And if you’re wondering, you can also gift an Audible subscription. If you’re a fan of romance and love stories, Audible’s Escape membership is slightly more affordable at $12.95 a month ($6.95 if you’re an Audible member) and gives you unlimited access to favorites in the genre. Subsequently, you get those three options each month. During those 30 days, you get an audiobook and two Audible Originals audiobooks for free - which is one way to listen to books online for free before settling into the medium. Getting started: An Audible trial membership gives you 30 days free to try it out, after which the subscription costs $14.95 each month. In 2008, the Library of Congress credited that recording with “launching the audiobook industry in the United States.” Related Their first release - a collection of poems by Dylan Thomas - was narrated by the author. In 1952, Caedmon Records became the first company dedicated to selling spoken word records to the public, according to NPR. Talking books first emerged in 1932 when the American Foundation for the Blind began creating books on vinyl records for war-blinded soldiers and blind civilians who couldn’t read braille. “Such books would be listened to where now none are read.” Edison likely couldn’t have predicted how popular the medium would become: Deloitte predicts the global audiobook market will grow to $3.5 billion in 2020 (a 25 percent increase) - that’s on top of APA’s record growth claims. “The advantages of such books over those printed are too readily seen to need mention,” he wrote in the North American View. Shopping The most purchased books we covered this holiday season How do audiobooks work: a brief historyĪfter Thomas Edison created the first spoken word phonograph record in 1877, he predicted technology might one day allow books to be listened to “with great profit and amusement by the lady or gentleman whose eyes and hands may be otherwise employed.”

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