By Stiv · Design, technology and personal finance
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Last chance to enter: win a year of audiobooks
The deadline. Bookshop.org is giving away twelve audiobook credits, one a month for a year, to push its UK audiobook subscription. Entries opened at 00:01 on 17 September 2026. They close at 23:59 on Sunday 20 September 2026, so enter before then if you want in.
The two ways in. You can enter by buying an audiobook subscription during those four days. Alternatively you can enter for nothing. The entry form and the promotions email address both sit on Bookshop.org's own competition page. Either way it counts as one entry, and Bookshop.org allows one entry per person.
Who can enter. You must be a UK resident aged 18 or over. Bookshop staff and their immediate families cannot enter. The promoter is Bookshoppe Limited, registered in England and Wales under company number 12831176. It notifies the winner by email after 20 September. CoolCuration has no part in running the draw and no say in who wins.
Twelve credits a year cost £155.88 at Bookshop.org and £69.99 on Audible.
Bookshop.org audiobooks run on a credit subscription. £12.99 a month buys one credit, and one credit buys any audiobook in the shop, whatever its retail price. The catalogue runs to over 500,000 titles. The books stay in your library after you cancel, and £1.30 of every £12.99 payment goes to independent bookshops. It also costs more per credit than every Audible plan I priced it against.
Section 01 · The service
What Bookshop.org audiobooks gets you for £12.99
You get one credit a month, one audiobook per credit, and a library that stays yours after you cancel.
The Bookshop.org audiobooks subscription costs £12.99 a month and hands you one credit on the day your payment clears. That credit buys any audiobook in the catalogue, so a nine-hour thriller and a forty-hour history cost the same. Bookshop.org puts the catalogue at over 500,000 titles. Billing runs monthly in advance, on the anniversary of the day you joined. It renews automatically until you stop it.
Credits do not expire at the end of the month. Bookshop.org gives them two years from the date you bought them, so a month when you do not listen still leaves you a credit to spend. You listen in the free Bookshop.org app on iOS and Android, or in a web player in a browser. The player offers adjustable speed, a sleep timer, Bluetooth output, and the choice of streaming or downloading for offline listening.
The July 2026 launch
Bookshop.org announced this three years before it shipped. It has sold audiobooks in name since 2020, when it started sending its American customers to Libro.fm to buy them. In March 2023 it announced that it would sell ebooks and audiobooks itself in the UK, on the back of a $1.8m funding round, with a test version promised for the end of that year. The subscription priced here opened in July 2026, so it had been running about two months when this prize draw started.
You cannot buy audiobooks inside the app at all. Bookshop.org refuses to hand Apple and Google their 30% cut, so every purchase happens on the website. Gift cards and store credit do not pay for audiobooks yet either. Nor can you give an audiobook to anybody else.
Section 02 · The maths
Bookshop.org audiobooks vs Audible on price
Twelve credits cost between £69.99 and £155.88 a year, depending on where you buy them.
Audible runs two monthly plans in the UK and two annual ones. Standard is £5.99 a month and Premium is £8.99. The annual plans run to £69.99 for twelve credits and £109.99 for twenty-four. Bookshop.org, by contrast, has one plan at £12.99 a month and no annual option. A year of listening therefore works out like this.
| Plan | Monthly | Twelve credits | Keep the books? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bookshop.org audiobooks | £12.99 | £155.88 | Yes, plus unused credits |
| Audible Premium, monthly | £8.99 | £107.88 | Yes, credits lost |
| Audible annual, 12 credits | £5.83 | £69.99 | Yes, credits lost |
| Audible Standard, monthly | £5.99 | £71.88 | No, titles lock on cancelling |
Prices read off each company's own pages on 18 September 2026. Audible bills its annual plans once a year, so the monthly column divides that price by twelve.
So Bookshop.org costs £48 a year more than Audible Premium. Against Audible's twelve-credit annual plan the gap widens to £85.89 a year, for the same one-book-a-month arrangement. Those are the two figures to compare, because the rest of the deal is the same on both: one credit a month, any title in the shop, and the book is yours once you have bought it.
Audible Standard and the padlock
Audible Standard is the cheapest of the four at £5.99 a month, and it works differently. A Standard member picks one audiobook a month, then keeps access only while the membership runs. Cancel, and those titles lock in the library behind a padlock icon until you rejoin. Premium credits and cash purchases stay in your library for good.
Twelve credits cost £155.88 a year at Bookshop.org and £69.99 on Audible's annual plan. About £15.60 of that £155.88 reaches bookshops.
Section 03 · The money
Where the £1.30 a month goes
The checkout prints £1.30 against a £12.99 payment, and shows it before you pay.
At checkout, underneath the £12.99 total, Bookshop.org tells you what your payment raises: £1.30 for local bookshops, on every monthly payment. Over a year that is £15.60. The company says it gives over 80% of its profit margin to independent bookshops, and that it supports over 650 stores. The running total on the UK site stood at £5,312,157.45 when I checked it on 18 September 2026.
Until July a UK independent could sell you a hardback through Bookshop.org but not the audio edition, so that £1.30 is money the shop had no way of earning before. The Bookseller covered that launch in July, reporting it as Bookshop.org's number one request from the shops it works with. Its framing was that indies could finally sell in all three formats rather than two. You choose which bookshop gets your £1.30 at checkout, the same way you would on a print order.
