How many times have you been riding the subway during your morning commute, still bleary-eyed, only to look over and realize that the sweet older woman next to you is reading an absolutely filthy sex scene on her Kindle? Well, Audible’s invented a way to make it even easier for romance novel fans to consume content surreptitiously and, uh, efficiently.
The audiobook company recently unveiled a new “Romance Package” service, which gives monthly subscribers unlimited access to thousands of romance novels. Crucially, Quartz reports, it allows them to skip directly ahead to sex scenes for 110 titles in a feature called “take me to the good part.” This is presumably the result of a market research study that determined nobody actually wants plot — they want heaving bosoms, and they want them now.
And what can listeners expect to find?
To help listeners find exactly the storyline they want, Audible has gone granular with its tagging system, including 41 categories, like “animals/beasts,” “immortals,” and “time travel”; 63 character tropes, such as “hockey player,” “Navy SEAL,” and “viscount”; and 67 cherished set-ups that include “age gap,” “secret babies,” “brought together by a bet,” and “fake relationship.”
The future is here, everyone: At any given moment, anyone around you could be fast-forwarding to stream an X-rated sex scene into their headphones with just the click of a button. As for me, I’ll just stick with my usual.
