Hacker News Reader

Comment by AlwaysRock | Hacker News Reader

Digital Audiobooks are becoming more and more of a racket. Amazon recently removed the ability to buy an audio book for a $ amount. You can only buy a credit and exchange that for a book. This means that you might be buying a new $30 book for 1 credit or a $3.25 book for 1 credit.

It's incredibly frustrating and only exists to trick readers into overspending on books.

View on HN

This is only the case on the mobile apps, to avoid paying fees to Google/Apple.

If you go to the website, you can still buy the books for regular money in addition to credits.

(In addition, the majority of books cost more than 1 credit anyway, so in most cases you are much better off buying via a credit)

I dont actually think you are better off buying a credit in most cases. In many cases, yes. In many cases, no. If you buy older books its very often cheaper to buy the book directly.

It does look like you can buy books on audible.com still. They removed the ability from the mobile app and amazon.com. I wont be surprised if they remove it from audible.com as well.

I just checked in the android audible app, I actually now have the ability to buy with dollars via the app itself.

Usually they'd redirect you to audible.com to avoid any google fees but apparently they stopped that?

I do not have the premium audible subscription though, only plus. Maybe that's why?

I don’t understand this comment, do you mean Audible? I buy audiobooks with cash there all the time. I just checked and you can still do that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com