Audible.com has a great product. They carry books in digital format that I can purchase and then download to my PC or iPod. This is a very handy way to listen to books. But Audible has a really lame pricing model. They started out that way yet I keep checking back to see if they’ve finally created a consumer friendly model. I checked out their website tonight and they are still trying to gouge the consumer with an absurd subscription service. How does this make sense?
When I want to purchase the latest Malcolm Gladwell or John Grisham book I don’t go into a Barnes and Nobel and expect to cough up money for a subscription service. The Audible website leaves more questions unanswered than it answers. What if I chose their “Audible Listener Platinum Plan” for $22.95/month and one month I only find one book I’m interested in. Can I carry that “credit” over to the next month? It’s not clear from the website. Now I’m sure someone is going to reply here with an answer. I’m certain Audible has a policy buried somewhere on their site. But I shouldn’t have to go search around for it.
Why should I have to subscribe to a service in order to listen to a book? Can you imagine Amazon.com charging to $9.95/year just to be able to shop at their website? But that’s exactly what Audible is doing with their “Audible Listener Plan”. Very lame indeed.
If I want to put a book on my iPod today I just order it off iTunes. Audible supplies the digital books on iTunes and probably marks them up a bit when purchased individually. Why can’t companies take Apple’s approach and make it easy for consumers to understand exactly what they are buying and how much it’s going to cost them? Companies like Audible that sell “credits” seem to only benefit the seller. The poor consumers now have to figure out the exchange rate to determine how much a book costs. Microsoft is pulling the same scheme with it’s new music store where people must purchase Zune credits in $5 increments in order to purchase a single song.
Going forward, I’m going to pass on companies that try to complicate the purchase process.
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