Why everyone should download Overdrive and switch to Audiobooks

 

If you’ve spent any time at all talking to me about books over the past year I’ve likely hijacked a few minutes of that conversation to expound the virtues of Overdrive (of which I cannot get enough).

Here is that sermon in print:

Audio over E: If you don’t check your phone while sitting in front of the TV or stay away from Whatsapp or Facebook while reading a multi-page article on your phone, well, congratulations! You can stop reading here and go back to what you were doing earlier. Otherwise, you’ve probably seen your reading habit suffer as a result of diminished attention span. I find that audiobooks provide the necessary sensory insulation to be able to absorb content without distraction. Further if you’re spending a material portion of your day in front of a screen anyway, it helps get your eyes and neck a rest once in a while, letting your ears do the heavy lifting.

Getting over the hump: I found getting used to audiobooks very challenging to begin with. I recommend easing yourself in, either by listening to something you’ve read already or by sticking to humour - I opted to do both and dug into Bill Bryson. Persevere through at least 5-6 hours of material before you decide to give up on audio. I promise you second wind.

The voice matters:  I tend to stay away from authors who read their own books - they don’t seem to realize that reading is as much an art as writing - the exceptions to this rule are stage and radio comedians who read their books (David Sedaris is an excellent example). Hachette and Randomhouse do an excellent job of picking pleasant and appropriate voices for their publications.

Fiction vs Non-fiction:  Non-fiction is significantly easier than fiction as you can afford to drift away if you like and still not feel lost. Fiction, the kind I read at least, requires high attention to detail and is harder to follow on audio though I continue trying. Whodunnits are the worst and I stick to my kindle for them.

Add Ons: Pacing, Snoozing etc:  Most audiobook apps allow you to modulate pace without affecting pitch - this is a life saver especially once you adjust to the format and want to kick the speed up a couple of notches. Almost all players also come with a snooze function that lets you play audio for a chosen period of time before switching off - keeps me from staring into my phone while in bed into the wee hours of the morning.

And finally..

Overdrive vs Audible:  About a year back Lifehacker did a poll on audiobook services and Audible won hands down. I’ve tried Audible and I’ve found their service to be excellent. My beef with the ecosystem though is that audiobooks are notoriously expensive vs e-books and perhaps rightly so - it takes a lot more effort to create a good audiobook and the audience for audiobooks is markedly smaller for now. Even with the subscription model that gets me a free book each month and discounts, it doesn’t make sense for me to buy books on Audible with the same frivolousness as I do on Kindle. Here is where Overdrive comes in.

Overdrive is connected to over 30,000 libraries & schools - if you have a first world library membership (such as with the NLB ) that allows you access to their audiobook collection (apart from their e-book collection) so long as you’re a library member. The app seamlessly interfaces with your library’s digital collection allowing you to sign in with your library card credentials, search and download any book you like. Getting on to Overdrive has brought me back to reading a material amount of long form content each week after trying to desperately make it work for several years. For this reason I cannot recommend it enough.

Bonus: Finally the one complaint I have with the app is the inability to view the entire audiobook collection of your library in an endless scroll without having to hit next page each time. I wrote a simple crawler for NLB here which should spit out info into text file that you can parse into something like this.

Happy listening!