I will be talking about some of the hidden features of Audible that I discovered and how to make the best use of them.
This took me quite a while and lots of in-hand experience as well. I also discovered a few tricks and hacks around this service.
1. The Silver Plan.
Now after browsing through all the membership plans like gold monthly, platinum monthly I stumbled upon one special plan which Audible does not advertise, called the Silver plan. To actually enquire about this plan one must contact customer service directly. You cant even sign up for it without asking for it. This plan costs$14.98 for every two months instead of just one and comes with one audible credit every new billing cycle along with other audible benefits. If you’re an individual who likes audiobooks and likes the experience of using Audible but does not have time to use the credits then this plan might be the best fit for you. It really took me quite a while to learn about this feature.
2. Special Return Policy.
The Audible credits that a user gets are valuable. Sometimes a user might purchase an audiobook title which is worth way more than the monthly price of $14.95 and if they don’t like it then Audible gives the user an option to return the audiobook if the purchase was made in the last 12 months. Users also have the ability to exchange a book as well. To return a book head over to your account details and click “Purchase History”, over there you will see a list of your previous orders. Find the order that contains the book you want to return and click “Return”. If you have reached the return limit don’t worry you can still return the book by contacting the Audible support service. It has also been observed that sometimes users abuse this generous policy of Audible.
3. Narration by the Authors themselves.
Ever wondered what would it be like if the book you are currently reading was narrated to you by the author of that book? Well not to worry cause Audible has got you covered. With over 200,000 audiobook titles it has a lot of audiobooks narrated by the authors themselves. “Why not me” by Mindy Kaling, “On Writing” by Stephen King. to books by the authors themselves as you can understand the tone, the mindset of the character and more details of a scene the way the author intends you to. And also let’s be honest it’s pretty cool to have the author of the book narrate the book to you. Who wouldn’t want that?
4. How to make the best out of Sales?
On multiple occasions like for example Prime Day, Amazon will post special offers for members. To be considered for such offers you need to have an Audible membership for at least two months. Sometimes users can purchase additional credits at a discount. On top of that Amazon offers insane prices on some classic books which go as low as 99 cents as well. There are always good deals coming up and you can easily make the most of them if you regularly check your email. There are also numerous cashback sites that have lots of offers for Audible users as well.
5. More clever ways to save money.
So if you missed a few sales or you want to get even more discounts on Audible then you have to be a bit more clever. This is something that I discovered if you go through the process of canceling your Audible membership but stop when it asks you why you want to cancel it and here’s the catch if you select “it’s too expensive” and continue to the next page, Amazon might offer you discounts on your Audible membership. Do select that if you want the Audible subscription at a cheaper rate. You can even put your account on hold from one to three months if you don’t think it’s worth buying the yearly membership. Subscribers can do it once every 12 months and can still access their library and use credits they have.
6. Don’t do this if you want to save money
With so many generous policies by Audible a lot of users try to abuse them, Some users even try methods that they think will help them save money but instead end up losing their money’s worth. One such method is trying to save credits all year long. So a lot of users try to save or accumulate their credits over a few months but they forget one thing that the credits expire in one year after they are issued. So it’s very important for the users to keep track of their credits and my suggestion would be that if you find that you’re not using those credits at least save them and redeem them for books that you can listen to later because once you redeem a credit for a book in your library then it will be stored in your library forever.
Well to conclude this article and talk again about the worth of this service and whether I think is Audible worth it? In my opinion, the short answer is still yes. Anyone who wishes to listen to audiobooks should at least take the 30-day free trial by Audible and see the service themselves and if you still decide not to go forward with it well look on the brighter side you still get a free audiobook and the free knowledge that comes with it. So be sure to download this service and play around with the settings to get the best possible experience. I would again say that it is very easy to navigate and extremely user friendly. Well to me all of this definitely makes Audible worth a try.
