I'm tempted to get an Audible subscription for an hour commute every working day. Thing is, I'm a little unsure on how good it is in terms of selection and value-for-money as I'm a tight git with a fear of commitment. Either of you two tried it and can tell me how good the experience was?
I find it's good for long walks where I would like to be reading, but obviously can't do that and cross the road safely at the same time. That and for falling asleep to, I have a small speaker that I connect my phone to and usually listen to a chapter in bed to wind down. It seems listening while lying down with my eyes closed in complete darkness is more effective for getting me to sleep than keeping my eyes open reading in bed, which usually turns into me reading a lot longer than I should and missing a sensible bedtime. I haven't cancelled my subscription since I got it but I try to really get the most out of the fee by buying audiobooks that are at least 20 hours or longer. Anything shorter than that and you'll have burned through that month's credit and be left with nothing to listen to.
There are over 130,000 audiobooks available on Audible. That selection includes a surprisingly small amount of crap, because recording an audiobook to Audible's standards is relatively expensive.
The basic subscription is £7.99 a month, which gives you a credit to download one new audiobook per month. You can keep that audiobook forever and unused credits do roll over to the next month. It's not cheap, but it's reasonably good value. They have a very generous returns policy - if you don't like a book, you can get your credit back and choose another one, no questions asked.
If you're on a very tight budget, you might want to check out your local library. For the benefit of blind people, libraries tend to have a good selection of audiobooks, although you'll need to rip them from CD. Most libraries also have an online collection of e-books and audiobooks that you can borrow using the Libby app, but the selection is usually limited to a small number of popular titles. You just download the app and log in using your library card number.
