Each month Amazon releases their First Reads- which are FREE books only available to Amazon Prime members. These books haven’t even been published yet and we get the chance to check them out. But many of my readers have a hard time finding the opportunity to sit and read and would prefer audio books.
So here is a nice list of places to find free audio books that I hope you find helpful!
Where To Find Free Audio Books
1. Librivox is a non-profit initiative to record public domain books and release them as free audiobooks. The site has over 10,000 projects, with a diverse set of titles ranging from War and Peace to Leaves of Grass to The Dream of the Red Chamber to Anne of Green Gables.
You can even volunteer to read sections for books-in-progress! This is a FREE site so it’s not going to have pretty pictures but you can search for topics and authors. Obviously if the books are public domain books they will not have new releases.
2. Your local library likely has a system for free audio books! Even in smaller areas the technology is popping up on your local library website. I know in my city you can even get on the wait list for audio books. If you aren’t exactly tech savvy just ask your librarian and I bet they already have the directions on a piece of paper somewhere!
3. Lit2Go has files tailored to work in the classroom- audio books, plays, short stories and poems. Along with each free audiobook, you’ll get citation information, play time, and word count.
4. Loyal Books shares free audiobooks from titles in the public domain. There are about 7,000 free books and they do have an easier to use interface as far as book selection goes than some of the other sites.
5. Open Culture has combed through the same audiobooks offered other places online, and compiled them into one list to browse. While you’ll still find many of the same classics offered elsewhere, like Frank L. Baum’s The Wizard of Oz audiobooks, you’ll also find stories by James Baldwin, Ray Bradbury, and Virginia Woolf. Or poetry by Maya Angelou and Charles Bukowski.
6. Spotify has an “Audiobooks” playlist for a list of audiobooks that are always being added to by the service. Spotify is free to listen, or you can go premium if you don’t want the ads.
7. Storynory offers free audiobooks for kids, with a mix of classics, fairy tales, and original stories.
Free Audio Books for Amazon Prime Members
As an Amazon Prime member you have access to a nice selection of audio books but Amazon doesn’t exactly advertise how to do it. In most cases you need to download the ebook before you can get the audiobook; you can’t just see a separate list of available audiobooks and download them individually.
Here’s the list of Books with Audible Narration free for Prime members. You have to borrow the ebook before you can borrow the audiobook; if you just go to the audiobook page directly you won’t see an option to borrow it.
Prime eligible ebooks show a Prime logo in the buy box that says, “Included with your membership”.
Books that also have a matching Prime eligible audiobook will show a box that says, “Read and Listen for Free”. If the audiobook isn’t part of Prime it will just say, “Read for Free”.
After you select a Prime eligible book that has a matching audiobook available with Prime, you don’t have to select the audiobook version of the book too because it will automatically be available once you borrow the ebook. If you have a Fire tablet you can easily find Prime audiobook content from the menu of the Audible section where it lists Prime Benefits.
Audible Channels are another way to get free audio content with Prime. Audible Channels include original short-form audio content (podcasts), along with playlists, and a selection of audiobooks to stream anytime. I have taken advantage of these before! Prime-exclusive audiobooks are a small selection of audiobooks only available to Prime members. Just open the Audible app on your device, go to the Channels tab, and scroll down on the Featured tab until you see Audiobook Collections.