Ways to Listen to a Book

I buy most of my books through Amazon for reading on my iPad and for listening on my iPhone but I’ve run into situations where a particular title is unavailable from them.

It doesn’t happen often but some publishers refuse to produce electronic formats for their books and others just don’t like Amazon or Audible. That poses a problem for me since I rarely carry around a physical book to read since I dont see how I can ‘read’ a physical book while I’m driving or running a mile. So instead of just not reading the book, I’ve found a variety of methods to listen to ebooks while I’m exercising or driving but in order for things to work out there has to be some form of electronic version of the title. Here are the Options I’ve found so far…

• Audible – this is the easiest and most straightforward method of listening to a book and there is a large selection of titles available.
• Kindle/Whispersync – Amazon’s Kindle often offers a whispersync option that lets you buy the audiobook when you get the ebook. This lets you listen and keep track of the story electronically at the same time and actually is my preferred method.
• Audio CD/DVD – I haven’t done this in a while but if you can’t get the book on Audible or through the Kindle store, it may still be available on CD. I’ve found that older titles might be better available in this format.
• iBooks/Siri – Apple’s iBook store has often had selections that I couldn’t find in the Kindle store. Often if there’s no audio component to the iBook, you can use Siri to read it to you. I’ve found that the swipe gesture to ask Siri to read what’s on the screen works pretty well with iBooks but not so well with the Kindle app. Right now, I’m listening to Raymond Feist’s Shadow of a Dark Queen in this fashion since I couldn’t get it through Audible.
• YouTube – there are some books that have been read into YouTube and are available for listening. These tend to be older titles and those in the public domain. I listened to Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny in this fashion and I didn’t really like it. YouTube requires a constant internet connection to stream the book and you can’t do anything else on your device while it’s playing unless you pay for a special YouTube account.
• Soundcloud – similar to YouTube, there are some books that have been read into Soundcloud and are made available. I haven’t listened to a full book in this manner but samples I’ve heard seem to work just fine.

I’m sure there are other methods of listening to a book on you’re phone or iPad but these are the options I’ve used in the past. If you know of any other possibilities, please let me know as I’ve had to be creative with these as you can see.

Right now, I’m listening to Shadow of a Dark Queen through iBooks and Siri while it is offered in Europe as a fully produced audiobook (see the image above). For some legal reason the publisher decided not to allow the audiobook to be sold in America so I’m left to figure out this alternate method. Of course listening to a book in an non-standard method increases my likelihood of not enjoying the book as much as I could have, as seen in my reading of Lord of Light, but at least I got to listen to the book.

Books – Ways to Listen to a Book