Testing out the new features on my Kindle Fire HD this evening led me to accidentally discover a killer promotion that Amazon and Audible have teamed up for to give away 22 public domain ebooks and audiobooks (listed below).
I know public domain may not sound interesting but these are classics, and the audiobooks are professionally narrated and most cost anywhere from $15 to $25 each. And there’s 22 of them!
Amazon and Audible are giving away these classics to get people to test out Amazon’s new Whispersync for Voice feature that syncs audiobooks and ebooks together so you can jump back and forth from reading a book to listening to the audio version.
All that’s required to get this free loot is an account with Audible.com and a Kindle device or a Kindle ereading app. Setting up an account with Audible is free and you can merge it with your Amazon account to make everything easier. Then all your audiobooks will get tied to your Amazon account and will become available from Kindle devices that support audio. If you don’t have a Kindle that supports audio you can use Audible’s apps.
It’s a two step process to getting these free ebooks and audiobooks. First you need to "purchase" the free copy of the Kindle ebook, and then once that’s done the matching audiobook magically becomes free at Audible. Amazon even reminds you to download the free audiobook immediately after purchasing the ebook so it’s really easy. If you don’t have an Audible account, just get the ebook first and then follow Amazon’s link to Audible to sign up for a free account.
Disclaimer: I have no idea how long this promotion will last. The deal could expire at any time so make sure the ebooks and audiobooks are still listed as free before purchasing. This deal will probably stick around for a while though since Amazon is using it to promote their new Whispersync for Voice service.
Here’s the link to the complete list of the 22 free ebooks at Amazon.
Here’s the list of individual titles.
- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
- Moby Dick: or, the White Whale by Herman Melville
- The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Tom Sawyer’s Comrade by Mark Twain
- David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
- Dracula by Bram Stoker
- Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank
- Gulliver’s Travels (Timeless Classics) by Jonathan Swift
- White Fang by Jack London
- The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
- The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
- Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
- The Sign of the Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
- Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
- House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
- Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
- The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
If you missed the link for the audiobook after getting the ebook, just go back to the product page for the book. Amazon has a link for the audiobook titled "professional narration" in the Whispersync for Voice box below the price. The link disappears once you get the audiobook.
Sounds like a great promotional offer, but I can’t seem to find the free account option at audible.
The plans I see start from $7.49 per month. Am I missing something, or could it be a problem that I am doing this from Germany?
I’m not sure exactly. I opened an account with Audible a couple of years ago to download some freebies and have never had to pay anything.
Gee, now I have to get a new Kindle to have space for some audio books. Thanks Nathan!
Yeah Nathan, I don’t think there is a free account anymore. Everything starts you with a 30-day free trial, two free audiobooks, and then $7.49 per month for the first three months if you don’t cancel.
I guess you could still sign up and download the free books, snag your two free audiobooks and then cancel the account.
Scratch that! Just click on the “Buy at Audible.com” link of the audiobooks AMAZON page and it will lead you to set up an account without ordering a subscription. There is NO option to do this on the audible.com site!
Thanks Andrew! I added a sentence above describing that. I knew there was a way. That’s one thing I’ve always disliked about Audible’s website: they make it too hard to navigate and find things. The search bar on the homepage doesn’t even work right.
No problem Nathan. I knew there had to be some way to get a free account if you did at one time. I also discovered that you can actually just buy a single audiobook, without signing up for a subscription, by using the “buy at Audible.com” button on the book’s Amazon page. I was always under the impression that you had to be a subscriber to purchase anything from Audible. Looks like their crafty marketing techniques pulled one over on me. Of course, I would never buy a $7, $15 or $35 audiobook download; just go on eBay and buy the CDs, then resell the set after you have burned it to your computer. The membership makes sense for heavy audiobook listeners, but you really have to have some disposable income (and be okay with DRMed audio files). Audiobook downloads, like eBooks, can be a pricy endeavor.
Exactly. The new Whispersync for Voice feature is pretty cool, especially on the new Kindle Fires where it reads along while highlighting the text, but who’s really going want to buy both the ebook and audiobook of the same title–talk about pricey.
What is described here (i.e., buy a CD, burn it to your computer and then resell the CD) sounds wrong from a copyright perspective.
So… how do I actually purchase the free Kindle book, i’ve tried to search for it but no luck. Could anyone provide a link to the book in the store?
All the links are in the article…
Aaah, now I get it, sorry about that 🙂
Hi Nathan, I just tried and this is only good if you open a new account at Audible. I am not eligible since I am a current customer.
I’ve had an account with Audible for a couple of years and didn’t have any issues…
Man, this Audible promo is giving a lot of people issues.
Cool! I just downloaded four of them and the audio that goes along with it to my computer and my iPod Touch and iPad 🙂
If you do not have an account sign up for the free 30 days and select an audio book. Then change to the email window/tab and start downloading. I just did all 22. After verifying downloads cancel the new account within 30 days.
Yes yo can do that, but if you just click on the “buy at Audible.com” button on the audio book’s Amazon page, you can sign up for a free account without any subscription requirements at all. No canceling or hassles.
Greetings from Audible.
We are happy to introduce the new Whispersync for Voice feature and to try it out, we are offering a number of free Audible audiobooks and Kindle titles to all customers. You do not need to enroll into a membership plan or free trial in order to take advantage of this offer. Simply use your existing Amazon username and password when directed to purchase the audiobook from Audible.com. You can view all of the free titles that are available here: http://www.amazon.com/s/?node=5744839011
For more information about this new feature, please visit our FAQ page listed below:
FAQ: Whispersync for Voice & Immersion Reading
http://audible.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4146
If you run into any issues, you may contact us at any time (24 / 7) at 1-888-283-5051.
“You do not need to enroll into a membership plan or free trial in order to take advantage of this offer. Simply use your existing Amazon username and password when directed to purchase the audiobook from Audible.com.”
Not sure I agree with this. I bought Tale of Two Cities from Amazon.com for $0.00, went to the audible website, entered my Amazon username and password, and at the end of the checkout process it still was asking for money. I cancelled at that point.
You need to make sure you have the exact eBook that Amazon wants to pair the Audible audiobook with. I found I was being charged for Moby Dick, so I just downloaded the eBook in Nathan’s link again and it went down to $0.00.
Awesome deal…thanks for sharing! Each book took around 7 or 8 minutes to download on my iPod using a wireless connection. No complaints from me though…free is good!
Being that I used the Audible link that was on the page for the book on Amazon.com, I doubt I picked a different book at Audible.
Another thought that came to mind is that I was attempting to get the Audible book from Ecuador, and maybe there are restrictions on that.
In any case, I was mainly interested in seeing if the synchronization features worked. I am not loosing sleep over it.
Nathan’s instructions worked: Buy the ebook from Amazon and, in the upper right hand of your screen within Amazon, you will get a link to download the audiobook.
seems only a few of the audiobooks show as free after i got the ebook. it worked for dracula ok but not other and i was doing it correctly with the wispersynch pro narration link.
Seems some of these Kindle ebooks and associated Audible audiobooks are still available free of charge, but not all. Taking advantage of this deal opens an Audible.com account characterized by the same login credentials as the Amazon.com account used to purchase the ebooks, but one is not required to purchase an Audible membership.
Your not required to, no, but they’ll get you some way or another when you let your guard down. Somehow I got charged a membership fee without intending to do so. I don’t care for Audible’s deceptive tactics and you’ll no longer see me advertising them here on this website.
A question to Audible representatives.. Why are there only 20k “whyspersync for voice ready” books? Do you have to sync them by hand, so that it takes a lot of time to add new books?