Audible is the the world's largest audiobook service. Many users subscribe to an Audible Premium plan, which gives you credits that can be redeemed for audiobooks. New users often don't realize that these credits expire after 1 year!
The ethics of this credit scheme are certainly debatable, but it struck me as an opportunity. Every month, thousands of Audible users have expiring credits that often never get used. What if there were an easy way to use those expiring credits to send audiobooks to other people? Well, that's exactly what Audiobook Wish plans to provide!
How it works
When you sign up for an Audiobook Wish account, you can offer to donate your expiring credits or build a wishlist of audiobooks you're interested in. Once a month, the site will email registered donors with some suggested matches for audiobooks they could gift to other people. If a donor chooses to make a gift, the site will provide the contact info of the recipient and the donor will send the audiobook through Audible's "Give as a gift" feature. A few minutes later, the recipient will receive an email from Audible with instructions for accessing their gift audiobook. It's a win-win!
What does it cost?
Using Audiobook Wish is totally free for all users. If you want receive audiobooks as a gift, you will need to have an Audible account, but you don't need to subscribe to any paid plan.
Is this allowed by Audible/Amazon?
As far as we can tell, yes. We're not automating any actions. Donors have to manually use the "Give as a gift" feature of Audible to gift an audiobook. We never ask users for their Audible account information. The marginal cost of an audiobook is basically zero, so Audible is not losing anything by letting people send gift audiobooks. And there's a good chance that using Audiobook Wish will increase user engagement for Audible, which they should like.
Does Audiobook Wish have a business model?
The monthly emails we send to donors may also include suggested audiobooks that they might like. We plan to charge audiobook authors/publishers to appear in these suggestions.