Escaping the Walled Gardens
I've been on a bit of a journey to slowly divest our household from companies that are complete opposites to the values we hold.
I am doing this at my own pace, as time and money allows. I am so vehemently opposed to people shaming folks for still using Amazon, Spotify, Google or whatever. We aren't stupid, we know these companies aren't good. You know what they are? Convenient... and if that's a dirty word for you I'm so glad you haven't experienced a life like mine.
A while ago we cut off our Amazon Prime sub, this was only made possible because I now have a fiancé who lives with me and is able-bodied (unlike me!) and has a driver's licence.
Next on my list... Audible. I'd stopped my subscription eons ago, because I am both a very slow audiobook reader and also an avid re-reader. (I put on the books to fall asleep too and rarely listen at other times). But still, I wanted to divest from the app and actually possess the books I paid for.
Was able to sync my Audible library, download and remove the DRM from all my books (nearly 200 of them!). Now I have the files and am free to use as I wish.
If you are concerned about sharing your password with an app, fair. My suggestion would be change the password, use it to download your current library, then change it again, revoking any possibility of further access. Although the dev does say your credentials are not stored, I am not especially savvy to know all the details of that.
On my Android phone I'm now using Playbook Lite which has the primary feature that I want, a sleep timer, and the UI seems pretty similar to Audible so less stress on my brain.
Lastly, where to get new books?
I'm not a great candidate for using audiobooks from the library (although I use it extensively for ebooks). Due to how long it takes me to finish a book as I only listen at bedtime it's just not practical.
Several ppl have suggested libro.fm which does seem an excellent solution all around. Similar to audible you can subscribe and get new books monthly, and/or purchase à la carte.
When I'm next wanting to add a book I may check it out from the library first to see if I like the narrator, etc and then probably purchase from libro (supporting a local indie bookstore!) to keep it.
Another suggestion for purchasing books was Chirp. They apparently have good sales, but the books have DRM which means probably you're stuck in their app which is again a walled garden.
All in all, I'm glad I've made the switch, although it definitely took a chunk of time to do the research and then more time just organizing stuff and exporting/importing them into the app. This would be easier if I had fewer books, lol.
