Chirp offers considerable savings on audiobooks, no strings (or subscriptions) attached.
Chirp
Love audiobooks? Then you know they’re expensive, often selling for anywhere from $15-$30 apiece. There are ways to save money on audiobooks, of course, but get ready for one of the cheapest options yet: Chirp. Note that The Techy Trends may get a share of revenue from the sale of the products featured on this page.
Chirp offers time-limited deals on curated audiobooks. For example, Marie Kondo’s seminal The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up is currently just $1.99. Price at Audible: $21.95 (unless you have a membership, in which case it’s $14.95). The Weight of Ink, by Rachel Kadish, is just 99 cents at Chirp — and $29.99 at Amazon.
The site adds new books almost daily, and each one is usually available for about a month. Right now, for example, there are some 190 titles across just about every major genre. (My advice: Start with the Editor’s Pick list.) Best of all, there’s no subscription requirement.
However, while you will find a handful of well-known authors (including Joyce Carol Oates, Nora Roberts and P.G. Wodehouse), the majority of the actual books available here are lesser-known. I was hard-pressed to find more than a couple titles I actually recognized.
Still, you can always check reviews elsewhere (Chirp proper has none) to see if any particular book is worth your time. And with most of them priced between $1-$5, it won’t cost you much to find out for yourself.
To listen to your purchase, you’ll need a web browser or the Chirp app. The latter has nearly all the features you’d expect, including adjustable listening speeds and a sleep timer, though it could definitely use a car mode.
If you can’t get enough audiobooks, you should definitely check out Chirp.
Read more: 10 ways to download and read books for free
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