Audiobooks present a great way to extend your reading and learning opportunities: they make it possible to avail yourself of either some entertainment or education while commuting, exercising, traveling, doing housework... This convenience, however, seems to be reserved for those with deeper pockets only: $50 price tags, often even more, are a common occurrence with audiobooks distributed on CDs, and even downloadable content does not lag far behind. Fortunately, there is a solution to the problem: meet Audible.

Audible, Inc.(since January 2008 a subsidiary of Amazon.com) is probably the No.1 provider of premium digital audio information and entertainment on the Internet. Audible specializes in the spoken experience, providing digital audio editions of books, newspapers and magazines, original programming, and TV and radio subscriptions.

Audible's main advantage lies in it's membership plans. Basically, in exchange for a commitment on your part to buy at least one audiobook (or some other equally valued audio program) per month, you get your audio entertainment at prices that are in range with printed paperback books.

Here's how this works: as a member, you will receive a certain amount of credits each month in exchange for a monthly fee. The credits are used to purchase audio content, which is then downloaded and played back on personal computers, CDs, or AudibleReady® computer-based and wireless mobile devices.

Currently, you can choose between two membership plans: Audible Gold and Audible Platinum.

With Audible Gold you get one credit per month for which you are charged $14.95 monthly fee. The credit can be used to purchase almost any audiobook available in Audible's library (some rare exceptions apply) or any other audio program. If you sign up for the annual plan you get two months of membership for free and 12 credits all at once. The price of a credit in this case is $12.46 (17% off).

Audible Platinum plan is aimed toward more demanding listeners. Here you get two credits per month for a $22.95 fee (or $11.47 per credit). Again, signing up for the annual plan will get you two months free in which case the price of a single credit drops to $9.56.

The main benefit of Audible membership are, without a doubt, the savings. For one credit (which can cost you from $9.56 to $14.95, depending on the plan and the length of your commitment), you can get pretty much any audiobook or other audio program from Audible's huge library. Seeing how plenty of audiobooks are priced at up to $70 (or more, on occasion), it's clear there are substantial savings to be made on a single audio program.

Furthermore, as a member you get 30% off any additional items you buy at the Audible store, a free audio newspaper, plus there will be special e-mail offers featuring even more savings.

Audible members currently have over 50,000 audio programs to choose from. These include digital audiobooks from dozens of genres such as mysteries and thrillers, sci-fi and fantasy, romance, history, literary fiction etc. All the popular authors such as Nora Roberts, James Patterson, Stephen King... are included and represented with their entire backlists. If you are more into classics you'll find everything from Shakespeare to Tolstoy to Hemingway. There are thousands of titles on business, education, self help, health & fitness, religion & spirituality, science & technology, language instructions... and much more.

In addition to audiobooks, Audible also offers newspaper subscriptions such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, The New Yorker... to mention just a few. You can buy a single issue or subscribe to future issues.

Members can also purchase or subscribe to radio shows and podcasts such as This American Life, Car Talk, The Ricky Gervais Show, In Bed With Susie Bright... and many more.

To sweeten the deal for new members even further, Audible is offering special introductory deals for both plans. Currently they look like this: if you sign up for the Gold plan you get 50% off the first 3 months of membership -- that's 3 audiobooks for $7.49 each. Audible Platinum, on the other hand, offers a free 14-day trial so you can evaluate the service properly before making a commitment. You will be allowed to download 2 audiobooks of your choice for no charge -- which you will be able to keep even if you decide against retaining your membership.

More information about Audible membership plans including a comprehensive review and detailed account on savings can be found here: