from Hacker News

Free Audio Books: Download Great Books for Free

by thisisastopsign on 1/21/20, 3:40 AM with 84 comments

  • by rasengan0 on 1/21/20, 8:21 AM

    Welcome to the internet 2020

    http://www.openculture.com/2015/06/isaac-asimovs-favorite-st...

    version 1 "debug_error": { "errorCode": "auth", "errorDetail": "0", "errorMessage": "Video unavailable", "lh": "This video contains content from Penguin Random House, who has blocked it on copyright grounds.", "xA": "ec.150;ed.0;es.This video contains content from Penguin Random House_ who has blocked it on copyright grounds." }

    version 2 https://youtu.be/rjqjSP7kOO4

  • by fmela on 1/21/20, 4:31 AM

    See also https://librivox.org for free public domain audiobooks.

  • by gsail11 on 1/21/20, 5:03 AM

    Also, most public libraries have extensive audiobook and ebook archives, and there are apps that bring all that content straight to your phone. If you live somewhere that has library access, you can greatly and easily expand your access to books, new and old through that method.

  • by sandreas on 1/21/20, 1:45 PM

    If you are looking for free german audio books, checkout

    - https://www.vorleser.net/

    For a free conversion tool, checkout

    - https://github.com/sandreas/m4b-tool

    - https://github.com/gonzoua/AudioBookBinder

    - https://github.com/yermak/AudioBookConverter

  • by JonathanFly on 1/21/20, 9:15 AM

    If anyone is looking for some free modern genre fiction, I can highly recommend the Worm audiobook: http://audioworm.rein-online.org/

    It's longer than the entire Games of Thrones series, plenty of content there. It is a fan created recording and the early parts are a bit rough, but gets more professional over time and eventually becomes extremely polished.

    This is a sample (standalone, relatively spoiler free since this is 100% flashback) chapter from the sequel story Ward. Read Worm first but this specific chapter can be read by itself. http://parahumanaudio.com/podcast/gleaming-9-x/

  • by walterkrankheit on 1/21/20, 12:32 PM

    Does anyone else have an issue with audiobooks as literature? Like, if I'm not able to control the pace at which I'm paying attention, it's problematic. I can't guarantee I'll pay 100 percent attention to noise that otherwise would almost be background to me. Regardless, the selection here is pretty bad-ass.

  • by lopis on 1/21/20, 8:41 AM

    I considered whitelisting the website on uBlock but then I noticed 25+ different blocked requests (that number usually explodes after whitelisting too). Is this really necessary?

  • by KloudTrader on 1/21/20, 4:28 AM

    If your favourite book isn't available as an audiobook, give us a try:

    https://auditus.cc

  • by eXpl0it3r on 1/21/20, 9:13 AM

    What do you use to listen to audio books files? Some normal audio player is rather cumbersome, due to missing progress tracking.

  • by mark_l_watson on 1/21/20, 5:44 PM

    Cool site, but for myself, I will stick with Audible because of the convenience. I have probably spent about $1000 on Audible books and I feel like that has been a good value, over many years.

    Some advantages I have experienced:

    When I read James Joyce "Ulysses" several years ago, it was somewhat difficult to follow the narrative. I then listened to it as an audio book with a half a dozen good actors reading the parts and the book came to life for me.

    I have some arthritis in my hands, and any time not using a keyboard, holding a physical book, or an eBook reader helps.

    When I am working in the yard, cleaning up the kitchen, etc. it is good to listen to a book.

    The one thing that bothers me is the possibility of losing a large investment in Kindle and Audible books if I ever lost my Amazon account. I mitigate this somewhat by buying some eBooks and audio books on Google Play and on Apple's store. --> don't put all of your eggs in one basket.

  • by thekevan on 1/21/20, 6:17 PM

    Not what I expected to see: Iggy Pop reads Edgar Allan Poe

    http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/iggy-pop-reads-edgar-alla...

  • by tomerbd on 1/21/20, 9:15 AM

    I prefer TTS machine generated voice than non professional readers such as librivox, so for me it's either a professional reader or TTS.

  • by zerop on 1/21/20, 5:29 AM

    Do these free audio books collection also has transcripts? I want to use them to train my Speech to text model.

  • by Glosster on 1/21/20, 9:08 AM

    How do we know they're great? There's no review section like on Audible or Librivox.

  • by sams99 on 1/21/20, 8:08 AM

    Is there an app on iOS that indexes ubuweb, I noticed Junky read by Burroughs there which would be a fascinating listen, but it comes in lots of pieces and consuming it on the run seems somewhat tricky

  • by reallydontask on 1/21/20, 9:05 AM

    Was surprised to see the free books in Audible, turns out that this is free only if you sign up and you only get one book, which is pretty misleading

  • by drumttocs8 on 1/21/20, 2:36 PM

    So, what software/app do you guys use to consume audiobooks? I haven't found a decent one that works with external downloads.

  • by AllegedAlec on 1/21/20, 9:21 AM

    First link I click on is a dud (Asimov, Isaac - "The Last Question" ) due to copyright claims. Not a great start tbh.

  • by fabriceg on 1/21/20, 3:02 PM

    This is great! thank you

  • by cryptozeus on 1/21/20, 5:11 AM

    Why is this sorted by author name ? Site is very spammy and unusable

  • by harshreality on 1/21/20, 5:01 PM

    I think this (pre-recorded) audio book thing is a short-term phenomenon that's creating an economic distortion. Recording audio books requires extra labor, but not much (how many person-hours does it take to record War and Peace compared to person-hours spent by each publisher publishing a new edition, even assuming the use of an existing translation?). Yet Audible rakes in huge amounts of cash by charging a premium (particularly popular titles) for audiobooks over regular ebooks. Sometimes it's because they get famous people to read books, which is a blatant cash grab by the voice artist and/or by Audible. You could find 10 people who have better reading voices than any particular famous person, unless your only objective is to hear your favorite famous person read a book, any book.

    Also, subscription plans are designed around most people not using them fully, and not optimizing their purchases.

    Soon enough neural net TTS + ebooks will be nearly equivalent, and doesn't cost any more than the base ebook. Plus TTS allows synchronizing between print and speech which you can't get between ebooks and audiobooks; i.e. it would be nice to read in print, then switch to TTS while commuting or working out, then back to print.