Have an Audible subscription you’re not taking advantage of? Running out of tricks to teach your Echo Dot or Google Nest Mini? What if we told you there’s a way to seamlessly mesh your digital audiobooks with your favorite voice assistant?
In this step-by-step guide, we break down the audiobook services that are available for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, how to teach your devices to read these books, and how you can control your reading experience with both brands. In no time at all, you’ll be lounging in your study with a glass of chardonnay, as Grandmother
For Alexa
What audiobook services are available?
Using any Alexa-enabled speaker, listeners are able to take advantage of two Amazon-supported audiobook services: Audible and Kindle. A big convenience with both libraries is that Amazon owns each one, which virtually eliminates any kind of setup. For
If you’re new to Audible, your first 30 days are free on Amazon, and signup is just a matter of entering your email and linking to your Amazon account. Your free trial also nets you one free audiobook and two
For Kindle users, the options are a bit more limited. Your
Controlling through the Alexa app
For both
Once you select a book, you’ll be asked which
Tapping the bar will expand control options to fill the screen. From here, you’ll be able to select book chapters, rewind, and fast forward in 30-second jumps, and you can also choose other devices to play your book on.
How to use voice commands
If your Audible-subscribed family of four each uses their own Amazon voice profiling,
For Google Assistant
What audiobook services are available?
There’s only audiobook service with Google Home, and that’s Google. As an Android user (or as someone who prefers the Google Play Store), you’ll buy audiobooks straight through the Google Play Books app. Doing so is quite simple.
To begin, open the Play Store app and tap Books at the bottom of the homepage. At the top of the next screen, tap Audiobooks.
Run a search for the title you want or scroll down and spend some time perusing the many Google-curated categories. Once you buy a book, it’ll automatically be synced to the mind grapes of your
Controlling through the Google Home app
Playback and volume options are available for audiobooks using the
How to use voice commands
Now it’s time to talk to your
With Google Voice Match set up, other family members can request audiobooks from the library of the person who created the Voice Match profile. You can also share audiobooks with other family members if they’re set up through Google’s Family Plan service in the Google Home app.
We also love how well a full network of Google devices can pass an audiobook around. You can pause your book on your bedroom Nest Mini, run downstairs to the living room, and fire up the same book on the kitchen Mini by saying, “Hey Google, resume.”
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