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Posted by u/niksmac 5 months ago
Ask HN: Where do you guys find audiobooks?
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?

TA.

caitlinface · 5 months ago
Don't forget to check out Libby. Plug in your library card and you can check out audiobooks for free.
Crisco · 5 months ago
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.
jdgoesmarching · 5 months ago
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.
kaggie · 5 months ago
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.
flkiwi · 5 months ago
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.

navanchauhan · 5 months ago
If you want to sail the high seas, MyAnonaMouse is one of the best private trackers.

If you want a public tracker, I’ve heard good things about Audiobookbay

zevon · 5 months ago
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).

silverquiet · 5 months ago
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.
reaperducer · 5 months ago
BBC Radio 4 has a number of audiobooks online. Here are a couple from Agatha Christie:

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.

malshe · 5 months ago
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.
entropie · 5 months ago
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.

barbazoo · 5 months ago
I’m jealous, I wish my mum was into tech more so I could build stuff for her. But she’s a luddite :) Good for you.
entropie · 5 months ago
It was not a short way to get her there.

I tried a web interface before among other thigs. The telegram bot is perfectly fine because she can just use the share button on youtube on her mobile.

If the bot receives a message specifically from her, it is stored in a special folder in Jellyfin, and jf displays the recent added tracks.

She spent the last few days and weeks sorting 500+ GB of audiobooks onto an external SSD she bought on my recommendation.

I give lots of tech support, but I try to do it in a way that she gets something out of it so I have to spend less work later.

I haven't been able to get her to use ChatGPT so far, but I will eventually.

She used my telegram bot so much that I rewrote the original software (1) to something better (2) (that I can use regulary as well). The second iteration supports mqtt and magic wormhole and sends wormhole codes back to the sender after downloading. It was a bit much for her, she never used wormhole but I do.

1: https://gist.github.com/entropie/d265e94136b9777cc6b3190189b...

2: https://github.com/entropie/ytdltt

nickthegreek · 5 months ago
if your mum can use netflix, she can use jellyfin.
amelius · 5 months ago
jmclnx · 5 months ago
Where I am, the local library is the best place. They quite a bit of these.