If you want to share Audible books with your family and friends but you are not exactly sure how to do it, you are in the right place.
Here you will learn the step-by-step process to share Audible books for free in an easy way.
However, before you proceed, you should know that there are certain restrictions on sharing Audible books.
I have explained three separate methods in this article along with their restrictions and drawbacks. I hope at least one of them will be suitable for you as per your requirement.
Let’s dive in and see how to share audible books…
You might already know about this feature if you share Amazon Prime benefits with your family. If not, you can follow similar steps for Prime sharing too.
To be able to share audible books in your family library, you will first have to set up your Amazon household and then add devices in which you want to share them.
Each step is explained below, but before that let’s have a brief overview of Amazon Household and who are eligible to share Audible books via this feature.
About Amazon Household
Amazon Household is a feature that allows you to share your Amazon’s selected contents and benefits with another adult, teens, and children in your household while still maintaining your own account’s security and privacy.
Your Amazon Household can have a maximum of 10 members (Including you) as follows:
- Two Adults: Each adult needs to have their own Amazon account.
- Up to Four Teen Profiles: Age of each teen should be between 13 to 17 years. They cannot share contents though.
- Up to Four Child Profiles: Suggested for children below the age of 12. Their profiles are created from an adult’s account.
But the sad part is that you cannot share your Audible contents with all of them. In fact, only the two adults can share their audible benefits with each other. Children and teens can only enjoy some selected benefits and that does not include audible membership benefits sharing.
So basically, through Amazon Household sharing, you can share audible books with only one other amazon member. If that is what you want, then this is the best method you have.
Here are two important points that you should keep in mind:
- Each member must be from the same region/country to join the same Amazon household.
- If you leave Amazon household, you cannot join any other Amazon household with the same account for the next 180 days. However, you can re-join the old Amazon household again.
If you already have set up your Amazon household, you can skip the next section and jump to adding devices to the family library.
Set up Amazon Household
Here’s a step-by-step process to set up Amazon Household to add another adult account:
1. Log in to your Amazon account and click on the ‘Accounts & Lists’ menu.
2. Once you are on your account page, scroll down and click on the link ‘Amazon Household’ under the title ‘Shopping programs and rentals’
3. You will land on Amazon Household Homepage
4. Now click on ‘Add Adult’. You will be asked to enter your Amazon password. Enter your password and sign in.
5. After you sign in again, you need to enter the name and email address of the member you want to invite to the Amazon household. Enter them and then press continue.
6. You will now be asked to share your wallet (your payment details) with the member. Press on ‘Agree and Continue’
7. Choose what you would like to share with the member and press continue.
8. You will again be asked to enter the name and email id of the member. Enter it and click on ‘Send Invite’
10. The other member will get an email with the link to join your invite.
11. After he follows the link, he will have to go through similar steps as above like agreeing to share his wallet, choosing what to share in the library, etc.
12. On completing all the steps, he will get a confirmation message on the screen like this:
After you have joined the household, you can now see each other’s content on Audible official website after logging in and going to the library section.
But you will still not be able to access them in your devices like Android, iPhone, Kindle, etc.
To see the audible books in your devices, you need to first add your device to the family library. It is simple and is explained in the next section.
Allow Devices in the Family Library
1. Go to your account section and then click on ‘Content and Devices’ as shown in the screenshot below.
2. From the menu on top, choose ‘Devices’.
3. In the device page, click on the action button and check the box under Family Library. (Do this for all the devices you want to share audible books with)
That’s it. You can now see shared audiobooks in your devices.
Devices on which you can share Audible books
Audible Library Sharing is compatible with a large number of devices. Here’s a list of devices that supports library sharing:
- Audible app for Android
- Audible app for iOS
- Audible Cloud Player
- PC & Mac computer
- Fire HD 6″, Fire HD 7″ and Fire HD 8.9
- Kindle Fire HDX and Kindle Fire HDX 8.9
- Kindle Fire 2nd Generation
- Kindle Fire HD 7″, Kindle Fire HD 8.9
- Kindle Reading App for iOS
- Kindle Reading App for Android
2. Using Multiple Device Log in Feature
There is no limit on the number of devices you can use with your Audible account. You can use it in as many devices as you want.
