eMusic’s Audiobooks September 19, 2007

I took a quick look at eMusic’s recently launched audiobooks store, which sells DRM-free MP3 audiobooks, just to check out the selection. I only looked at the unabridged titles, which were heavy on the classics, non-fiction, and literary fiction. The only contemporary children’s/YA titles I saw were Eragon, Eldest, and, interestingly enough, Nick Hornby’s Slam (which is due out in print Oct. 16).

It looks pretty much the same as the music store and is easy to browse. Since the audiobooks store is still in beta, I’m hoping that they’ll add the “Save for later” feature available on the music side at some point. And they really need longer excerpts, because one minute is not enough. The store works on a credit system, just like the music. One credit, occasionally two, to purchase a title, and it looks like each credit will cost $9.99. The audiobook will be downloaded in lots of small files, unlike Audible’s large chunks. If you’re already an eMusic subscriber, you can get a free audiobook for signing up for an audiobook subscription. Other listeners would get more out of it than I would, since I mainly listen to YA audiobooks (which means I’ll probably be sticking with Audible), but I’ve been wanting to read In the Woods, so maybe I’ll give it a try.