Amazon has started setting up a number of great deals for the audiobook companions to ebooks purchased at Amazon and any book you have previously published that gets linked will qualify. Many of the choices are $3.95 or less (which is a huge bargain compared to the cost for most audiobooks - this will mean you can often buy the ebook and the audiobook for less than the cost of the audiobook alone). Since this is a joint Amazon/Audible deal, you won't have to have any type of paid membership at Audible either (note that I can't check for geographic restrictions on this, but assume there may be some, due to publisher arrangements in various countries). To kick things off, they have set up a number of FREE companion selections for some of the free public domain classics. Even if the formatting is off on the ebook, these audiobooks are professional performances and you'll want to add at least a few of them to your account.To add these to your account, first "buy" the free ebook at Amazon, then click thru to the Audible listing and add that selection to your cart. Make sure that you uncheck the box to use a credit, if you do have a paid membership, then click on Update. Once you are sure that you don't have the box checked and the price is still showing as free, click to complete your order (you'll have to log in and confirm; on the confirmation page, you can double check that no credits are going to be used). Once my order was completed, I was dumped into a page wanting me to install software - if you've used Audible in the past, just ignore that page and go to your library to download or send to your Kindle, as you have always done. You can get that message to go away forever by turning off Software Verification under Account Details.
This is a list of the ones that have been discovered so far, including the 27 titles on Amazon's official list:
Inexpensive ebooks with free audiobooks:
| eBook at Amazon | Free Companion Audiobook |
|---|---|
| Siddhartha [with Biographical Introduction] ($1.75), by Herman Hesse and Hilda Rosner (Translator) | narration by David Cross |
| Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad ($1.42) | narration by Kenneth Branagh |
| Pride and Prejudice, Annotated, by Jane Austen ($6.99; a no longer free version is also linked to the free Audible edition) | narration by Lindsay Duncan |
31 comments:
I don't understand how to access the free audible version. When I downloaded the book Tess and then went to the Audible page, it wants to charge $25. There don't seem to be any instructions in the Help on Amazon's site
This is awesome! Thanks for sharing! :)
DeAnna Schultz
Just follow the steps above (ignore what it wants to charge on the product page).
1) buy the book at Amazon
2) go to the audible page and put the related book in your cart
3) if you have a subscription, click to uncheck the "use credit" box and click update
4) you should now see a $0.00 total - click to checkout (log in, if prompted)
5) On the confirmation page, just be sure your total is $0.00 and that you are not using any credits. If all is well, click to confirm. The next page (if not the annoying software download page) will prompt you to send the audiobooks to your Kindle
BTW, it appears that Amazon is fixing both the problem of the price being shown and the credit used by default on these - the last one I bought shows a 'special price' of zero and the Use Credit box was not checked by default.
I figured out it wasn't working because I hadn't turned on Whispersync. Now it's working. Thanks!
Thank you for putting this list together. I'm excited to get all of them! FYI - your list above is missing Tale of Two Cities, but I found it from the link you provided to the Amazon list.
I had to make sure I was signing into Audible with the same email and password that I use for Amazon.
I think you're missing Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities":
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004EHZXVQ/
Although now that I have it in my library it's not actually showing me that the associated audiobook is still free. It's still in the list of 27 though.
LOL! I knew I was missing one, somewhere - I already owned this one, so grabbed the audiobook first to test out how it worked, then accidentally skipped it when I put together the post.
This is great!!! Thanks for sharing.
Nice and easy....Now when you "buy" the free book, the thank you screen has the button to purchase the audiobook.
I now see that when I go to the Amazon product pages for Kindle books that I already own, there is a box that says that I have the option of buying the Audible version for a discounted price. It only appears when there is an Audible version that is set up for Whispersync for that book, of course. And the prices vary--but they are still much less than the Audible book would have been otherwise.
Thanks for posting this--I got all but three of them.
Thank you for sharing this great deal!
Thank you so very much for posting these!!
