Am I missing a trick here? Kindle Unlimited V Audible

[SunshineAvenue]

I currently subscribe to Audible at £7.99/month which effectively gets me one book a month at below what I would pay without a subscription or for a paper copy.

Kindle Unlimited is free for the first month and then £7.99/month for unlimited audio books AND kindle books. This sounds like a far better option to me than audible (I prefer reading but like to have an audio book on the go for when out and about).

Am I missing something? Should I just switch to Kindle unlimited and cancel the audible subscription?

Kindle Unlimited has audiobooks? I thought it was literally just for books on the kindle?

You pay £7.99 for one book at a reduced cost? So you still have to pay for the book on top of the £7.99 a month???

I didn't know kindle unlimited has audiobooks? I've been an audible subscriber for about 5 years now-£109 a year for 24 credits.

How do you listen to the kindle unlimited books? Have you a link? I thought you could get a kindle book & then pay another £3-£4 for the audio version

Kindle unlimited books are mostly rubbish and not all of them are available as audiobooks. You really can't compare the two!

You can get audiobooks from the library though, it's free and pretty easy. You just have to wait for the one you want to become available.

From what I can work out a limited number o the kindle unlimited books might include an audio version. Must be a relatively recent thing.

I think the range is smaller, I am not sure how much smaller. Unlimited is also (I think) just a loan system so you only borrow the books/audiobooks so if you cancel your sub you lose them whereas Audible is a purchase scheme.

audiobooks available in unlimited

With Audible you are actually buying the audiobook and it's yours forever (or at least until the internet goes bang or Amazon go bankrupt). Surely with kindle unlimited, you only get to have it for a specified period of time? like a library book/audio download?

Kindle unlimited is basically a subscription library for Kindle books. 10 at a time, return/borrow as often as you like

@WireBrushAndDettolMaam The £7.99 monthly charge gets you one credit which you use to purchase a book. You don't pay more on top of that. Audiobooks are expensive compared to print books as they have much higher costs to produce.

I did a few months of Kindle Unlimited and it really was rubbish. The selection is so limited and you can only borrow ten books at a time (which doesn't last me a work trip for a week).

I have an Audible subscription, but also have a private shopping list on Amazon which I stick all the books I want to read on and then monitor it for price changes. I will get at least one book a week which discounts to 99p or 1.99 from that list - and then you can get the Audible at a big discount too if you want to listen to it.

The £7.99 monthly charge gets you one credit which you use to purchase a book. You don't pay more on top of that

Thanks for clarifying.

My local library uses the Libby app to loan audiobooks free, there is a limited range but still quite a lot there, there is a waiting list for the most popular books but as it is so quick to return a book when you are done these waiting lists move along quite fast. You can borrow 5 books and wait for 5 more - enough to enjoy bit few enough that no-one can hog too many.

I had Unlimited for the past couple of years, as I listen to books on the way to work every day. There are some good collections...mainly detective, crime, a few romance etc. that are good. The rest aren't great at all.
If you like crime / murder then sign up for it for a few months and it'll keep you entertained. You can always go back to Audible if you like.

Ahhh not keen on crime or murder, thanks everyone for replying. It sounds as if it might not be worth the switch. I didn't realise the books were only on loan. I might take the free month and put a note in the diary to cancel. Thought it was too good to be true.

Good tip about the Amazon price list and checking for discounts.

Worth checking the kindle edition and 'adding' audible narration, haven't tried it myself but may be cheaper.

The handmaids tale is 5.99 on kindle with 6.99 to add audible narration, the audiobook is shown as 20.99.

Take the free month and then cancel it straight away, you'll still get the whole month. Don't start it in February as it's a short month (eg if you start on the 5th it will run to the 4th of the next month). You will get another offer of a free month in about 18 months or so (it varies). The Unlimited books are very much of the trashy, been-out-for-years type, which is fine now and then but gets a bit boring. I have an Unlimited wish list, so I just add Unlimited books to that and wait until the next free month comes along to read them.

I also subscribe to Bookbub which sends me a daily email of about 10 or so books of the genres that I like that are free or on special offer. There are some great offers that are very short term, like Eleanor Oliphant for 99p a couple of weeks ago.

Sometimes Google Play has audiobooks cheaper than Amazon too, if you don't mind having a mix of ecosystems. I do Google Reward surveys and use the credit towards audiobooks.

Also, on Audible you can often buy extra credits quite cheaply. And if you cancel your membership (you can reinstate it really easily) they will often offer you something to keep you. Don't cancel your membership if you have unused credits as you will lose them (I may or may not have done this and had to email Audible to reinstate my membership and get them back).

Cancel the free trial as soon as you activate it. Than you won’t forget. You’ll still get the whole month free.

Kindle unlimited doesn't have audio books. What it does have is Voice View Screen Reader in accessibility.
I use it to read to me when I'm busy making dinner or doing another chore. You can't read a book when chopping veg or you might lose a finger.

The Kindle voice is far less robotic than Siri on an iPhone. You can adjust a lot of the settings, such as speed of speech, verbosity, key echo, punctuation level and even raising pitch when identifying capital letters.

It's not exactly Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter but it is very good.

Actually come to think of it, KU has some Audiobooks. I've had a couple and not noticed they had audio attached until I clicked it. I've had KU for years and only a couple of books with narration included.

@Instagrump I thought that VoiceView can be activated on a Fire tablet for any book?

Sorry, yeah what I meant was kindle unlimited books can be read by it. Audible is great but too expensive for me to justify it. Voice view is close enough for me and you get a huge amount of books for the same price as one Audiobook.

Kindle unlimited has tons of great fantasy books on and if you join their book groups on facebook and newsletters etc they giveaway audiobook codes for free occasionally or some do if you send them proof of purchase of the book

The indie authors do I mean not Amazon just to clarify