Maximizing Your Audible Account

I’m a major book junkie. I’ve loved reading ever since I learned how to read. I remember as early as first grade staying up regularly until 1am reading quietly in my bed. However, I’ve found that as a mother it’s much more difficult to justify snuggling up in a chair all day with a book – for some reason my kids seem to require a bit more attention than that.  I missed the chance to expand my horizons without leaving my home, but couldn’t justify letting my house become a disaster and my kids run wild while I kept my nose stuck in a book.  

Luckily, I found a wonderful compromise – Audible.  With Audible I can enjoy fantastic audiobooks and still have my escape to other worlds while my hands and eyes can be busily occupied with laundry, dishes, cooking – or any of the other tasks of motherhood.  My husband is a similiar bibliophile but also found his reading taking a backseat. However, with audiobooks he’s been able to turn a monotonous commute into a small escape.  My kids have also really gotten into listening to books, especially at bedtime.  We have Amazon Echo Dots in each of their rooms and they are able to enjoy many wonderful books this way – although it sometimes tends to keep them up later than I would like.  I guess they must be like me after all 😉  To say that we are Audible fans in our household is an understatement – we LOVE Audible around here!

Anyways, over the years I’ve found lots of ways to get the most out of my Audible subscription.  I’ve built up a library of 557 books so far and have done it for surprisingly cheap.  I thought these tips and tricks might be useful to some of my readers, so here we go!

1. Spring for the Platinum Annual Membership. I know this suggestion might not make sense for everyone but hear me out. Audible has a subscription service – you pay a certain amount of money to get a certain number of audio books on a monthly or yearly basis.  You can sign up to get one or two books a month and either pay for that many books for a year or per month.  The plans range from $14.95/month (for one book credit each month) to $229.50/year.  The platinum membership costs the most all at once, but it costs $5.39 less per book credit than the basic monthly plan.  In 16 months you would have paid the same amount going with a monthly plan but you would have 8 more books with a platinum plan than with the gold plan.  I think this is the hardest part to swallow is that large charge all at once, but I’ll give you some tricks for making that very worthwhile in my next few tips.  Whatever you decide, a membership is definitely the key to getting the most out of Audible but I’d highly recommend the Platinum membership.
2. Share with a friend.  This is the trickiest tip to do properly, but it can really make that Platinum account make sense.  My husband and I actually have two separate audible accounts, even though we only have one membership.  What we do is have the membership in my name and whenever Eric wants a book that he doesn’t think I’d be interested in having in my library he purchases it on my account as a gift for himself.  He is then emailed a link that he can click on to add that book to his account.  So there are a few ways you could use this.  If you have a spouse, sibling or friend that you’re close enough with to share your Amazon password (and accompanying access to your credit card for purchases on Amazon/Audible) then you can split the cost and share that password.  I’ve also purchased books as gifts for siblings and friends and then had them send me money for it in return.  They get the book at the membership rate and I can more easily justify my Platinum membership 🙂
3. Never use a credit to get a book that’s less than $9.50.  Ok, do I need to spell this one out for you?  If you credits are only $9.56 each please don’t use a credit to buy a book that you can get for less than that!  As a member you get discounts on the regular prices of books so make sure that you take advantage of those discounts!  Just be careful at checkout to uncheck the box for using a credit because if you have credits that will be the default value!  I’ll tell you later how I get those books for free a lot of the time 🙂
4. Sign up for Daily Deal emails. Every day Audible discounts a book to $4.95 or less and emails anyone on their list to let them know what the Deal of the Day is.  I’ve gotten LOTS of great books this way!  If you were to try to buy most of these books on CDs it would cost you $30+ so to get the books for less than $5 is pretty awesome.  I probably only find a book that I’m interested in a couple times a month, but it’s well worth following for those couple times a month!
5. Take advantage of coupon deals.  Frequently Audible will send their members “Buy 4 books get $10 credit” – this probably happens like twice a year.  I *always* take advantage of this!  If you have credits and a wish list it’s easy to pick out your next 4 reads and get a $10 credit.  I then use that credit to buy a few books that are either priced low or on sale.  It doesn’t get any better than free books!
6. Maintain a Wish List. One of the greatest features about Audible is that if you keep your wish list filled with all the titles that you would like to get if one of them goes on sale they will highlight those books in their emails to you.  It also makes it easy when you’re looking for your next read to go to your wish list and find something queued up 🙂
7. Browse 3-for-2 sales, $4.95 sales, etc.  Probably about once a month Audible will have a sale of “3 books for 2 credits” or “any of these books for $4.95”.  I always browse these and have found some of my favorite books this way and stretch my credits even farther!  There’s a strong possibility that last month I spent over $90 and bought 15 new books for my kids – but at $4 per title how could I pass it up??  I was able to justify it since I’ll submit the receipts to my kid’s homeschooling charter school 😉
8. Check for WhisperSync titles. Seriously, even without a membership this is one of the greatest deals ever.  Sometimes the Kindle book will be free but because you “bought” it you’ll be able to get the audiobook for super cheap.  I’d recommend checking out this post on SlickDeals where you’ll find a bunch of books that you can get the Kindle edition for free and then buy the Audible edition for a couple dollars!  You can also check out this page on Amazon to find out what the audio upgrades cost for Kindle books you already own!
9. Prime Shipping Credits.  To go along with the WhisperSync titles – if you have a Prime membership you will often be given the option at checkout to forego your 2 day shipping and instead be given a $1 credit that can be used on Kindle books.  I almost always will take that offer, then I take those Kindle credits and buy WhisperSync books that I want for free!  That makes the cheap audio addition an even better deal 😉
10. Holiday Gift Books and Audible Originals.  Every month Audible has a selection of free books for members!  You can pick up to two of them and I’ve gotten some really fun listens that way.  Occasionally Audible will also give away books for free as gifts for different holidays.  I’ve gotten new books for 4th of July, Christmas, Valentine’s Day and other holidays.  They’re specific titles that might not be something that I would have chosen myself, but it’s been a great way to get me out of my comfort zone and reading something new – and you can’t beat free!

So there are my tips and tricks to get the most out of your Audible membership. If you’ve signed up now and need a good listen you should check out my book recommendations list – I made it specifically from my Audible listens that I’ve enjoyed.  Happy listening!