You can purchase Audible books individually or in groups of 12 or 24 at a discounted price. Most major releases are available on the date of the printed book's release many can even be preordered at special prices. Their collection currently includes well over 150,000 books and periodicals. is far and away the largest provider of downloadable recorded books. Recorded books can also be directly downloaded from the Internet in a single large file. Most can also be copied, or “ripped,” to MP3 music files, so they can be enjoyed on your computer, or copied to a smartphone or tablet so you can listen on the go. They usually arrive as a set of MP3 CDs, which can be played using any standard music CD player. Most recordings are produced by the book publishers, and are read by actors or the author him- or herself. You can also rent and purchase recorded books online at sites such as Audio Editions and These days nearly every bookstore and library features a special section devoted to recorded books. Even so, over the past fifteen years the recorded books industry has flourished, and it’s now possible to purchase or borrow a wealth of new books in recorded format, often the very day the print edition is published.

Books on Tape no longer makes their titles available to the general public they now focus on providing books to schools and libraries. Over 30 years ago, Books on Tape began producing recorded versions of best sellers and other books and making cassette versions available to the general public either through purchase or rental.

In this section we will describe several ways to obtain books that have been recorded for loan or purchase by all readers, regardless of vision status. While the resources discussed in special text collections will doubtless provide you with a lifetime of reading, it is also possible to obtain mainstream recorded and audio books.

Books on tape to rent