So firstly what is the difference between audiobooks and podcasts?

They are both increasingly popular forms of audio entertainment, both are readily available on your smartphone or computer and both are digital audio files meant for listening too.  

A ‘podcast’ is an episodic series of audio content run by one or more hosts. It can take a variety of formats, from quick news roundups to round-table discussions, unsolved mysteries, science and much more. Typically, podcast shows release on a regular schedule and allow subscribers to get new episodes right away. 

An ‘audiobook’ on the other hand is a professional audio recording of an existing text, usually a book. The content of audiobooks almost always exists in another non-audio format, meaning that they provide an alternate way to consume the same content. Unlike podcasts, audiobooks release as a single product and are not episodic.

Both audiobooks and podcasts are a wonderful form of entertainment and give us all some much-needed respite from watching TV. They can be enjoyed while relaxing at home, in the car and on the move. You can explore topics that stretch your brain and teach you new things, you can relax listening to a new novel..the world is your oyster! And it’s a fraction of the cost of enrolling in a course or buying a book from the book store.

Here are some podcasts suggestions to get you started:

• Casefile: True Crime – a podcast that proves fact is scarier than fiction
• TED Talks Daily – hear thought-provoking ideas on every subject imaginable
• The Hungry Gardener – listen to Costa and your favourites at a time that suits you best
• Screen Dive – a look at 20th Century Fox’s most iconic films
• Who The Hell is Hamish – (One of our personal favourites) The Australian’s Greg Bearup delves into the fascinating yet devastating life of a serial conman and asks the question, Who the Hell is Hamish?

Here are five audiobook platforms to investigate:

Audible – Audible remains the best audiobook apps, with more than 470,000 titles in its library. Audible audiobook player offers solid playback features, with chapter navigation, bookmarks, a sleep mode, variable playback speed and multitasking support for background playback and downloading.

Audiobooks – RB Audiobooks’ cloud-based Audiobooks.com platform also is a solid choice among the best audiobook apps for Android and iOS listeners, allowing subscribers to choose from a library of more than 150,000 audiobooks from every genre that they can stream or download for offline listening.

Serial Box – Rather than splurge on a single fat novel or audiobook, readers and listeners can spring for shorter, episodic content through Serial Box, which offers bite-sized chunks of novels that are perfect for your commute or break time.

Google Play Books – Google Play Books also builds in audiobook features, allowing you to listen to your purchased audiobooks across platforms and devices. That enables listeners to pick up where they left off on their Android device, iPhone, or desktop PC. Audiobook controls allow you to skip ahead or scroll along the timeline, jump to chapters, and configure playback speed and a snooze timer.

Nook Audiobooks – Barnes & Noble offers the Nook Audiobooks app, with a store library of more than 50,000 titles across a variety of genres. Rather than use a subscription model like Audible or Audiobooks.com, Nook features an online store where users can buy books, and then download and listen to them through the app.