By John J. Joex
I have been reviewing Science Fiction and Fantasy audio books in this column for over a year now (you can find a list of the books I have reviewed at this link) and when I started I briefly touched on the sources for where you can locate these books. Since that time, the market has expanded some so it’s worth taking a look back at these audio book sellers and see what they have to offer. Following are the ones that I have turned to multiple times to find science fiction and fantasy audio books:
Audible.com
Pricing – Excellent
Selection – Excellent
Format – Audible.com Proprietary .aa Format (not compatible with all devices)
This online company (owned by Amazon.com) is currently the leading provider of audio books from what I can tell. They have a huge inventory of books that you can download either as part of a subscription service (starting at $14.95 for one book per month) or buy a la carte. When I first started using Audible.com, there selection was okay, but the number of genre titles they have available has since exploded. Rarely now can I not find a title I happen to be searching for whether it’s a science fiction classic or a more recent work (through frustratingly still no unabridged Lord of the Rings). My biggest issue with Audible.com is the proprietary format of their audio files. You aren’t downloading an MP3 file from these guys, it’s their own .aa format and it’s not compatible with all devices. I recently bought (shameless affiliate plug to follow) a Sony Walkman MP3 player that I absolutely love and that was a bargain for its price (about $70 at Amazon) and I just assumed Audible’s .aa files would work with a product from a brand like Sony. But I was wrong there and I can’t play the files on my new player. I know there are ways to convert these to MP3 files, but who wants to go through that extra hassle? Also, Audible tends to put their books on one or two very large files which makes them somewhat unmanageable if trying to search for particular places in the books. If you can deal with the nuisance of the file sizes and proprietary formats, though, Audible.com is a great place to find many, many science fiction and fantasy titles (along with many other genres). If you have their basic subscription, then you pay $14.95 for one book per month (and for the first few months you get an even better deal than that). Then you can also buy a la carte at discounted prices if you want additional titles (or change your subscription to get more books per month). And they regularly run deals for subscribers, sometimes offering select titles for as little as five bucks. If you are not a subscriber, you can still buy books from Audible, just at closer to full retail price. So you may get some headaches because of the file format they use, but you can find plenty of books at very reasonable prices.
eMusic.com
Pricing – Excellent
Selection – Good
Format – MP3
eMusic.com was the first audio book service that I used when I originally decided to start listening to books on my commute and they are a decent alternative to Audible.com, though they have their own drawbacks. As far as pricing goes they are cheaper, with their subscription service starting at $10 for one book per month (with the first month or so being free or cheaper depending on their current deal). And their download files are the preferred MP3 format and broken into smaller chunks for easy maneuvering through the book. Their selection is good, though not nearly as expansive as Audible.com. When I recently clicked through to browse their science fiction and fantasy selections, the site indicated they had over 1,300 titles. Quite a lot, but Audible boasts well over 4,000 titles. And I’m pretty sure that everything eMusic.com has Audible has, but not necessarily the other way around. But the biggest drawback of eMusic is that they are subscription only, not allowing you to buy a la carte. Even if you are a subscriber and want to buy an additional title one month, your only option is to upgrade (and I think the most you can do is three books per month). In addition, they don’t rollover credits. So if you forget to go in and download one month, you paid your subscription fee and got nothing. This probably won’t be too much of a problem for audio book buyers (I had it happen to me more than a couple of times when I used their music service, though), but it’s still a bit of a nuisance. In any case, eMusic is the least expensive option (apart from Librivox below) and they do have a wide range of titles as well as a universally compatible file format.
BooksFree.com
Pricing – Okay
Selection – Good
Format – CD and CD MP3
This is a Netflix style service that allows you to rent audio books on CD (you can also rent print books as well). For audio books, the service starts at $22.49 per month which can be a bit pricey unless you will be able to go through three or four books per month. The service has a decent but not great selection of Science Fiction and Fantasy titles, fewer than either Audible.com and maybe about the same as Emusic.com. Booksfree.com also offers an A la carte rental option that starts at $13.99. When I tried them out about a year ago, they turned around the books pretty quickly. Not quite Netflix quick, but not too far off either.
Barnes and Noble
Pricing – Okay
Selection – Good
Format – CD and CD MP3
While making the move from cassette tape to CD helped audio books increase their sales over the past decade or so, I would say that CDs are now on their way out. Downloads look to replace those disks, so these days you find fewer and fewer options at sellers like Barnes and Noble (Amazon has almost none because they direct people to their Audible.com service). On top of that, CD audio books tend to be rather pricey (the Dune audio CD retails for $60 and some books can be even higher than that). There are still quite a number of titles to choose from on CD or as CD MP3s, but it looks like many of the newer releases are going to download only. You’re probably better off buying these used from Barnes and Noble or scouring your local used bookstore for what they have available.
Librivox.org
Pricing – Free
Selection – Limited
Format – MP3
Librivox.org is the Project Guttenberg of audio books. This organization produces audio recordings of works in the public domain and makes them available for free download. All of the narration is done by volunteers, so the quality can be hit or miss. I have listened to several Librivox recordings and found one that was near professional quality (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, see my review at this link) while others varied widely because of the different narrators reading each chapter. But hey, they’re free and a great way to work your way through some science fiction classics like the works of H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Arthur Conan Doyle, and more. They even have works going into the mid-20th century (mostly short stories from the sci fi pulps) by authors such as Philip K. Dick, Lester del, James Blish, Ben Bova and others. Librivox’s selection of science fiction and fantasy titles is definitely limited, but it continues to grow all the time as volunteers lend their voices to these works from years past. This is definitely a good place to get started with audio books and to go back and explore some classic works from the genre.
I should also mention Audio Realms which has produced audio versions of works by authors such as H.P. Lovecraft (a quite excellent series I might add), Edger Rice Burroughs, Michael Moorcock, and other genre writers. They have a limited selection but produce first-rate quality productions and are worth checking out. You can buy their books on CD, CD MP3 or as downloads with the latter usually in the $10 range. Also, you can check out your local library to see what they have available. That’s actually where I got started with audio books and found they had a decent selection of sci fi classics (including the first four Dune books). And some libraries allow you to “check out” MP3 downloads, though I have not tried this so I’m not quite certain how it works.
Find More Reviews of Science Fiction and Fantasy Audio Books at Audiobook Jukebox
