My Audible Experience
Last updated: Dec 21, 2015
When I started at D2L, our new VP of Marketing handed out a sales book to us all called The Challenger Sale. Nothing says read me like a book I have been given and told to read about a subject I have no interest in… Needless to say it didn’t move from my desk. Shame on me… The next book he suggested to everyone was Behind the Cloud, by Marc Benioff which chronicles how he started Salesforce.com and turned it into one of the most successful companies of the Internet age. Again I wasn’t jumping at the chance to read it. However, for a while I had been seeing ads on youtube videos for a service called Audible (an Amazon company) which provides high quality audio books. Even better, the first book is free when you sign up with no commitment to use it further. I figured this was a good time to give it a try.
I had tried downloading audio files for the biography Steve Jobs by Walter Issacson. I had received the book as a gift and took it with me to Europe to read on the bus but I got about 150 pages into the 656 pages. To get to that 150 pages I probably spent 5 hours over 4 weeks. Slow, right? These audio files however didn’t allow me to keep my place. So I either had to finish a whole chapter or find my spot again later, not easy. This issue was taken care of by the Audible app. Once you download the audio files it always remembers where you have stopped so you can continue later. And because you download the whole book you can use the app even if you don’t have a data connection!
When I first looked at using Audible I was still using a BlackBerry and wasn’t sure if the app would work. However, because they worked with Android apps it worked fairly well outside of a little lag when it first starts. But the overall playback was perfect, you can even slow down or speed up the audio (I chose to go with 1.25x regular speed). Speeding it up a little and still felt natural but also meant I completed books slightly faster. The other great thing about having it on my phone is I could connect it to my car through Bluetooth and listen in my car when I drive to work. I could also listen to it when I walked into work since I had about 20 minutes of walking to and from my car each day. When I switched from my BlackBerry to an Android the Audible experience got an upgrade. Now I can start and stop my book from the notification bar, I don’t even have to go into the Audible app directly.
I download my first book in January and thought I would just use it for the first free month. When I went to cancel they kept asking if I was sure and eventually gave me a discount for the next 3 months, so I suggest after you use your first month you do something similar. For me it cut about $5 each month, for a saving of about $15 (or a full months subscription). So then I had 3 more months and 3 more books.
Since January I have finished 11 books, I know for a fact that I have never finished that many books in 1 year let alone 10 months… EVER! In total I have listened now for a total of 4 days, 3 hours and 46 minutes. Way more efficient than reading these books myself.
The books I have listened to have been focused mainly on businesses or business people, business concepts and of course golf.
Audible Business Books
Behind the Cloud
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Steve Jobs
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Delivering Happiness
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Multipliers
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The Everything Store
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The Challenger Sale
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How Google Works
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Rule the Room
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Audible Golf Books
The Big Miss
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Who’s Your Caddie
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Putting Our of Your Mind
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Zen Putting
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Other Books
An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth
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Outlier: The story of success
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Overall I have been very happy with my Audible experience and would recommend it to anyone. Although the on-going monthly fees can seem a little high at times there are constantly deals that you can take advantage of for cheaper credits or cheap books.
If you are interested in trying Audible out for yourself click the banner below.
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