Audrey is an audiobook player with all the functionality of any other, but designed to help listeners engage with fiction in a deeper, more meaningful way. Each audiobook has a handcrafted illustration done by professional authors and the service is populated with guides, who will assist users with finding their next audiobook. Each audiobook comes with chapter-by-chapter recaps and real-time character descriptions, meaning you’ll always know what’s going on.
Lucy Rand, an editor for Audrey told Good e-Reader “Our library of books is highly curated, so that our listeners know every book comes recommended by us and our team of recommenders (indie book shops, book clubs and book reviewers), and that we have chosen or produced the best audio version of it we can find. Audrey’s small but fast-growing library is made up of classic novels and short stories, as well as contemporary fiction published by the best small independent presses publishing today (Fitzcarraldo, Peirene, Pushkin, Bluemoose and more). We are working with Naxos Audiobooks and Ladbroke Audio to provide our listeners with the best narrators and audio experiences we can.”
Each audiobook on Audrey is paired with an expert guide and an illustrator. The guides are authors, literary researchers, translators, editors and the like, chosen for their expertise on the book, author or themes of the text. The Audrey Guide provides historical and cultural context, information about the author, reflection prompts, a playlist and more. These are delivered in a spoiler-free, bite-size way in the app’s ‘Notes from the Guide’ section, which is populated in real time as the listener moves through the book. Each book also comes with chapter recaps and character descriptions to help listeners avoid the commonly-reported audiobook obstacle of getting distracted and missing bits!
The Audrey app is available for iOS or Android. The app is available worldwide, and there are always a handful of audiobooks available for free.
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.
