I don’t have a problem with paying people for their labor, but I do want to have books that I actually own. I’m done paying for things that are locked into a particular corporate app. How do I buy ebooks and audio books that I actually own? Is this even possible in 2025?
While not the perfect answer to your question, I recently freed my entire Audible library from its DRM shackles via https://getlibation.com/ and set up https://www.audiobookshelf.org/ to host then on my server.
That process was so ridiculously quick and simple that I don’t know why I didn’t do it much earlier. Migration with full and flawless metadata was as easy as copying the files in the right folder.
Audiobookshelf offers all the benefits of a cloud based player like Audible, with cross device sync and ubiquitous availability. Heck, the library and players work better even. And, if course, there’s full control over the data.
Now that I am hosting my own audiobook library I’m far less picky about where I get them.
https://libro.fm/ is DRM free. Each purchase gives a link to the raw mp3 file and a share of each sale goes to a local bookstore of your choice. They also offer a subscription comparable to audible of you like that style.
Oh, wow, nice!
Hadn’t heard of them and was expecting it to have a very, very limited catalog like a lot of other DRM-free options. But at least the author I searched for has pretty much most of their catalog.
Will definitely buy my next series from them.
From what I’ve seen, Libro has one of the most expansive catalogs outside of Audible. What they don’t have is mostly down to Audible Originals/Exclusives, sadly, there are a lot of those.
I know this isn’t the “correct” answer (because I have no idea if it’s even possible in 2025 like you asked), but I typically just buy the audiobook (as much as “buy” means in 2025) and then pirate it.
For ones I can’t find on the high seas, I’ll just record the playback from the “locked up” version I bought and make my own if need be.
Personally I would recommend MyAnonaMouse. I often buy a book and then get a drm free copy from there.
I believe Downpour is drm free.
The challenge is that Audible has really sucked all the air out of the room so to speak.
Makes me wonder. Can you read a book aloud and sell your performance?
Yes if the book is public domain, just not many people would buy it probably because people do this and release them for free on sites like librivox.org and archive.org
i think there’s also tools to record a set of sounds using your voice then combine that with text to generate the audiobook using AI, but I haven’t played around with and of them yet
thats a good point. If you own the pdf there should be something that can read it aloud.
Not exactly an answer to your question, but related.
Most of the things I want to read now a days rarely come as audiobooks. If I want to read a scientific paper on anything I’m pretty much resigned to printing that as a PDF (without headers/footers). And then I use apps like https://github.com/foobnix/LibreraReader which let me use my own text to speech engine. I’m quite fond of locally hosting https://github.com/k2-fsa/sherpa-onnx. And on my android phone I use ryan-low since it doesn’t bog down my older phone.
