In the process of digital detox, I am able to acquire a used iPod. Trying to find good quality downloadable audiobooks for me. I have some luck with using some torrents, but not enough audiobooks are there, at lease the genre I am interested in. What are your sources? How do you get them?
I purchase my audiobooks from libro.fm. It’s like Audible where you subscribe and get a credit every month, but part of the profit goes to support local book stores, and the books are DRM free.
This right here. The ability to download actual MP3s from books you’ve purchased is a miracle in 2025. Plus, sending some change to your local bookstore is better than sending it to Amazon.
100%. My workflow is purchase DRM free audiobooks from libro.fm, put it in my selfhosted audiobookshelf folder, and listen anywhere. Libby is a first choice actually as well if you have a library card.
libro.fm is great. I happily subscribe to them because it's all so effortless.
Probably worth noting as an aside that bookshop.org is sometimes mentioned as a libro.fm-like Amazon alternative for ebooks (NOT audiobooks), but my brief experiment with them was awful: they were much, much more restrictive than even Amazon, at least before Amazon's removal of file download.
I've also heared good things of this island called Audiobookbay (and there's also this useful service called Bugmenot where you can find all sorts of login credentials...)
And even if it's a bit of a hassle, I always check if there is an option to buy books/audiobooks as directly as possible from the author (in some cases you can buy content directly on the author's website, for example).
I was going to post this - I just joined this week, but have a friend who has sourced audiobooks from it that I couldn't find any other way so it looks good so far. Their emphasis on friendliness is nice too and seems genuine.
I used to get them from Audible and my collection has more than 400 audiobooks. However, I realized that I rarely listen to a book twice so buying audiobooks wasn't the best use of my money. Then I discovered Libby and Hoopla thanks to HN. Now I borrow audiobooks from my city library.
I made a telegram bot for my mother that downloads yt videos and extracts the audio and makes it available to her via jellyfin from my homeserver. She downloaded way over 1tb in a year.
Once every few month I transfer everything to an SD kart and hand it to her.
So: youtube is pretty full of audiobooks also very recent ones - and shes only searching for german ones.
I try to support writers directly. eg. You can purchase Paul Millerd's Pathless path on his gumroad page and it comes with both the ebook and audiobook:
https://pathless.gumroad.com/l/pathlesspath
Tanbooks also sells mp3s of their audiobooks directly on their website. Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle changed my life profoundly for the better.
https://tanbooks.com
I download epub files and then have ElevenLabs read it to me using AI generated voices I created/cloned using its built in tool. I prefer this method because I can have a book narrated to me using any voice I want to. For example, I’m currently listening to the foundation novels but having it narrated by an AI clone of Lou Lobell’s voice since she narrates the tv show. You can also export narrations as mp3 files and listen to them however you want.
Libby: Source is local library
Spotify Premium: You get a certain number of free hours per month
BBC Sounds: Worst app of the lot, but they do have audio books
I wish all of these apps implemented a "Default Sleep Mode" between, say, 10pm and 7am so if you press play it defaults to only playing for 30 mins. Podcast Republic has this.
Like others mentioned, your library + Libby is a great resource, especially if you're in a major metro. I moved away from a major metro and kind of miss how rich the selection for materials was (I was spoiled!). It's not bad where I'm at now, but any major city should have a great selection, and using Libby is easy.
One suggestion that hasn't been mentioned yet is YouTube. Sometimes even books that don't have an official audiobook recording might have a random video of someone reading it.
libgen > open .epub in EPUBReader extension in Edge browser > Read Aloud This Page (Microsoft Steffan Online Natural voice, Speed at max) . "Keep Awake" extension prevents laptop from sleeping. Bluetooth headphones let me walk around the room. It's not ideal for things like bike rides but otherwise it works well for me.
I use Goodreads to track what I’ve read/listened to and my ratings, and then I dump it into LLM chat and ask for more recs. It’s not perfect but I get better recs than Goodreads itself.
I highly recommend "Blinkist". It is an app with only audio book summaries and written summaries. It was a key step in my successful digital detox. The fact that they were summaries was easier do create daily habits.
Tip: In your digital detox, I also highly recommend an app like "Freedom" to block your time wasters. It's a bit like parental control but for yourself to timebox time spent on the news or HN.
Note: This won't help you personally but expect to help HN readers in general.
My observation is that even though it's BBC "radio," the stuff on Radio 4 is more like an audio book, compared to American radio dramas which are more like "plays," as they're more acted out and can include sound effects and music. The BBC stuff is very dry, like someone reading to you.
If you want an equivalent digital news detox, see what reading services for the blind are available in your area. Where I live, one of the local NPR radio stations carries audio of someone reading today's newspaper, and it's also available online.
Probably worth noting as an aside that bookshop.org is sometimes mentioned as a libro.fm-like Amazon alternative for ebooks (NOT audiobooks), but my brief experiment with them was awful: they were much, much more restrictive than even Amazon, at least before Amazon's removal of file download.
But I'll also go out on a limb and suggest that, for a "digital detox", you should read physical books instead.
If you want a public tracker, I’ve heard good things about Audiobookbay
And even if it's a bit of a hassle, I always check if there is an option to buy books/audiobooks as directly as possible from the author (in some cases you can buy content directly on the author's website, for example).
Once every few month I transfer everything to an SD kart and hand it to her.
So: youtube is pretty full of audiobooks also very recent ones - and shes only searching for german ones.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Annas_Archive/comments/1ehcqc1/anna...
Tanbooks also sells mp3s of their audiobooks directly on their website. Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle changed my life profoundly for the better. https://tanbooks.com
I wish all of these apps implemented a "Default Sleep Mode" between, say, 10pm and 7am so if you press play it defaults to only playing for 30 mins. Podcast Republic has this.
VLC for listening on and copying to mobile.
Tip: In your digital detox, I also highly recommend an app like "Freedom" to block your time wasters. It's a bit like parental control but for yourself to timebox time spent on the news or HN.
Note: This won't help you personally but expect to help HN readers in general.
Don't use torrents. That's cheap. Pay authors, just like you expect to be paid for your work.
> Pay authors
Personally, because I also care about fair business practices, I avoid anything Amazon.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007vqm2/episodes/player
My observation is that even though it's BBC "radio," the stuff on Radio 4 is more like an audio book, compared to American radio dramas which are more like "plays," as they're more acted out and can include sound effects and music. The BBC stuff is very dry, like someone reading to you.
If you want an equivalent digital news detox, see what reading services for the blind are available in your area. Where I live, one of the local NPR radio stations carries audio of someone reading today's newspaper, and it's also available online.