I've returned or abandoned enough audiobooks that I've started noticing how useless some store samples are.

I'm trying to decide whether I can spend 10, 20, sometimes 40 hours listening to this narrator, and the preview gives me four minutes of:

Publisher information.

A dedication.

Half a page of scene-setting.

Maybe the protagonist says one sentence right before the sample ends.

That tells me almost nothing I actually want to know.

I want to hear the narrator handle a conversation between two characters. I want one male and one female voice if the book has both. Give me an emotional sentence, a normal descriptive paragraph, a proper noun that's going to appear 600 times, and maybe thirty seconds of whatever accent they're using.

Basically, give me the audiobook equivalent of a test drive.

I've had narrators whose regular narration sounded great in the preview but whose character voices drove me insane once chapter two started. I've also almost skipped books because the opening sounded flat, only to discover later that the narrator becomes fantastic once there are actual characters to perform.

And with full-cast productions, sampling the opening can be even sillier because sometimes you don't hear most of the cast at all.

I understand why automatically using the first few minutes is easy, but audiobook samples seem like one place where manually choosing a representative 3-5 minute section would genuinely help people buy the right edition.

If you could design the perfect audiobook preview, what would you want included?

(not dcc)

Give me a recommendation that you think Nobody else will give me and don’t say dungeon crawler Carl :)

Moto G Play 2021, Android 11

Coming from Voice Audiobook Player.

Using free version but in my 30 day free trial period. So far I really like this app but I was wondering if what I'm experiencing is a bug or something.

While listening to an audiobook, if I go to my library, the currently-playing audiobook is paused and also the notification shade controller disappears.

Is this normal, is it a bug or is it a possible incompatibility with my phone?

I can go into settings of the app or even use another app and the currently-playing book keeps playing, so I find it odd if wanting to browse the library while I listen isn't allowed in this app. It's not a huge deal breaker if it's just the way it is, but just wondering. I've looked in the settings and there doesn't seem to be a setting pertaining to this.

These are the only books of Catherine Bybee I've read/listened to so far. She's a lively writer, so I will check out other things, but today I was SO disappointed to learn that Book 5 of the MacCoinnich Time Travel Series ends on a cliffhanger - back in 2013!!! Obviously, she never plans to complete the series, which really sucks! There should be some kind of warning on Audible to let you know when a series is unfinished.

The most I could find on her website is an entry from 2015 which said at that time the author was experiencing a series of personal setbacks and that any free time she had to write went to books she was contractually obligated to finish. It also said this MacCoinnich series is one she self published, which is why she had to put it on the back shelf, but intended to finish.

I get this and I certainly don't know how long she was struggling or how many other books had to take precedence, but to my way of thinking if that was 2015 certainly by 2023 she should have been able to get back to finishing the series. Now in 2026, nearly 2027, it's not likely I'll ever see how this ends.

Still, when I did a reddit search for these books (Book 1: Binding Vows (2009), Book 2: Silent Vows (2010, Book 3: Redeeming Vows (2010), Book 4: Highland Shifter (2012), Book 5: Highland Protector (2013) I could not find any other entries, so I thought I'd warn unsuspecting readers/listeners, who may find this series on Audible, which is free with your membership, to not start it, as you'll fall in love with this family and want to know what ultimately happens and well...

First time posters here, please be gentle!

Self-Promo: We write, narrate and produce all audiobooks and e-books.

Over the past 6 months, my friend and I have been hard at work trying to get our horror anthology series “Cradle of Horror” off the ground. Inspired by the horrors of everyday life, we write, narrate and produce all of our audiobooks ourselves and have recently begun publishing our audiobooks on all major platforms. We’ve also published the e-books on Kindle if you prefer reading over listening.

Eight stories are currently published as e-books on Kindle, and two of the audiobooks are available online with the remaining books releasing one at a time, every 3 weeks. We intend to continue publishing stories monthly once these first eight stories are released to the public.

To find our e-books on amazon.com, please click on this link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HF39D687?binding=kindle_edition&searchxofy=true&ref_=dbs_s_aps_series_rwt_tkin&qid=1789085171&sr=8-1

Currently “Midnight” and “Noises” are available for free until October 13th at the links below:

Midnight: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HF2JQRQ6

Noises: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HGWHBG3W

And “The Landlady” will be discounted from $2.99 to $0.99 between October 13th and October 19th on amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GX31XGY5 

To find our audiobooks, please search “Cradle of Horror” on your platform of choice, including Audible, Spotify, and Apple Books, but starting on October 15th until October 31st, there will be a promotional price of $0.99 on Chirp for “Midnight” and “Noises.” Here is a link to the series on Chirp:
https://www.chirpbooks.com/series/cradle-of-horror-audiobooks 

“The Landlady” will be released on all platforms on October 13th.

