Fucking Audible and Alexa!
Just spent a fruitless hour trying to make Alexa (whose name may not be uttered except in supplication) play an audiobook my wife has bought from Audible. The book, Stephen Fry’s excellent ‘Mythos’ wouldn’t play on any of our Echo Dots despite having gone through the torturous process of linking the Audible account with her Amazon account as instructed in the well-hidden help files. No success! We tried instructing/begging Alexa (Oh, wondrous being) to play the book. No success!
She passed the problem to me and I began by searching the Alexa (she who must be adored) app on my iPad. There isn’t an Audible skill listed there and I was beginning to despair when I went to the home menu and into ‘Music, Video and Books’ where Audible is mentioned. Hey! The book was shown here! I tapped ‘play’ and waited…. silence. Bugger! Then I noticed that it was the downstairs Dot that was showing as selected so I switched this to the upstairs Dot – since we were still decadently abed – and tried again… Success! Stephen’s sonorous voice began to emanate in ghostly form from the speaker.
With a smug look of triumph I handed the iPad to my admiring wife. Just to complete my intellectual victory I commanded the oracle to speak: “Alexa… play Mythos from Audible”. After a moment of silence she responded…”If you wish to play an audiobook please go to the Audible website at http://www.audible.com”. Fuck!
Finally, in a paroxysm of anger and embarrassment I had an inspiration… “Alexa… connect to Audible. Alexa, read Mythos from Audible”. Success! All that was needed was to plead with Alexa (she who is all-knowing) to make the connection before trying to read the book.
Thank God it’s a free trial!
Paddling 