No matter if you are facing a long road trip with squirming children, a long and boring commute on a daily basis, or some other situation when you know you will be "stuck" in waiting mode of some kind, then there is no doubt that having access to an interesting and entertaining audio book or two can help make the time go by more pleasantly. In this day of all things internet, it should come as no surprise that there are many websites that provide audio book rental memberships. These membership sites give you access to a huge and always growing collection of all kinds of them on CD or MP3 format versions that you can download.

There are quite a variety of rental services to be found online. Some of these rental services charge a fee each month, while others have an annual fee that you must pay in order to become a member and have access to their audio books on CD or their downloads, depending on your preference.

Audio book rental services have a huge library of titles that you can choose from and generally work in a similar fashion to Netflix, which introduced DVD rentals online. One you purchase a membership to the rental service you will log in and make a list of the titles that you want to listen to and then indicate the order you would like to receive them in.

Next, the rental service will send the titles that are highest on your priority list if they are available at that time. If you choose a new audio book release that is very popular, then you might not receive it right away even if it is in the first position of chosen audio books on your list. For your first shipment, you will receive the audio books that are highest on your list if they are in stock at the time you set up your account.

When you receive your audio book titles from the rental service, you will also have a postage paid return envelop for each of the audio books so that you can send them back individually, as you are finished with each one. As soon as you send one back, another one will be sent out to you from the audio books on your list. In this way, you will always have at least one audio book on hand to listen to while others are being returned, processed, and while new audio book selections are being sent out to you.

Most of these companies have different subscription levels that you can choose from that will allow you to have anywhere from one audio book to four audio books rented at any one time. The fewer audio books you have at a time, the lower your monthly or yearly fee will be.

While the cheapest way to go is to only have one audio book rental at a time, most people prefer to have a subscription that allows them to have at least two audio books available to them. This allows them to have one book rental that they can listen to while the other one is being returned.

For people who travel a great deal, or spend a lot of time commuting, or for families, the plans that allow four, or even more audio book rental titles to be rented at a time can make more sense. Some companies allow you to change your plan from month to month; therefore, if you want some extra books to take on a long vacation you can do that and then switch to a lower plan when you return from vacation.