Give Librivox a Hand

≡ Category: Audio Books |Leave a Comment

Perhaps you’re already familiar with Librivox. If not, you should be. Librivox provides over 3000 free audio books. The books (all in the public domain) are recorded by a passionate community of volunteers, and they’re all made freely available to you. (See their catalogue here.) Millions of people have downloaded their books. And, as you [...]

Jonathan Safran Foer on Eating

≡ Category: Audio Books, Books, Literature |Leave a Comment

Note: You should be able to download Safran Foer’s new book for free (in audio format) through Audible.com’s no strings attached offer. Details here.

Disney Kindle Commando Sunday is Here!

≡ Category: Amazon Kindle, Audio Books, Books, Literature |4 Comments

Today’s free story: When They Were Calling You in for Dinner (listen here) or read it in the Charles River Review [To download the story and listen on your MP3 player, just right-click and "save file as..."]
Dear OC readers,
About a week ago, I posted here about my Publishing Experiment Take 1. I spoke of the need [...]

Free Download of A Confederacy of Dunces

≡ Category: Audio Books, Literature |1 Comment

A quick note: Audible is currently running a nice deal. Click here to get a free download of the 1981 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, A Confederacy of Dunces. (Move quickly, it’s probably available for just a short time.) You can also download pretty much any audiobook you want from Audible, with no strings attached. I’ve included [...]

Uranium Wars: A Free Audio Chapter

≡ Category: Audio Books, Science |Leave a Comment

Just a quick fyi: Audible.com is giving away a free chapter (in audio) from a new book, Uranium Wars: The Scientific Rivalry that Created the Nuclear Age (preview it on Amazon here). Written by Amir Aczel, a skilled popular science writer, the book takes a close look at the scientists who discovered the destructive potential [...]

Good “Reads” On Audible (with Freebie Possibilities)

≡ Category: Audio Books, Books, Literature |2 Comments

A quick note: Audible has recently launched a series called the Audible Modern Vanguard (more details here) that brings groundbreaking works and authors into unabridged audio for the first time. Here, you’ll find works by Paul Auster (one of my faves), Saul Bellow, John Cheever, John Irving, Kurt Vonnegut, and William Kennedy.
There are some good “reads” [...]

The Future of Content Delivery

≡ Category: Amazon Kindle, Audio Books, Books, Podcast Articles and Resources |3 Comments

This podcast (get it here) presents the thoughts of Scott Sigler–media maven, NY Times Bestselling Author of INFECTED and CONTAGIOUS (both available free as podcasts), podiobook dynamo, and social networking mastermind–on none other than ”how will people read books in the near future?”
In this repodcast of his keynote speech at this year’s Balticon conference, Scott talks about [...]

Chris Anderson @ Google

≡ Category: Audio Books, Books, Google |1 Comment

Chris Anderson, the author of Free: The Future of a Radical Price (download a free audio file of the book here) is making the rounds, promoting his new book. Of course, it was only natural that Anderson (also the author of The Long Tail and editor-in-chief of Wired) should pay a visit to Google, a company that [...]

Never Mind Amazon, Get Your Free Orwell Here

≡ Category: Audio Books, Books |1 Comment

The whole mini-controversy surrounding Amazon’s deletion of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm from Kindle accounts reminded me of something. Over at the Internet Archive, you can find 1984 available as a free audio book. And, nicely, the recording is professionally done. You can download the full zip file here. Or alternatively you can get the individual mp3 files, or [...]

Update: How to Get “Free” Anywhere

≡ Category: Audio Books, Business, Economics |1 Comment

Ok, sorry to belabor this. Earlier today, I mentioned that you could download the audiobook of Chris Anderson’s Free: The Future of a Radical Price at Audible for no cost. It turns out that the Audible offer isn’t available to a worldwide audience. It may just be available to US residents. The good news is that [...]

