Where to find free audiobooks?

June 5, 2007 12:41 PM

Please recommend some good sources for downloading free/cheap audiobooks.
posted by gnutron to media & arts (12 comments total)

Not free, but maybe cheap
posted by unformatt at 12:56 PM on June 5, 2007

Previously. Also, AudioBooksForFree.com.
posted by amf at 1:00 PM on June 5, 2007

Perhaps your local library has NetLibrary's eAudioBooks.
posted by jaimev at 1:01 PM on June 5, 2007

Personally I don't think Audible is very cheap. (For new books they want as much as a hardcover copy!)

I'm interested in anyone who might have a good source, too, but I haven't found much and I've looked a bit. Best resource I found was the local library's collection of Books-on-CD. (Of course, don't keep the files around after you've returned the CD...that would be illegal.)

The Gutenberg Project has a page devoted to free audiobooks, that you should check out. I haven't tried any of them, though, so I can't speak for the quality.

They link to these guys:
http://www.audiobooksforfree.com/
Looks a little low-budget, but they say no computerized text-to-speech! They seem to let you download for free, and offer other options (MP3s on CD, etc.) for cost. Probably worth supporting or otherwise donating if you use them, since that bandwidth bill must be bad.

On preview -- amf and jaimev beat me to it.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:05 PM on June 5, 2007

Librivox. Public domain books, read by volunteers.
posted by mimo at 1:38 PM on June 5, 2007

These folks have a few good things for free - if you like, you can subscribe:
http://www.thoughtaudio.com

And there is also LibriVox:
http://www.librivox.org
which is sort of the open-source audiobook -
Only books in the public domain, read by volunteers, recordings themselves are also public domain.

LibriVox usually has one volunteer do a few chapters and another do the next few. Which can be a bonus when done well (an example from memory is White Fang - the mix of male, female, Canadian voices, etc. worked so well with the story I'd think it was done purposefully) and a grace when you get to a voice you don't like - it will only be a few chapters before you're hearing another voice).
posted by bartleby at 1:40 PM on June 5, 2007

Podiobooks has free e-books in podcast form. You can use something like DownThemAll (firefox extension) to download all the podcasts at once (or maybe there's an easier way to do it, I dunno).
posted by !Jim at 1:47 PM on June 5, 2007

I second jaimev's suggestion of your local library. I have had great success with my library.
posted by JJ86 at 2:07 PM on June 5, 2007

Seconding podiobooks.com. It's all absolutely free (although you are encouraged to donate). Lots of good sci-fi in there.
posted by JDHarper at 2:17 PM on June 5, 2007

ThoughtAudio
ManyBooks has some audio

See also
posted by mattbucher at 2:31 PM on June 5, 2007

Hey that podiobooks is pretty cool. Just subscribed to Black Jack Justice and it's teh awesome.
posted by juv3nal at 11:13 AM on June 6, 2007

Thanks to OmieWise, I've been listening to readings from Disciplined Minds from the Unwelcome Guests archive (starts on episode 176). Only one book, but pretty interesting.
posted by Chuckles at 6:50 PM on June 6, 2007