Amazon has kicked off its Audible holiday promotion ahead of next week’s Prime Big Deal Days sale. New Audible Premium Plus subscribers can get their first three months for 99 cents per month. The Premium Plus tier normally costs $14.95, so needless to say, this is an excellent offer for audiobook lovers. Each month, Premium Plus members get one Audible credit that can be used to purchase any audiobook in the catalog, including new releases and preorders. Once you purchase an audiobook with a credit, it’s yours to keep forever, just as if you paid with cash. Essentially, you’re getting three audiobooks for three bucks–plus access to thousands of other audiobooks and podcasts while you’re subscription is active.
There are tons of recently released and upcoming audiobooks that could make Amazon’s Audible Premium Plus promotion especially enticing this holiday. Former GTA creative director Dan Houser is releasing his debut novel, A Better Paradise Volume One, on October 14. The audiobook edition of A Better Paradise, which is a novel centered around video games, is exclusive to Audible. Another exclusive that is sure to be extremely popular is Harry Potter: The Full-Cast Audio Editions. Audible will release one book each month starting November 4 with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
Amazon’s Audible Premium Plus deal is available until December 16, and you don’t need to be a Prime member to get it. Amazon also has a great Kindle Unlimited sign-up deal that lets new members subscribe at no cost for three months. Unlike the Audible offer, the Kindle promotion is exclusive to Prime members.
Audible Premium Plus: How does it work?
Audible Premium has thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and original productions for subscribers to listen to whenever they want. The major perk of the Premium Plus tier is the aforementioned Audible credits. Each month, Audible adds one credit to your account that can be traded for any item in the Premium Plus catalog. Members can also purchase additional Audible credits for $15 each, and it’s a good strategy to use since audiobook prices are often higher than $15.
Best of all, buying books with credits is the same as paying cash; you get to keep audiobooks purchased with Audible credits even if you cancel your subscription. Unused credits roll over each month, but you will lose any unspent credits if you cancel your subscription, so make sure to spend them first.
After the 3-month free trial, you will be charged $15/month going forward unless you cancel before your renewal date. As an alternative to canceling, you could switch to Audible Premium, the $8/month subscription tier that includes the aforementioned catalog of listenable content; you just won’t get an Audible Credit each month.
The promotion is a nice opportunity to start or catch up on a new series such as Pierce Brown’s Red Rising, Frank Herbert’s Dune, or Brandon Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archives. There are some book series that are often viewed by fans as better in audiobook format. For instance, Matt Dinniman’s best-selling LitRPG series Dungeon Crawler Carl is an Audible exclusive that is brilliantly narrated by Jeff Hays. For science fiction readers, Dennis Taylor’s hilarious Bobiverse series is an entertaining ride made even better with Ray Porter’s incredible narration.
Since Audible credits can be used to buy any book in the Premium Plus catalog, it’s not a bad idea to put them toward brand-new releases that likely have extremely long wait times at your local library. For example, you could get Sunrise on the Reaping, the latest novel in Suzanne Collins’ wildly popular Hunger Games series. Stephen King fans can pick up the excellent audiobook edition of Never Flinch, which released at the end of May, or The End of the World as We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand. Fantasy readers should check out Joe Abercrombie’s The Devils, the first book in the best-selling author’s new epic fantasy series.
If you’re having a hard time deciding how to use your credits, you could check out Amazon’s top charts to browse the current best-selling audiobooks on Audible. The current best-selling novel in audiobook format is Dan Brown’s The Secret of Secrets, the newest entry in the wildly popular Robert Langdon series (The Da Vinci Code).
As mentioned, Amazon is also offering three months of Kindle Unlimited for free to Prime members. A Kindle Unlimited subscription unlocks instant access to over four million ebooks, including novels, comic books, manga, and more. You can borrow up to 20 ebooks at a time and swap them out as often as you’d like. Some Kindle Unlimited books also come with a free audiobook version that will automatically be added to your Audible collection.
How to get Amazon Prime at no cost
If you’re new to Amazon Prime, you can sign up for a 30-day Prime membership without spending a dime to take advantage of Prime Day deals, including the Audible and Kindle promotions. It’s also worth noting that students and anyone aged 18-24 can get a six-month trial at no cost. If you aren’t eligible for the trials, Amazon Prime’s standard membership costs $15/month or $7.49/month for the new Young Adult membership tier. So you can simply subscribe for one month and then shop all of Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days deals.
Prime Big Deal Days officially runs October 7-8, but there are tons of early deals, including steep discounts on Amazon devices you can use to listen to or read Audible/Kindle books. For example, the Amazon Echo Buds with ANC are only $45 (was $140). You can also save over $100 on the Kindle Scribe, Amazon’s premium e-ink reader and note-taking tablet.
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