...Audible, which was founded in 1995 and introduced an early portable digital audio player in 1997, unveiled several offerings this year. Among them: Customers now can make audio clips to share on social media. They also can give audiobooks to friends through a button that sends an email or a text message with a link to a free download. Audible, which
Amazon bought in 2008, saw membership grow 40% in 2015 over the previous year.
Audible increasingly is hiring well-known actors to narrate classics. (One of its top 10 sellers last year was Charles Dickens’s short novel, “The Chimes,” read by Richard Armitage, who played the dwarf prince Thorin in Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of “The Hobbit.”)