How to use Audible to listen to more than 500,000 audiobooks and audio shows

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With nearly 500,000 tiles and plenty of original content, Audible is the best way to listen to your favorite audiobooks and audio-based shows.
You can sign up for a 30-day free trial to try it out before you commit to the $14.95 a month fee.
Here's how to sign up for Audible and use the app on all your devices.

Voracious readers, get ready to become voracious listeners, too. For all the times that you couldn't put your book down but had to because — despite your best efforts — you cannot, in fact, drive and read at the same time, there is now a solution. Audible, the company behind the largest selection of audiobooks and original audio shows (nearly 500,000, to be exact), is here to save you from cliffhangers.

While I've always purported to prefer reading to listening, I'll admit that listening to Meryl Streep read Nora Ephron titles is something that I cannot do in my own head. Similarly, while I have yet to score tickets to "Hamilton," I like to think that listening to Lin-Manuel Miranda and Karen Olivo narrate "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz comes as a close second.

There are also some pretty solid Audible originals. For the political junkies in the room, there's "Conversations with Joe," which offers the highlights from Vice President and presidential candidate Joe Biden's tour across the US, in which he spoke of his son's Beau's life and battle with brain cancer. Or, there's the extremely popular "Heads Will Roll," featuring Kate McKinnon and Emily Lynne, which listeners have called "TV for your ears" and "unbelievably funny."

In short, regardless of what content you like to read or hear, you can probably find it on this Amazon-owned service. Here's how to get Audible and use it on your devices.

Sign up for an Amazon membership

In order to use Audible, you'll have to be an Amazon member, but not necessarily an Amazon Prime member. Unlike many of Amazon's other offerings, this isn't an add-on service that is contingent on your having a Prime membership. Rather, all you need is a standard Amazon account.

In order to get set up, you'll want to navigate your way over to the top righthand corner of the Amazon home screen, where you'll see an option that reads Hello, Sign In. If you roll over that, you'll see text that says, New Customer? Start here. From there, you'll just need to enter your name, email, and password, and you're all set.

Note that while you don't have to be a Prime member, a Prime membership would grant you free access to Audible content, so if you're on the fence about it, this may sweeten the deal in one direction or another.

Sign up for Audible

If you're not interested in going the Prime route, then you'll simply need to sign up for an Audible account by heading over to this new member page. You'll be granted a 30-day free trial, after which you'll begin paying the monthly $14.95 fee.

Start searching for titles

Every month that you're an Audible member, you'll receive one credit, which is good for any title, regardless of price. But of course, you'll want to listen to more than just one book a month. In that case, you'll have to buy these additional titles. The good news, though, is that they stay in your permanent collection, so you can go back to them time and time again and build the library of your dreams.

You can listen to Audible on all these devices

As it stands, you can use Audible on any iPhone or Android device, thanks to the Audible app. The service is also compatible with a wide range of other devices, including:

Fire phone
Fire tablet
The Kindle app
Kindle Oasis 9th Generation
Kindle Oasis 8th Generation
Kindle 8th Generation
Kindle Touch
Kindle Keyboard
Kindle DX
Kindle 2nd Generation
Kindle 1st Generation
The Audible apps for iOS, Android, and Windows
Audible software for PC and Mac
MP3 players and other devices compatible with Audible's file format

How to use the Audible app

To start listening, simply find the title on your My Library page or the Cloud tab on your mobile application. You can then either download the audiobook onto your computer to listen or transfer to another device; stream and listen via the Audible Cloud Player, which can be found on the My Library page; find the title in the cloud on your mobile device for downloading; or, if you're going old school, burn the audiobook onto a disc. Note, though, that you can only use the last option with iTunes software.