Audible has two subscription tiers to download and listen to audioboooks. Audible Standard/Audible Plus and Audible Premium Plus. The base membership is the cheapest, you get one audiobook credit per month and can be redeemed for any title in the Audible catalogue. However, credits do not rollover if you do not use them, and if you cancel your subscription, any audioboook you “bought” with a credit, is no longer available for online or offline listening. It just sits in your library with a locked symbol. It can then be only unlocked if you buy the audiobook at full price or reactivate your subscription.
Audible Standard Plus is terrible value for everyone. You pay a subscription, use a credit to license an audiobook and then if you stop paying, its gone. Standard also has no access to Audible Originals, or an expanded library of the good podcasts.Audible Standard does not include member sales and discounts. Audible Standard members do, however, have access to their Daily Deals and other sales that are not exclusive to membership.
If you had to pay for a subscription, Premium Plus is the best, Credits rollover, if you do not use them. I know many people who dint login to Audible for a long time and suddenly had a ton of credits to use on whatever audiobook they wanted. If you cancel your membership all titles you used a credit on can be listened to forever and all the unused credits are still attached to the account and can be used to get additional audiobooks,
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.