I am just finishing my 73 book on Audible!
Wow! That's insane. I remember when I first heard about audiobooks and thought it being a little strange to listen to books instead of reading them but now I am in love with the concept.
On my daily rides to and from work which are around 30 to 40 minutes long I listen to some of the best books you can imagine.
I have followed Genghis Khan on his conquest to rule the world, I laughed at all the shit Kevin Hart had to go through, I followed an honest thief to Paris and Berlin, I learned that a single guy basically transformed modern commerce, and so much more!
Because I love audiobooks so much I wanted to answer a few questions people ask me all the time when I tell them about the latest book I am listening to.
Can you really concentrate on the book?
Yes! While listening to books I can sometimes start thinking about something and lose track of the book but I don't think that missing 10-15-20 seconds of a book will make that much of a difference. If I, for some reason, can't follow the story I just hit the "back 30 seconds" button a bunch of times and catch up.
It takes time to get used to listening to books and be fully engaged but as with everything - practice makes perfect. I currently listen at 2x speed which allows me to go through books much quicker without compromising the overall experience. It just becomes normal to listen to books at a quicker pace
Do you buy all books? I tried downloading some books and I just couldn't listen to it.
Yes, I have bought every single audio book so far and will continue doing so for a few reasons. First, it's just convenient. I am in a position where I can afford spending some money and get the content I want much easier. Instead of searching for a book I want to listen to I just type the name and download it directly to my app. This leads to my second point.
The Audible app is great. You can jump around from chapter to chapter, speed up the narration or slow it down, skip a few seconds or go back if you missed something. One other cool thing is that you can start listening to a book on your phone, get home and turn of your computer and continue right where you stopped. It. Just. Works.
Third, and probably the most importantly, people put effort, time and money into making an audio book and I just want to repay them a little. As I said before, I am lucky enough to have a great job which leaves me with money to spare which I can then spend on fun stuff.
Aren't audio books expensive?
That's relative. What's expensive for you can be cheap for me and vice versa but there are a few things I take advantage of.
1. Audible membership - for 15 dollars a month you get 1 token you can spend on any book you like. I bought a bunch of 30+ dollar books that way.
2. There are promotions quite often - before halloween you can get nice horror stories for 25% of the regular price. On other occasions you can get other books cheap. I bought 4 books from the Great Courses (educational books) for around 12 dollars. In total it's 60 hours of content for 12 dollars which is a steal in my opinion.
3. Every day there is one book on sale also for a fraction of the original price. I have bought some great books that way from popular authors as well as some lesser known gems.
Buying one book a month in the start should be just enough to keep you happy.
And one more thing - the first month you get a book for free!
I hope some of these arguments convinced you to try it out. I haven't posted any referral links so that I won't have any benefit of you joining "through me" other than knowing that I got someone excited about this as I am.
Audible says that I have spent 1 month 20 days 9 hours and 58 minutes listening to audio books which is just 10 hours shy of being a master listener.
Catch me if you can :p