Free Audio Books

Audio books are a great resource for the visually impaired and blind who have trouble reading.  With many outlets such as Amazon and the new Apple iBooks in iTunes, the number of books in a variety of genres is growing.  The advantage of audiobooks over using a screenreader to read the text to you is a specially recorded narrator reads the book rather than bein read by the screen reader's computer generated voice.  Books are available in a number of formats depending on the equipment being used for playback, such as CDs, cassette tapes, downloadable digital formats (eg MP3).

Whilst most audiobooks, newspapers and magazines are paid for there are a number of downloadable books available for free.  Copyright laws mean that many classic books are now in the public domain and can legally be distributed freely.  Well known books such as Tom Sawyer, Alice in Wonderland and Sherlock Holmes and authors like Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and H.G. Wells can all be found in audio formats at no cost.

The British charity Listening Books distributes a library of cd's, internet streaming or downloadable audiobooks for people who have trouble reading.  The service costs as little as £1.67 a month.  Members have free access to the ever expanding free library of fiction, non fiction and national ciriculum textbooks from the download service.

Below is a list of some of the many web sites that offer free audiobooks:

Audio Books for Free
"MP3, iPOD and DVD audiobooks (adventures, detectives, horrors, classics, children, non-fictions, philosophy, etc.) for you to download and enjoy.

Every audio book produced and recorded by professional actors/narrators and experienced directors. No computerised text-to-voice convertions have been used."


Books Should Be Free 
Hundreds of classic audio books in MP3, iTunes and iPod formats in genres such as adventure, science fiction, history, childrens, poetry and many more.

Learn Out Loud
"LearnOutLoud.com has scoured the Internet to bring you over 2000 free audio and video titles. This directory features free audio books, lectures, speeches, sermons, interviews, and many other great free audio and video resources."

NewFiction
"NewFiction offers a library o$$$◘f audio books that are performed by multiple actors. We call them iSoaps. Consider them modern-day radio dramas."  Subscribers get an update of these "iSoaps" delivered to them daily.

Open Culture
"The best free cultural & educational media on the web" with a free audiobook section. Focuses on education, including online courses and language lessons.

Storynory
Specializing in books for children, including classic literature, fairytales and educational books.

Thought Audio
"Our journey has always been one of making classic literature available to anyone willing to listen, and now in this next phase, to expand our scope to include more thinkers, writers and essayists."

Podio Books
Serialised contemporary audiobooks.

Gutenberg Project
"Project" Gutenberg is the place where you can download over 33,000 free ebooks to read on your PC, iPad, Kindle, Sony Reader, iPhone, Android or other portable device." Also has an audiobook section.

Many of the audiobook sellers, such as Talking Book Store,  do trial offers or free samples for becoming a member, so are worth checking out.