Thanks very much! What a treasure trove! I picked up almost all of them. I already owned several of the classic books so I didn't get a direct link to the free audiobook. To fix that, I searched for the audiobook of the same name on Audible.com, picked the free one, and was able to buy for free successfully. I did have to switch to using my Amazon login on Audible.com so the ebook and audiobook are on the same account. The discount (free) wasn't available otherwise. I went back to the other free audiobooks from your post the day before and was able to grab most of them under my Amazon login on Audible. I think at least one was whispersync enabled; I'd already grabbed the free ebooks where possible. Thanks again! This sort of fun surprize is why this is my favorite Kindle blog.
I am using Kindle for Mac on my Macintosh, so my comments may not apply to folks who are using Kindle machines. But I wanted to let people know that Amazon is only offering me the Audible recordings as free when I have the Kindle for Mac app running. Otherwise, they want to charge me variable amounts for them. But when I have the app running, ALL of the recordings mentioned above were completely free. So if you are seeing prices on them, make sure your Kindle app is running before you pay any money for them.
AmazonDoc - try using the web pages, making sure you are logged into both. Buy the book first, then refresh the page for the audiobook (it looks to the related Amazon account to give you the price). Once in the cart, you have to sign in, so the prices there should always be correct.
You do have to have a LINKED account in the two stores (using the same email address), in order to get these free audiobooks.
Debbie - I'm glad you were able to pick these up. I think one of these was why my mom decided to start listening to audiobooks (although it was one she originally received free from Tantor).
I know this was a lot of work. Thank you for doing this! (and for all your other posts too)
I "purchased" one of the books previously, but when I tried to get the audible version, I was unable to get it for free. Any ideas how to go about doing that? I tried the methods noted by the posters above, but Audible still wants to charge me nearly $20 for it. Thanks for the help, all the work you put into the blog, and for the information you provide. My Kindle is much fatter thanks to your blog, LOL.
THANKS!! I just got 19 titles. I love listening to audiobooks while I knit and sew. BTW, I have Audible lite which is $9.95 a year. I don't get any credits, but can take advantage of sales and special deals like this one. So far this week, I've gotten almost 30 audiobooks for FREE with all the promotions going on related to the new Kindles.
Just a quick note that any of the paid books you may have borrowed from the library (possibly also ones loaned to you) seem to qualify for the audible discount even if you don't 'own' the book. Just click the amazon title and follow the link to buy the audible version and you'll see that you're offered the discounted price.
From the first day I signed on to receive your daily newsletter, I have benefited in so many ways. This list, for example! Thank you so much for this terrific service. -Dix
An additional observation --
A couple of times now, I have had to hit refresh/reload on whatever web page I was on (it's happened on both Audible and Amazon) before I was offered the free deal -- so if anyone is having trouble getting that $0.00 to show up, simply refreshing the page might be an easy fix for you.
YES, you CAN get this Audible.com deal even for free titles that you've already 'purchased'.
Simply go to your Kindle Account, search for the free book's title, make sure it's the same free edition (check that the ASIN and price matches!), then delete the book from your Kindle account. Next, repurchase the book.
When you repurchase, you'll be prompted to buy the Audible version... for $0.00.
YES, you CAN get this Audible.com deal for free titles that you've already 'purchased'. But you have to work around a bug in the Amazon system to do so. Here's how:
Simply go to your Kindle Account, search for the free classic book's title, make sure it's the same free edition in case you bought multiple editions of that classic (check that the ASIN and price matches!), then delete the book from your Kindle account. Next, repurchase the book.
When you repurchase, you'll be prompted to buy the Audible version...
...For $0.00.
The Time Traveler's Wife audio book is FREE at the moment.
Thank you!
The Jane Eyre Audiobook is not longer free, it's $7.95
You have to buy the Kindle edition first, then be logged into your Audible account that is linked to the Kindle account (must be same email address). At that point, assuming the title is not geographically restricted, you'll see the Special Price of $0.00 (I just checked it, so it is still valid).
Alice's audiobook is .49. And it is not Jim Dale.
That's a different edition (and the Jim Dale edition is no longer free, it seems)
Thought you'd like to know you can get the Heart of Darkness audio for free if you use a different ebook:
http://www.amazon.com/Heart-of-Darkness-ebook/dp/B0084AMNWQ
Also, several of the books are slowly reverting to "non-free" status. "Treasure Island" is also no longer free. I doubt if any further titles more in the other direction.
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