Barnes & Noble Is Finally Competing With Audible
Barnes & Noble is finally competing with Amazon and Audible in the audiobook market.
The service, B&N Audiobooks, is effectively Audible but for Barnes & Noble customers. Both services are focused on audiobooks, offer a one-month free trial, and depend on subscriptions that only provide access to one audiobook per month. But there are some key differences.
The most notable: B&N Audiobooks subscriptions cost $15 per month. Audible offers five subscription tiers ranging from $8.50 per month for one audiobook credit to $229.50 per year for 24 audiobook credits. Barnes & Noble's offering costs twice as much as Amazon's equivalent.
Barnes & Noble also says it has 300,000 titles available to purchase via B&N Audiobooks. Amazon doesn't say how many titles are available via Audible, but according to Business Insider, the service had more than 500,000 audiobooks in 2019. That number is certainly higher now.
Amazon has also turned Audible into a general audio platform where people can find audiobooks, original content, and podcasts. B&N Audiobooks seems to be focused exclusively on its namesake content to start. Maybe that will change as the service continues to evolve.
Another important difference: Barnes & Noble says that B&N Audiobooks is only available in the US. Audible says that, as of 2017, it had listeners in more than 150 countries.
More information about B&N Audiobooks is available via the Barnes & Noble website. The company is offering a credit for one free audiobook to people who sign up for a free trial.
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