Audibly Is A Vast Collection Of Free Audiobooks For Your iPhone
Audibly- 2,947 audiobooks for free. (Free) by Spreadsong, Inc. gives users a library of audiobooks to listen to, for free on their iPhone or iPod Touch.
Are you the type that wants to read, but prefer to have the books be read to you? The folks behind the development team of Spreadsong, Inc. have released Audibly, which gives you 2,947 audiobooks for free. Keep in mind that the content in the app is all from public domain, so it's mostly the classics and other well-known books of history. Don't be expecting anything modern or recent in the vast collection of audiobooks.
Audibly is free and ad-supported. The developers also have Free Audiobooks, which is essentially the same thing but without the ads and faster download speeds. However, Audibly is great for those that don't mind getting a wealth of information for free.
When you get in the app, you'll see that there are four main sections of the app, as shown in the toolbar on the bottom of the screen - Featured, Browse, Search, and Listen. There's also a big green button, but that simply allows you to view a video about Free Audiobooks, and have an option to view and purchase it in the App Store if you wish.
If you're unsure of where to start your audiobook search, the best bet is to go through the Featured and Browse sections. Here, you'll view alphabetically by Title or Author, or even by Most Downloads. There's also a bar at the top of both views that allows you to search by category or author. With almost 3,000 audiobooks to choose from, you can spend a lot of time going through the catalog and finding something good.
Looking for something specific? Try searching for it via the Search tab. The app will notify you on the first time that sometimes it's better to enter in a generic term rather than something too specific - this will get more results, and that can actually be a good thing.
Once you find a book you're interested in listening to, tap it to view the Book Details screen. Here, you'll get the book title and author, an overall star rating (provided by users of the app), and a link to view listener reviews. You can leave your own review as well, if you connect the app with your Facebook account.
If you're ready to get a book to listen to, just tap the Download button. You then have the choice to download the book and listen to it in the app, or email it to yourself. Chapters of the book will be downloaded in the background, and will continue to download as you begin listening.
During playback, you'll get a screen that shows the book cover with book information, and playback controls. You can skip or go back a chapter, pause playback, and even rewind 30 seconds. You can tap anywhere on the screen during playback to access the chapter list or go back to the library (the library will stop playback).
Worried about being able to do other things while enjoying your audiobooks? Don't worry, Audibly supports full multitasking, so you can control Audibly playback directly from the multitasking tray.
Audibly is overall easy to navigate, and has plenty of choices in it's book catalog. The reading voices are pretty decent for a free app, and the ads will only come up every now and then. If they bother you, then it's easy to upgrade and get rid of the ads for a cheap price ($1.99 for the Free Audibooks app).
So if you're one that is looking for a way to get a collection of classic audiobooks, then you can't go wrong with Audibly, especially at the free price tag.
