Heard good things about Audible (amazon’s audiobook app) – You get a couple free books a month via a credit system and they were offering 2 months free so I bit. What an absolute disappointment to discover that the Japan version of the service is absolute trash.
You get access to “120,000 titles” but none of the 30 books on my to-read list happen to be listed. There is no “credit” system, as I was led to believe, and no way to even purchase any titles from the mobile app (apparently this is due to Google/Apple’s app store pricing disagreements with Amazon but whatever)
Fine, so you have to log into the desktop site, whatever. I search up a few books and generally they run a whopping 2500-4000 yen.. for rented content that becomes inaccessible should you ever leave the service.
Short of “sailing the high seas” could one use a VPN to sign up to Audible is UK/AUS/USA and just listen from there? Would non-J Amazon notice that my CC is from Japan and reject it? Has anyone else attempted this?
Frustrating to live in a digital era and still be geolocked into… whatever this is. Unless I’m just an idiot and I’m doing it wrong? (Which is entirely possible!) Any advice/rants welcome.
5 comments
You don’t need a VPN, you make an amazon account for the store of the country you want and subscribe that way.
I’ve been using the US audible store for a couple of years now.
Audible Japan doesn’t have a lot of English book available. What a surprise.
You don’t need VPN. Just register for that country store.
I use Audible USA because I mostly listen to educational material by English speakers. They don’t care where your credit card is from or if you’re living in Japan.
They used to give you one free book a month and you could buy “coins”. Three coins for 4,500 JPY. That was a decent deal. You could even buy a book with a coin, finish it and then return it.
The new “listen to as many books as you want” deal sounded good but just like you said, none of the books on my reading list are actually available for free. Huge disappointment. Ended up canceling.
Different thing but you should look into whether your public library in your home area has overdrive/libby. I’ve used both to get basically unlimited free audiobooks for years and it’s great. Way better deal than Audible in any country. I signed up for the card on my parent’s address and they’ve literally never checked on it.