The upshot is now that I’m less likely to buy any version of The Circle. This is $3.43 more than I would spend if I purchased the Audible version of The Circle with one of my Platinum Audible credits. The book is Whispersync for Voice enabled (yeah!), but the cost for adding the Audible book after the Kindle book purchase is $12.99.

Take for example a book that I’d like to read, The Circle by Dave Eggers. This means that there is no incentive to bundle the purchase. The crazy thing that Amazon is doing is that in many cases the Whisperync deal (to add the audiobook to the Kindle book purchase) is a worse deal than buying the Audible book (with one of my credits) and the Kindle book separately.

Under the Platinum Plan you can roll over up to 12 credits if you have not used them in a year, but in practice I listen to many more than 24 books each year so this is not an issue). (Actually 24 credits, but one credit always equals one book). This means that I give Audible (which remember is own by Amazon) $229.50 in exchange for 24 books. I’m a longtime Audible Platinum subscriber. In future blog posts I’ll share some thoughts about how Whispersync changes both the book reading and book buying experience, and why I think this Whispersync technology has implication for education.įor now, I want to vent a little bit (or even better get Amazon’s attention) about how poorly Amazon is executing the pricing strategy for Whispersync-enabled books. I listen on my iPhone, and then switch back and forth between listening and reading the e-book version on my Kindle Paperwhite or on the iOS Kindle app. This works great as along as you listen to the book through an Audible app. Whispersync will then keep the audio version and the e-book version synced up. The way it works is that you first buy the Kindle book, and then for Whispersync enabled books you can add the Audibile audiobook to the purchase. Whispersync is Amazon’s technology that lets readers switch “ back and forth between a Kindle book and Audible professional narration - without ever losing your place.”

Amazon kindle app sync