I listen to audio books all the time, exclusively through Audible.com, almost a book a week. With some audio books, there are great passages and sections that I want to bookmark so I can refer back to them easily, and sometimes I want to share the snippets with my Mom or friends. Can I do that with Audible.com or the Audible app?
Another Audible.com fan. I too listen to audio books all the time, often having more than one book going simultaneously (one at the gym, one while I’m driving). Right now I’m listening to Stephen Baxter’s sci-fi book ARK and Martin Turnbull’s The Garden on Sunset, rather a bit of a soap opera that takes place in 1930’s Hollywood.
With both, I also find passages where it’s particularly evocative, I really like the author’s prose, or I just enjoy the accent of the reader as they wind their way through a particularly thorny passage. Until recently, there wasn’t much we could do about bookmarking specific passages and sharing them with family and friends, but the Audible app now supports a feature called Clips that does exactly what you request!
In fact, let me show you how I heard a great line in The Garden on Sunset, clipped it, then shared that clip with my friends on Facebook. All with just a few taps!
To start, the latest version of Audible for iPhone looks like this when listening to an audio book. You’ve probably seen this view a thousand times!
Look closely, though. You’ve probably never noticed the “+ Clip” on the lower right. That’s what’s new.
Tap on “+ Clip” when you’re at a particularly pithy, thorny or other passage you want to save or share.
The Audible app then pops up a note that the spot has been clipped:
You can just proceed with your listening, but tap on “Add Note” so you can add a note or just fine tune the Clip to have exactly the start and end point you desire. The screen looks like this, with a simple slider:
By alternating between play/stop and dragging the start and end markers, you should be able to precisely get the desired passage. Max length is 45 seconds, but my Clips are always shorter than that.
Want to add a mnemonic note either for yourself or your friends? Tap on “Enter a title” and type in whatever you’d like.
Done? Great. Tap on “Done” on the top right and you can go back to listening to your audio book, total elapsed time just a few seconds.
Let’s share this snippet on Facebook, shall we?
Tap on “Share” and you’ll see lots of share options!
To share this Audible Clip on Facebook, I’ll just tap on the Facebook icon.
Moments later I’m looking at a Facebook share screen, able to type in a witty comment or invitation for my friends and family to listen to the Clip and perhaps even purchase the audio book if they’re so inclined:
You can see what I’ve typed in. A tap on “Post” and it’s posted on Facebook.
Wondering what it looks like? Here’s the Facebook version of the posted content, viewed from a Web browser:
If my followers and friends click on the audio book cover, they’ll be able to listen to the clip even if they don’t have an Audible account.
Really super easy.
In fact, want to listen to my Clip from The Garden on Sunset? Just click: Dave’s Audible Clip from “The Garden on Sunset”.
As I said at the beginning, however, this is also a way for you to bookmark passages too. How do you work with that? It’s easy.
Back in the Audible App where you’re listening, notice that there is a three dots button on the top right:
Tap on the three dots (should we be erudite and call it an ellipses? Maybe.)
It brings up a menu with tons of choices:
Here you want to tap on “Clips and Bookmarks” and it’ll show you a list of every Clip you’ve created, including the title of the Clip if you added one:
That’s it. Now you know how to create Clips in the Audible app that you can email, send via text message or even share on social media like Facebook with your friends and family. And your Mom! You also now how to access your Clip list later to reference favorite passages and sections from audio books you’ve listened to even months or years ago. Super helpful!
Not a member of Audible.com yet? You really should sign up!
This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Audible. The opinions and text are all mine.
Hey Dave,
Thank you for giving my book a go. I hope you’ve been enjoying it.
I was curious to hear which line caught your eye, so I followed your link
https://www.audible.com/socialshare?id=317451a0-7bd9-4ad4-95e6-4a2ccf827a36&source_code=AIPORWS04241590BF
but when I click play, nothing happens. I tried it on Firefox and Safari, but it failed to work on both browsers.
BTW, I now follow you on FB – you’ve got some handy-dandy tips!