If you’re an audiobook fan, I recommend heading over to Downpour.com and signing up for their newsletter. The weekly deals have been terrific, with free or inexpensive unabridged audiobooks offered regularly. The current promotion is “Huck for a buck”.
The books are all “classics”, which is another way to say that the copyright is expired and the text is in the public domain. (I.e., no author royalties to pay.) That’s OK, these are still cool books. I’ve picked up Frankenstein, Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for the grand total of $1.1
Downpour.com also has a terrific library of best sellers and new releases, including a few series that are on my list of recommended audiobooks, like the Vorkosigan Saga, the Harry Bosch series, and the Sookie Stackhouse books that inspired the HBO series True Blood. Their prices are competitive with Audible.com, they have a subscription plan that’s even cheaper, and they have apps for both iPhone (iOS) and Android.
These guys are great, I recommend you check them out. The newsletter sign-up form is at the bottom of every page.
- Before you say “I can get all those same books at LibriVox, and more besides, for FREE”, no, you can’t. The Downpour.com versions have terrific production values, recorded by professional voice talent in a professional recording studio. LibraVox, while a neat service, is amateurs of varying levels of talent reading into microphones of varying levels of quality in environments with varying levels of extra noise. There’s no comparison. ↩