Back on July 28, 2017, I did a review called “Hooked on Audiobooks” in which I pointed out many of the advantages of audiobooks and how great a resource your local public library can be as a source of free audiobooks (and ebooks).  Since then I have gone through so many books that I am finding a relative shortage of available popular audiobooks books in the South Jersey Inter-Library system that I have not already “read”.

Audible

My first “solution” was to purchase a 2-year Audible subscription for those books I wanted that were not elsewhere available.  The 2-year plan allows the purchase of 24 audiobooks.  They can be purchased with your 24 “credits” anytime within the 2-year subscription period.  That gives the lowest cost per book.   I have used my Audible subscription to get time-sensitive books like Hilary Clinton’s “What Happened?”  and  Michael Wolff and Holter Graham’s “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” and books I wanted that were just not available at my local library.

Overdrive

So as to not unnecessarily use up my 24 book quota I researched other possible sources.  The Overdrive App that one uses to access library ebooks and audiobooks can be used with any participating library (I think most libraries use the same app).  You can add all the libraries you belong to, to the Overdrive app.  The problem is most public libraries will only allow local residents to become members.

Non-Resident Membership

For an annual fee, some libraries, allow non-residents to become members for the use of their electronic media.  In shopping for a library, the goal is to find a library with the largest electronic media collection for the lowest price.

Fairfax County Public Library

Fairfax County Public Library (Fairfax, Va) charges a relatively low annual non-resident membership fee of $27 per year.  They have about 10,000 audiobooks.  I find that many books are available in one library but not the other.  Also, books that are on a waiting list in one library may be ready to borrow in another.  In addition, even if a book is on the waiting list in both libraries, the wait may be short in one library and long in the other one.  So having multiple libraries can greatly increase the number and quality of books available to you and shorten the waiting time.  Fairfax County Public Library allows you to borrow the electronic media for 3 weeks, in contrast to the South Jersey Library system which allows you only 2 weeks.  This makes it easier in the event that 2 or more books on hold become available to borrow around the same time.

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Last year, while driving back to New Jersey after visiting my Mom in Florida, I was listening to a talk radio program in which they were discussing audio-books.  They discussed the nuances of how the experience varied depending on whether you read the printed or eBook text compared with listening to its audiobook format.

Advantages of of text books (printed & eBooks):

• Your mind paints the images uninfluenced / not colored by the interpretation that the performer (reader) of an audiobook imparts.
• Generally more available
• Generally less expensive

Advantages of Audiobooks:

• You can listen while doing other things, like walking, running, mowing the grass, painting, gardening, driving.
• With the proper headphones, you can isolate environmental distractions.
• Lighting isn’t required.
• Blind people can enjoy the book.
• The reader can perform the characters by altering his/her voice.  Sometimes there are multiple readers for different characters.  This can vary in quality (like any performance) and you may consider it an advantage or disadvantage, depending on your point of view.

View at Medium.com

I didn’t do anything right after listening to that radio program, but the discussion stuck with me as something I should examine more closely and try out at some point.  I remember having listened to one audiobook in the past and having enjoyed it a lot.

Sometime later after returning to New Jersey I get this email from Amazon regarding benefits that come with my Amazon Prime account.  They decided to offer a taste of their sub-company “Audible“, one of the largest audiobook sources available to their Prime subscribers.  They called this feature  “Audible Channels” .  Basically, this gives you access to a small subset of the huge library of Audible.  However, it is included at no extra charge with “Prime”.  As part of that, they have “Audiobook collections”.  Now this only contains about 50 titles, but they are all good reads.  Enough to try it out and see if you like it, at no cost.  To access this, you download the audible app for your smartphone, tablet. or pc.   One limitation of this service is it requires an internet connection for live streaming. So at home, or wherever I had WiFi, I was fine.  You can use cellular data, but I try to use WiFi when possible since I pay per GB for cellular data.  At first I got around that limitation using a pocket wifi router with a free cellular data account from FreedomPop, but you are limited to 500mb per month with that account.  But, that became a moot point because I was painting rooms in my house, listening to audiobooks, and I was going through the available books on Amazon Channels so fast I realized I would need a new source of books.

I’m sure Amazon offers these “free” books expressly to get you addicted to them so that you will purchase the full audible subscription.   That costs $14.95 per month, which isn’t too bad, until you consider it only includes one audiobook per month.  On the other hand, it does include the ability to download the book so you can listen to if offline.  You also get a 30% discount on any audiobook you purchase from them, but audiobooks are expensive and Amazon makes it difficult to get a price list.  I remember titles costing in the $50 range each.

So, what to do?  I remembered that the local library had some of this available on CDs, but I wanted the convenience of listening to them on my cellphone.  I researched this some more and found out that you needed to use an application called “Overdrive”.  You then go to https://www.overdrive.com and establish an Overdrive account.  You then link it to your library account(s).  Voila!  ¡Es magia!

With overdrive installed to your PC, tablet, or cellphone, the interface is like you are on Amazon.com browsing the huge universe of available eBooks and audiobooks.  As part of your library membership, they are all free to borrow.  And because it is online, you don’t need a trip to the library to get them, nor go back to the library to return them.  You get them for a finite time (one, two, three weeks) and, if you haven’t marked them as “return to library” sooner, they return themselves automatically, so no late fees.

The above is a screenshot of browsing titles on overdrive on a PC.  You can do the same thing on your tablet or smartphone.  You can do an advanced search so you could, for example,  limit the search for audiobooks in Spanish, if you wanted to.  By the way, I found I could listen to books in Spanish, and the occasional word I didn’t know was made up for by the clarity of dictation, intonation, and performance of the person reading the book.

Like the paid audible subscription, you can either stream the content, or download it and listen to if offline.  I routinely download my audiobooks to my cellphone and listen to them offline.  Since Overdrive supplies the link between your library and your electronic media, you have the normal library options.  Some books are available to borrow immediately.  Others, you can put on “hold”.  If you put a book on hold, you are told how many copies the library has and where in the queue you are.  I wanted the “Hidden Figures” audiobook and there were 110 people ahead of me, but they had 13 copies available.  It took a couple of months to get it.  During that time I could check my place in the queue and listen to other books that were either immediately available or had shorter queues.  You can place holds on up to 10 books at a time.  You can also have a “wish list” in which you mark those books you are interested in so you can find them quickly in the future.  You are limited to 5000 titles in your wish list.

I belong to the Vineland Public Library.  But from Overdrive’s point of view, I have access to the South Jersey Library Cooperative.  That is a association of about 100 libraries in South Jersey, greatly increasing the availability of online content.  If that weren’t enough, I have the option of joining other libraries.  Many libraries will allow you to join them for a small fee, even if you don’t live in the town or state in which they are located.  You then add those libraries to your Overdrive account and you can access them as well.

Earlier today on my way to a medical conference I finished Bryan Cranston’s “Life in Parts”.  Later this morning I started listening to “Sex Object, A Memoir” by Jessica Valenti while pulling out weeds in my lawn.  And so on, and so forth …

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