Do the arithmetic before you switch, though. Moving from Audible's annual plan to Bookshop.org costs you £85.89 a year and sends £15.60 of that to bookshops. You may well want to make that swap. It will not save you money.
Section 04 · The gaps
What Bookshop.org audiobooks does not do yet
There is no included catalogue, no free trial, no annual plan and no way to buy one as a gift.
The included catalogue
Bookshop.org audiobooks have none. Audible Premium bundles an all-you-can-listen library of Originals, audiobooks and podcasts on top of the credit, and runs member-only sales and discounts on extra purchases. One credit buys one book, and nothing else comes with the subscription.
The catalogue size
Bookshop.org's figure is over 500,000 titles. Audible publishes no catalogue count for the UK at all, so there is no like-for-like comparison to make. Availability also varies by publisher rights, region and release status, and a title on sale in print is not always on sale as audio. So search the catalogue for the next two or three things you want to listen to before you pay for anything.
The app
The Bookshop.org app arrived on the UK App Store on 30 September 2025. It holds a 4.6 rating from 89 ratings. Audible's app holds 4.8 from 754,633. Eighty-nine people cannot tell you much about quality either way. They do tell you the app is new: it first shipped in September 2025, so it has had far less time than Audible's to have its faults found and fixed.
No free trial
Audible gives new members 30 days free on either plan. Bookshop.org advertises no trial on its audiobooks page, in its subscription panel, or anywhere in its audiobook help pages. So you pay the full £12.99 before you have heard a minute of anything.
The top-up credit condition
You can buy extra credits whenever you like, but only while your subscription is running. Bookshop.org also does not publish what a top-up credit costs. Cancel, and you keep everything already in your library, but you cannot buy another credit until you subscribe again.
Copy protection
Audiobooks carry digital rights management, the encryption publishers apply to stop people copying files. Bookshop.org is clear that you licence rather than own what you buy. It also promises that a title its publisher pulls stays playable for anyone who already bought it, and that it will refund you if access ever goes.
UK payment only, and no gifting
You need a UK payment method. Gift cards and store credit do not work for audiobooks either, and you cannot send an audiobook to somebody as a present. So if you were planning to buy a relative a year of listening, this is not yet the shop for it.
Section 05 · The verdict
Who Bookshop.org audiobooks suits, and who should stay with Audible
It comes down to how much you listen, and whether £1.30 a month to bookshops is worth the extra £4.
One book a month, and a view about where the money goes. At that rate you pay about £4 a month over Audible Premium. In return, £1.30 of each payment goes to independent shops, your unused credits survive cancellation, and those credits have two years to run. If that swap suits you, the service does what it says: the credit buys any title, the app plays it, and the library stays yours.
Heavy listeners. The all-you-can-listen catalogue, the twenty-four-credit annual plan at £4.58 a credit and the member discounts all reward heavy listeners. None of them has a Bookshop.org counterpart. Equally, if you already own hundreds of Audible titles, those stay in Audible's app. There is no way to transfer them.
Anyone undecided. The UK subscription is two months old and the app has 89 ratings. There is no trial to test it with, and no annual plan to bring the price down. Meanwhile my monthly best audiobooks guide keeps running whatever shop you buy from. September's edition is the place to find something worth a credit. For the incumbent's side of the argument, my Audible service guide has the plan detail in one place.
See the Bookshop.org audiobook catalogue
Bookshop.org audiobooks FAQs
How much do Bookshop.org audiobooks cost?
The subscription is £12.99 a month and includes one credit. That credit buys any audiobook in the catalogue, regardless of its retail price. You can buy extra credits on top while the subscription is active, though Bookshop.org does not publish what they cost. Price checked at Bookshop.org on 18 September 2026.
Do I keep the audiobooks if I cancel?
Yes. Bookshop.org audiobooks are yours once bought, and Bookshop.org says you keep every audiobook you have bought with a credit. You also keep the balance of any credits you have not spent, which is unusual. Audible keeps your purchased and credit-bought titles too, but unused Audible credits disappear when the membership ends.
Are Bookshop.org audiobooks cheaper than Audible?
No. Twelve credits cost £155.88 a year at Bookshop.org. Audible Premium monthly costs £107.88, and Audible's twelve-credit annual plan costs £69.99. Audible Standard is cheaper still at £71.88, though Standard titles lock when you cancel, so it is not the same thing.
Does buying an audiobook actually help a bookshop?
The checkout shows £1.30 raised for local bookshops on a £12.99 subscription payment, so about a tenth of what you pay. Bookshop.org says it passes over 80% of its profit margin to independent shops and supports over 650 of them, with £5,312,157.45 raised in the UK so far.
Can I listen without the app?
Yes. Bookshop.org audiobooks play in a web player as well as in the iOS and Android apps, so a laptop works. You cannot, however, buy an audiobook inside the app. Bookshop.org will not pay Apple and Google their 30% in-app fee. Purchases happen on the website and then appear in the app.
How do I enter the prize draw?
Entries close at 23:59 on Sunday 20 September 2026. You can enter by buying an audiobook subscription in the window. Alternatively you can enter free of charge, through the entry form and promotions email address on Bookshop.org's competition page. The promoter is Bookshoppe Limited, company number 12831176.
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