Listen To DRAGONTIARNA Free On Audible
I am pleased to report that if you are an Audible member, you can no listen to DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS & THIEVES for free!
Here’s how it works. I’m afraid the explanation is somewhat long.
For a very long time, Audible had only one tier of membership. You got your monthly credit (or 2 or 3 monthly credits if you coughed up for more), and then you used your credit to buy an audiobook. You could still buy audiobooks at list price off Audible, but most people don’t do that. Like, for THE GHOSTS OMNIBUS ONE, 86% of its lifetime sales have come from credits, and the rest from people buying retail. This was the dominant model for many years.
But! Things are changing. Audiobook subscription streaming (think Netflix but for audiobooks) is becoming a growing model – companies like Scribd and Storytel are already doing it. Rumors abound that Spotify and Apple are planning to do an audiobook streaming service. Amazon, which owns Audible, is Very Worried about this, since Audible is set up for credits and retail sales, not streaming. So I expect Audible will start moving towards more streaming subscriptions in the future.
But here and now, this is why you can listen to DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS & THIEVES for free if you’re an Audible member. As part of the move towards streaming, Audible now has two tiers of membership:
-Audible Plus, which is like $8 a month, and lets you listen to anything in the official Audible Plus library. The Audible Plus library has a bunch of audiobooks, but also podcasts to compete with Spotify.
-Audible Premium Plus, which is $15 a month, and works like the traditional Audible credit system, but you still listen to anything in the Audible Plus library without spending a credit.
That is a pretty good deal for listeners. I have no idea whether it will be good for writers or not. I suspect it will be like most things in life – some people will win, some will lose, and some won’t even notice that anything is happening. 🙂
Anyway, that was a long explanation, wasn’t it? The long and the short of it is that DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS & THIEVES will be in the Audible Plus library for the next two years, and if you’re either an Audible Plus or an Audible Premium Plus member, you can listen to it for free today!
-JM