Libro FM and AudiobookShelf Are Seamless

For years I was very happy with Audible, until it was bought by Amazon, and then I felt the desire to move away because I didn’t want to feed a monopoly. It is through my desire to break free from Audible that I began to experiment with stripping DRM from books, first so that I could listen on more devices, but also so that if, for any reason, Amazon, and Audible, went bankrupt I wouldn’t lose my library of books.

One of the simplest tools to strip DRM is OpenAudible. I paid for the yearly license to support their project. I strip the DRM for my own personal use, with no intention of sharing with people, to stay in line with copyright law.

It is worth highlighting that this is a critical step if you want to listen to Audible books via Audiobookshelf, a self-hosted alternative for listening to books, podcasts and more.

Audiobookshelf caters to three niches. It caters to those that love audiobooks and pocasts but don’t want to pay for pocketcasts, or get trapped within Audible’s paywall, or be forced to listen to adverts.

Recently the BBC began to automatically inject ads into their podcasts for people outside the UK. This might sound like nothing but when you have a loud advert in French or German, ahead of an English language podcast it is excruciating, to the point that I gave up on BBC podcasts.

I did try using a shell script to top and tail the adverts out of podcasts but their cunning plan was to shift the adverts to the middle of podcasts, and that is much harder to strip out.

Whilst I did temporarily try stripping ads out of podcasts I did continue listening to podcasts with no ads or where I could be a patron and get an ad free podcast. Within this context it makes sense to use Audiobookshelf.

For a while I had dozens of podcasts that I could listen to via Audiobookshelf but I stopped. There are two key reasons for this. The first is that there is no iOS friendly Audiobookshelf interface, especially when driving, so you need to fiddle with firefox. When driving this is out of the question.

That’s where we get to Libro.fm. Libro,fm is a collaboration of bookshops around the world that allow you to buy books online whilst supporting local shops. In my case when I buy from Libro.fm I support Books, Books, Books in Lausanne. When I say buy I mean that I pay 9 CHF per month for one credit a month, and with that credit I can buy any book I want, for 9 CHF. As long as a book is more than 9 CHF it is worth using the token rather than paying for a book.

Recently I noticed that they have book sales. You can buy books for 2-5 CHF each, instead of spending a 9 CHF credit.

Libro.fm allows you to buy books and listen to them directly via their app, but they also make it very easy to download the book, upload it to Audiobookshelf and listen at your convenience.

Within twenty seconds you can download from libro.fm, upload to Audiobookshelf and listen from your server. If you’re on a road trip with iOS and Apple Car Play you can use the Libro.fm app for simplicity.

Both complement each other well.