Audiobooks: Do I like them?

Yes and no.

A coworker introduced me to Audible last year. We're housekeepers who clean lodging units between guests, so we can listen to music or books while we work. I looked up some of the books I was interested in, which ranged from 9 to 12 hours. I thought it was a great idea. How convenient to keep work more interesting, finish books in 2-3 days, and not feel guilty spending all those hours reading in bed.

I've listened to some great ones. The Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates by Caroline Carlson is a fantastic series - swashbuckling, hilarious, and piratical, yet still child-appropriate. And the narrator, Katherine Kellgren only improves it.

I've also listened to others ranging from pretty good to decent. Sometimes the narrators are straightforward and a bit bland, but the stories usually keep me interested. So, to start on something positive, here's what I do like about audiobooks:

1. You can "read" while you drive, cook, run, work, sew, wash your car, play Farm Heroes Saga, etc. If it's a book you're already familiar with, you could even have it on in the background without worrying about zoning out and missing something.
2. If it's digital (vs CDs or tapes) you can carry several on a trip without taking up space.
3. You can sync your progress between your smartphone and your desktop app.
4. If you have the both Kindle and Audible editions of a book, you can sync between them on your devices.
5. Sometimes you can buy the Kindle version, and add the Audible version at a steep discount. I've occasionally done so at a lower total cost than if I'd bought only the audio.
6. Audible has a Great Listen Guarantee. You can return a book for any reason within a year of purchase, and they'll refund you, even if you already listened to it. (Also, your first listen on Audible is free.)
7. You can have an Audible account without being obligated to pay for a membership. If you do have a membership, the prices are discounted 30%, and you also get a certain number of book credits a month. For most books, using a credit is cheaper than paying money, but you still have both options. Credits roll over for six months.

Plenty of people like audiobooks. If you're interested, give it a try. It could help you get to all the books you haven't had time for. It could help you enjoy reading again. Or for the first time. As a writer, I hope my future books have audio versions.

But 7 months after joining Audible, I still can't get into it. I can enjoy listening to a book, but it can take me weeks to get through one when it's digital rather than live. At first I thought I just needed to get used to a new format, but for fiction it still feels like a chore. Here are my reasons and speculations why:

1. It's like being led blindfolded by a guide who's trustworthy but doesn't tell you in advance what's coming. In print, I can count pages and see the white space and paragraphs. I can see how far until a scene or chapter break, and know when to start getting nervous for the possible disaster/cliffhanger vs. when I can probably relax. I can read faster through tense parts, faster than you can intelligibly speed up a narrator. An audiobook, on the  other hand, is a long string of words with no organization or breaks.
2. I don't know what romance developments might come up. I think YA books could do without sex anyway, but I especially don't want it to surprise me aloud in front of my coworkers.
3. I like being immersed in the story I'm reading, and nothing else. So when I am listening, it slows down my productivity at work. And it's not like I'm going to listen at home, while I'm doing nothing else, just staring at the wall. Because then I'd just pick up a copy I can read myself.
4. If something distracts me for a minute, or I want to flip back real quick to something in a previous chapter, I have to skip back, hope it's the right place, and listen until the sentence in question happens again (or doesn't). I can't skim pages. If I want to revisit something after I've finished, or quote a passage, I don't want to listen to an entire chapter just to find it.
5. Reviews help me weed through my large to-read list.  However, in Audible you can only rate and review a book currently in your library. That means all the people who didn't like a book and returned it can't leave a review. So how do I know I can trust the mostly positive reviews?

I like the idea of audiobooks. I like their convenience. But sadly I don't enjoy them as much as I'd like.