Recommend a site for Audiobooks

On the face of it, it should be easy to find audio books right?

Audible and Amazon amongst others provide a fantastic range of titles, but I need to be able to play the books straight off a USB dongle that I can plug into my car's stereo, so ideally I need them in MP3 format, while the services that I have looked at all have some sort of DRM that would mean I can't go straight from download to USB dongle.

I'm not looking for any illegal sites, though legal and free would be nice, but otherwise a good affordable site with a decent range of fiction and non-fiction books would be awesome, if anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear about them?

I got the idea after listening to the Hunger Games book that I got in a Humble Bundle deal, and have since added the next two instalments.

I haven't found an elegant way of doing it, and I've been looking a long time. There are various ways of deDRMing the audible stuff but nothing simple, so I gave up and just use an iPod. The 2 books/month deal from Audible gives me way more than I can listen to during training/commuting, so I started getting stand up comedy - they're worth a look if you're into that sort of thing.

DRM-free audiobooks don't really seem to be a big thing - presumably because they tend to be quite expensive (too expensive if you ask me, and I'm actually looking to start producing and publishing them!) and would therefore be a big draw to pirates.

It might be worth looking at www.craftlit.com - I've got a friend who records for them, they do a download-only subscription that gives you -AFAICT - a DRM-free mp3 bundle on a regular basis. By the look of it they largely deal with out-of-copyright books (rights holder can be so fussy ;) ), so you might not like their selection so much, but probably worth a look....

That's why Audible is so great. IIRC it about £15 for the 2 books/month subscription. I'm currently ploughing my way through The Pillars of the Earth, and that's about 40 hours long. Generally audiobooks tend to be ~ 15-20 hours so not THAT expensive tbh.

If you're after something that Audible don't carry, for example the complete Harry Potter set though, I agree ~ £200 is a bit steep!

The subscriptions might be better value on Audible, but you're still stuck with DRM and having to work around the ways they say you can listen to the books. Plus I don't know what the terms are for the bigger publishers, but if you're a little indie going through Audible (like I would be) they keep at least 60% of the calculated purchase price/subscription value, which seems pretty high to me given they're literally just a distributor.

40 hours long? I guess it's a substantial tome, but that's still fairly staggering. The sheer person-hours that go into producing that much audio is unbelievable. It's about 2 hours of recording (with at least two people involved) and then 4 - 6 hours of post-prod - around 10 hours effort - per hour of finished audio. So you're looking at up to 400 person-hours to produce that - almost 3 months of full time work...

The issue with Audible is that I can download the books then go through multiple hoops in order to get the book to play from a USB key, but it is far too overly complicated.

Yeah, pretty sure talking about circumventing the DRM is off bounds. In the end it's probably easier just to buy a cheap ipod nano and wire that in. I actually like the Audible file format, because it remembers how far you got through a book, even if you stop it and listen to some music etc. Much better than when I've bought an audiobook, and ripped it and uploaded the MP3, (like I had to do with Harry Potter), then you need to remember which track, and how far through it you were.

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Originally Posted by b0redom

Yeah, pretty sure talking about circumventing the DRM is off bounds. In the end it's probably easier just to buy a cheap ipod nano and wire that in. I actually like the Audible file format, because it remembers how far you got through a book, even if you stop it and listen to some music etc. Much better than when I've bought an audiobook, and ripped it and uploaded the MP3, (like I had to do with Harry Potter), then you need to remember which track, and how far through it you were.

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That was the solution offered to me by Audible's tech support, however I will edit my original post as I didn't think of that. Thanks for the heads up.

That would add another device to the mix, I use my phone on a dashboard mounted stand for SatNav, my bluetooth headset so I can hear it and respond to calls and texts etc... so plugging a USB dongle into my stereo is a far better solution then using another device that needs more cables and power.

Sorry, I must sound like a right fusspot, but all I want is a simple solution and my idea strikes me as the simplest way to deal with this, unless someone can point out an obvious way to deal with things that I have missed.

The only people I've used outside of audible (seeing as I don't use them unless there's no alternative for the same reasons as yourself) are emusic, used to use Audiogo who went under :( and in hindsight I'd have bought all my list up at once from them if I'd known that was on the cards). Part of their catalogue went to downpour.com, but I'd guess both emusic & downpour may not have anything like the range you're after. (Aside of you've quite likely tried them already anyway.)

Only worthwhile 'site' I use is the physical one called the local library. Borrow CD. Rip. Most are only £1 too.

DRM is such a pain. I'd love to play my Spotify music in the car without having to faff about with the phone.

Yeah, I did that for a bit too, but really it's a PITA remembering what track and how far through you got up to.