Now Download Free Audiobook of Chris Anderson’s “Free”

≡ Category: Audio Books, Business, Economics |4 Comments

A quick update: Yesterday, I mentioned that you can grab on Google Books and Scribd a free e-book of Chris Anderson’s latest work, Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Today, I discovered that you can also download an audiobook version of Free over at Audible.com. It will cost you nothing. But you will need to [...]

James Joyce Reading from Finnegans Wake

≡ Category: Audio Books, Literature |2 Comments

On Bloomsday (June 16), BoingBoing featured a rare audio recording of James Joyce reading from Finnegans Wake (mp3). It’s a bit intriguing to hear his voice and accent. Also, we came across another Joyce recording, where, this time, he’s reading Anna Livia Plurabelle, another section of the same novel. For kicks, you can catch an animated [...]

Stephen Colbert Reads Joyce’s Ulysses

≡ Category: Audio Books, Books |Leave a Comment

Every June 16 is Bloomsday, which commemorates James Joyce’s Ulysses (get free audio of the text here). In Dublin and around the world, celebrations usually include a reading of Joyce’s classic. Last year, in New York City, one high-profile event featured Stephen Colbert reading the part of Leopold Bloom, the character around which the sprawling novel [...]

Sedaris Reads “Solution to Saturday’s Puzzle”

≡ Category: Audio Books, Comedy |Leave a Comment

Not long ago, we featured David Sedaris reading “Of Mice and Men,” a comic bit from his newish book, When You are Engulfed in Flames. Now, we give you another funny (also live) reading from the same book. The story is called “Solution to Saturday’s Puzzle,” and you can get it as an mp3 here.
Related Content:
David [...]

Writing in the Digital Age: It’s All About the Platform

≡ Category: Audio Books, Books, e-books |4 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, crime writer Seth Harwood wrote a very popular piece here – How I Sold My Book by Giving It Away. Now he’s back and telling us about the new challenge of writing in the digital age. Take it away Seth (and check out his new book JACK WAKES UP )…
The [...]

Listen to 1800 Free Audio Books on Your iPhone

≡ Category: Apple, Audio Books, iPhone |1 Comment

The iPhone just got a bit smarter. Thanks to this new, free app, you can listen to 1800 free audio books on your Apple device. The app lets you listen to public domain audio books from the great Librivox (whose works, read by volunteers, also appear in our Free Audio Books collection). The ad-supported software is straightforward [...]

How I Sold My Book by Giving It Away

≡ Category: Audio Books, Books, Most Popular |21 Comments

Today we’re featuring a piece by Seth Harwood, an innovative crime fiction writer who has used the tools of Web 2.0 to launch his writing career. Below, he gives you an inside look at how he went from podcasting his books to landing a book deal with Random House. If you want to learn more [...]

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

≡ Category: Audio Books, Literature |Leave a Comment

From The Internet Archive: “Recorded here is the complete, original story The Curious Case of Benjamin Button as penned by Fitzgerald in the early 1920s, published originally in Colliers and finally collected in the popular Tales of the Jazz Age.” You can download and listen to this Fitzgerald story here. Multiple formats are available. We’ve also  added [...]

Crime Fiction: Download and Listen

≡ Category: Audio Books |1 Comment

Seth Harwood is bringing crime writing into the new world of Web 2.0. Since 2006, Harwood has been podcasting his own crime fiction, including a book called Jack Wakes Up, which you can download (for free) via iTunes, RSS Feed, or MP3. (Random House will be releasing Jack Wakes Up in print next month for [...]

Seth Godin’s Tribes: Download the Free Audio Book

≡ Category: Audio Books, Business |1 Comment

The audio book version of Seth Godin’s latest book, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, can be downloaded for free from Audible.com. Godin is the best-selling author of entrepreneurial business books and writes a popular blog on “marketing, respect, and the ways ideas spread.” In print, the book usually costs $13.57 and runs 160 [...]

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  • About Us

    Open Culture editor Dan Colman scours the web for the best educational media. He finds the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & movies you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.

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