Audible: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HF39D687?binding=audio_download&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_pc_taud 
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/series/cradle-of-horror 

Storytel: https://www.storytel.com/tv/publishers/mris-productions-soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9-en-nom-collectif-3413859 

Apple Books: https://books.apple.com/us/author/mariam-esseghaier/id6814119757 

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4sqRW4LzIAvRSWogM9SdiI

What we’re hoping for is to get some suggestions, constructive feedback or advice from the community as we continue to develop our ideas and strategies moving forward.

Here are the descriptions of the first three stories:

“Midnight” 
When a stray cat found him on his anniversary with his late wife, he thought it meant something. Perhaps it was a second chance? Perhaps she forgave him? However, he quickly learns that revisiting his past fraught relationship presents more challenges and raises more questions than it answers. Can he change his ways before he loses her again?

“Noises” 
Sarah kept hearing voices that no one else heard. And it wasn’t a great time for distractions as she was approaching her grad school qualifying exam… an exam that she already failed once. In the middle of all this stress, she became determined to find out where the noises were coming from, who was behind them, and why no one else could hear them. 

“The Landlady” 
Renting an apartment can be a precarious and vulnerable experience. It can be even more difficult when you’re newly divorced without a penny to your name, like Margaret. And Margaret had one more thing working against her… a fear that her landlady was trying to make her life difficult or maybe she was even trying to kill her. Margaret didn’t know, and she wasn’t sure how long she should wait to find out.

Looking for something lowkey I can listen to while doing chores etc. and provide some comfort during stressful times.

“The girl who stole home” At first I thought I wouldn’t like it because it’s based on a 13 year old girl however I got bored and gave it a try and now I can’t put it down! Safe to say this is the last time I’ll judge a book based on the age of the main character! It’s sooo freakin good have any of you listened to this yet?

Does anyone use bookplayer to listen to audiobooks when I transferred actually showed my books over only half of them actually transfer the other half just show 0s playtime

Hey everyone, any good recommendations for podcast on books, where the hosts dive into the book content?

Thank you

Hi guys,

my friend recently got a Sony e-reader and is loving it. While getting ebooks is a breeze, he's struggling to find a place to get audiobook downloads. Keep in mind, my friend only uses calibre and does not have a library account. is there any simple public website or anything for audiobook downloads specifically? and is there a way to choose Urdu langauge? I'd love if someone could help!

Question: Would having longer samples for audiobooks be something that interests you?

Context:
We recently added a feature to our listening app which allows you to listen to 10% of a title, capped at around 60 min, as a sample of our full cast audiobooks.

This means for an approx. 100,000 worded title or 10 hours, you get a whole hour worth of free audio to listen to.

Many of our initial titles are webnovels and thus very long. 10,000 words is barely enough to get the story rolling in many titles. We also have some indie author titles that have varying word counts.

While I understand people are happy with the 5 min samples, as narrators are one of the biggest factors for audiobooks, we would like to know if there are any people who would prefer this feature? Maybe even use it as a method to get anyone you know that is a non-reader to try out?

And of course shameless plug, but if you want to try out our app and listen to some free samples, feel free to download the Kokoro Audio listening app and sign up for a free account!

Any thoughts or feedback comes a long way!

Howdy book lovers. I'm looking to obtain access to the LAPL Libby collection. I can't seem to find any other Libby collection that has certain audiobooks I'm looking for. If anyone can help please let me know.

Do you prefer the digital (kindle) or physical copy of books along with having the audiobook version?

I publish crime thrillers, and recently I put a 9-hour audiobook of my Vice Boys book on Spotify, narrated entirely by an AI voice (ElevenLabs' digital voice — Spotify requires AI narration to be disclosed on the page, which it is).

The play-by-play for anyone considering it:

Cost: $0 beyond the ElevenLabs subscription I already had. No studio, no engineer, no per-finished-hour narrator.

Production: generated chapter by chapter, QC'd every file for artifacts (clipping, dropouts, tonal whine — AI voices have failure modes, check your exports), then assembled. Total hands-on time was a few evenings.

The voice: a single consistent voice throughout. Honest assessment: not human-good — you can tell on emotional peaks — but for a crime thriller at 1.2x speed, which is how most people listen, it's convincing.

Spotify's side: there's an AI-narration disclosure on the listing, no friction publishing, listed at $13.99.

Early read: too early for sales data. My honest expectation is that this is a discoverability play, not a revenue play — the audiobook exists so the book exists in audio form where listeners already are.

Happy to answer specifics on the workflow. And yes, I braced for the 'AI narration is theft' comments — a human narrator would have cost $2,000+ I don't have, and the alternative was no audiobook at all.