AudioBook SYNC Blog

Week 4’s free audiobooks bring listeners an #OwnVoices pair that include a stage play and a novel, each based on real events. Thank you L. A. Theatre Works and Scholastic Audio for these outstanding and free audiobooks.

Week 2 of this year’s SYNC program provides participants with one #OwnVoices work of realistic fiction and another providing a journalistic account of factual events that are as compelling as anything a novelist might create.

With just one week to go before SYNC 2020 opening day, it’s time to make a few last minute announcements to make sure listeners in your locale can access their free audiobooks.

Three more weeks! And we know you still have questions. Some are about accessing free audiobooks for teens during the program and other questions we are hearing include: why for teenage listeners?

We are just over a month from the launch of our 11th season. For those new to SYNC, there are a few details that can being you up to speed quickly: SYNC Audiobooks for Teens provides free to keep downloads of excellent audiobooks. Only individuals, not libraries or other institutional collections, can access and keep these files. And when we say keep, we mean keep. Each title is available for one week only so even if you don’t plan to listen to that title during its week, make sure you grab it because when the week is gone it is, too.

We have a lot of nearly-ready for prime time tools that will land across the next couple of weeks. Consider this a “be on the lookout for” notice.

AudiobookSYNC has been a staple in a variety of teen summer reading programs where listening to books is (rightfully, we think) accepted as good summer reading engagement. We always work to get some titles onto the annual roster that reflect popularly assigned books from required summer reading lists, too.

As veteran participants know, our SYNC program targets the interests and some academic needs of teenagers. Each summer we offer free-to-keep audiobooks to individuals (not institutions) and takers may well fall outside that specific target age range. One such participant group we’ve heard about, and celebrate, are the graduate school instructors who share SYNC with their students as a way to encourage their broadening of their own reading tastes and preferred format choices to include new titles of high teen interest presented in authentic voices.

We're continuing to thank all the publishers who make the AudiobookSYNC program possible with great listening selections for teens. One of our generous returning publishers is Brilliance Publishing, who again this year is providing audiobooks they’ve produced from a couple different book publishers, including Candlewick. Oasis Audio, another longtime SYNC supporter, is also returning for another summer of SYNC audiobook giveaways.

Two publishers who have been generous with SYNC participants over the years return for our eleventh season with some particularly great titles.