to say, I know my way around an Audiobook, and there is no platform quite like Audible.
What Makes Audible So Special?
If I had to put a number on the amount of audiobooks I’ve edited in my career so far, I’d probably have to put it somewhere in the ballpark of 300-400 titles. The vast majority of these (probably about 95%) end up being distributed on Audible. I briefly worked at a company that was retro enough to still burn their books to CD, but even the staff had no idea why we bothered.
The simple fact of the audiobook marketplace is that Audible just doesn’t have any major contenders offering anything close to their catalogue. The ubiquity of Audible is so evident in the industry that when I take on a job, nobody has to tell me that it needs working to Audible specifications, it’s just an assumed part of the process.
Their catalogue is vast, incredibly vast. According to Amazon’s own numbers, there are over 400,000 titles available on the platform, and many of those are exclusive to Audible. Dune, Project Hail Mary, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, you getting it? There’s also the Audible Plus catalogue, but we’ll talk more about that in a minute.
A Broad Market Place
Audible isn’t just a place for best-sellers. Thanks to a platform called ACX, anyone with the budget to get their book professionally converted into audio can have their title up on Audible. This leads to a huge range in genres and styles for customers to listen to on the platform.
Need a self-help book? It’s there. Books of the Bible? Yep. Travel Guides? Sure thing. The open nature of ACX allows for such a range of titles that listeners could pretty much never run out of things to listen to.
Oh, and you can also listen to podcasts and audio dramas on Audible, not just audiobooks.
Quantity and Quality
If there’s one thing that keeps me–and I suspect other people in the industry who care about their work–up at night, it’s AI. There’s been talk for a while that AI voices are going to squeeze narrators (and by extension editors like me) out of the market. I appreciate that I have an attuned ear for narration, but I cannot stand the robotic edge that comes with even the most sophisticated AI text-to-speech options. Currently, there just is no artificial replica for a solid narrator that can pick up the nuances of the text and bring it to life for listeners.
Thankfully, Audible agrees. They have adept (if not perfect) AI detection and will reject the upload of any title that they suspect has not been read by a human. This ensures a level of quality and consistency across the platform, even with the staggering number of books available.
It also keeps me in a job, so, you know, I have an obvious bias here.
How Does Audible Work?
When you sign up for your three-month free subscription, you’ll get their standard membership plan. This means that every month, Audible will deposit a credit into your account every month on the same date. You can then take this lovely lil’ nugget and use it to add titles to your library. So essentially, you’re getting one book a month from your subscription, and if you’re signing up via the Prime Day deal, you’re bagging yourself three free books.
If you’re wondering what the RRP for an audiobook is, you’re probably looking at about £15.99 for something nine or ten hours in length, but they can be as expensive as £35. Even after the promotion ends, the basic level of membership is £7.99 a month, and all the titles cost just one credit. And you can use the credits on titles of any length. Let’s take Orlando Figes’ ‘A People’s Tragedy’ as an example–because it’s the longest book I have in my Audible library at 47 hours in length. The audio format of the book retails for about £23.99, which is quite a fair price given its hefty page count. I paid my month’s subscription fee, and used my credit to buy it, leaving me £16 better off.
You can also upgrade your membership and pay £14.99 a month to get two credits a month. And, if you’re insatiable, you can also buy extra credits between your renewal dates, or just buy the titles outright for their RRP.
The Audible Plus Catalogue
Audible made a big song and dance about the launch of the Plus Catalogue, and I can see why. This is essentially their audiobook streaming service. Everybody with an Audible membership will have access to a rotating catalogue of over 11,000 titles that are free to play without needing to drop any money or credits on them.
I absolutely gobbled this up when they first launched the catalogue, because I often found myself blazing through my credits before my renewal date rolled around, so having titles I could listen to without needing to buy extra credits was an excellent way to plug that gap.
What is Amazon Prime Day?
Amazon Prime Day is one of the biggest sale events of the year next to Black Friday. It's a time when Prime members can take advantage of a wide variety of discounts available on Amazon's site, from tech to books to movies and so much more. Sometimes, other retailers will even jump in on the sale event fun with their own competing deals, which are great to check out.
If you're a Prime member, you can check out the available discounts right now. And if you're not, don't worry, you can sign up for a free 30-day trial to see what's still on offer today.
Joe O'Neill-Parker is a freelance writer and audio producer. He is the owner of O'Neill Multimedia. He writes commerce, sports, and audio-related tech articles for IGN.