So, if you are comfortable with sharing your account details, including your payment options with your family members, you can opt for this method.
Audiobooks are expensive and it doesn’t really make sense that different members of the family buy different copies of the same book. So using the same account in different devices can actually be very economical, especially if you have a common reading (or listening) list.
Wondering whether it is legal or not?
Why should it not be? As long as you are keeping it within your family members and as long as Audible is allowing its use in multiple devices, it is legal.
However, there are certain drawbacks to using this method. Here are some of them:
- Since other members have access to your account, your account’s privacy is compromised.
- Your payment options can be misused
- Since Audible syncs to all devices that it is being used with your account, you may not be able to sync your own devices as per your personal listening plans.
- Your Audible App stats will no longer be relevant to you as it will include a cumulative stats of all the members using your account.
3. Sending Book Via Audible App
With this method, you can send a book to your friend for free provided that it’s the first time that your friend is accepting a book from anyone.
You can send a book to as many friends as you want, but only those who have not accepted any book via this method before will be able to get it for free.
However, the total number of successful free recommendations is capped to 10. That is, only the first 10 recipients who redeem your recommendation for an audiobook will receive it for free.
Besides, you will only be able to send those books that you have in your own Audible library.
Here’s how to send a book using this method:
1. Go to the library section of your Audible app.
3. From the options, choose ‘Send this Book’
4. You will get three options to share – Message, Mail, or WhatsApp.
5. Choose one and send.
6. An auto generated message with a link will be sent to your friend. He will then be able to get the book for free from the link.
So these were three methods or tips on how to share Audible books with family and friends for free. I hope this was helpful to you.
If you have any doubts or confusion regarding any of the methods above, please share in the comment section below. I would be glad to answer them as best as I can.
With “Sending Book via Audible app”, are recipients of a title from my library required to be current Audible members?
Also-there is not an option to send via text message?
Thank you!
Yes Jenn, the recipients must be an Audible member to listen to the audiobooks. They can get a free trial for the first month if they are not already a member.
And about the text message, the process of sharing might have changed. You may try to share via other platforms.
If my husband and I both already have Audible and I add him to household Sharing so we can share audible books, will we each still get our own monthly credit?
Yes, you both will get your monthly credits!
I don’t quite understand how I get 3rd credit with this, or are you essentially saying that I just get a 3rd credit that I give away? In other words, do I get a 3rd credit to use myself or is just to be shared? If I get to use it, somehow I am missing how to do that part. Help!
Hi Heather,
You don’t get a ‘third credit’. If that would be the case, you could purchase any audiobook of your choice using that credit.
What you actually get is an audiobook that is shared by your friend with you. I understand it is quite confusing. So let me explain this with an example.
Suppose you are a current Audible member and so is your friend, Penny. Let’s say, you want to get the audiobook ‘Becoming by Michelle Obama’. Coincidentally, your friend Penny already has that book in her library (May be she purchased it before). Now, you can ask penny to share that book with you using ‘Send this book’ option (Explained in the article above). Once she shares that book with you, you can get the book from the shared link for free. Similarly, you too can send any book from your library to any friend who has not received a book using this method before.
But please note that this method will only work once if you are at the receiving end. And if you are the sender, you can share books up to 10 different users.
I hope this might clear your confusion. If you have any further questions, please let me know. I would be happy to help.
When husband sent book and I click on link, I just get sample. Clicked on I want this book, and it says it’s in my library, but it is not
Hi Donna.
If this was the first time that you received a book via ‘Send this book’ option, then there should not be any problem. But, if you have already received a book for free using this method before, you won’t get it again. It only works once.
Another possible reason could be that you were logged in to your husband’s Audible account in your browser. Please try clearing your browsing history and cookies and try again. Or try to open the link in an incognito mode. If that too doesn’t work, you can contact Audible’s customer care.
I hope that helps.