Elderly library users who rely on spoken word books are furious after being asked to pay more.

East Sussex County Council has imposed split charging levels for taped books. It means people who borrow longer novels, which take more than eight cassettes to read, have to pay 50 per cent more than for shorter books.

The move was unveiled as part of a county-wide restructuring of library charges, which saw the cost of taking out a spoken word book rise 43 per cent from 70p to £1 for the shorter novels and 115 per cent to £1.50 for the longer ones.

Eileen Brophy, 62, of The Ridings, Telscombe Cliffs, borrows up to four spoken word books a week for her husband Patrick from Peacehaven library and has seen her bill rise from £2.40 to £6. She said: "I think it is too much. The people who use spoken books tend to be the elderly on fixed incomes. I know you can borrow them for nothing if you are blind but what about those people whose eyesight isn't bad enough to qualify for free books but are less poor?

East Sussex County Council defended the price increases and said spoken word books are more expensive for them to buy than paperbacks. Dina Thorpe, head of libraries, information and the arts, said: "The reason we have increased the price is to enable us to buy more tapes.

"It is not a statutory requirement for us to loan cassettes and by charging we are able to plough the money back into the selection we have on offer. It costs only £6.99 to buy a paperback for the library but nearly £40 to buy a spoken book.

"We used to be able to get abridged versions of titles. This meant very few books were more than eight cassettes long but now the whole book is put on to tape and they are more expensive to buy."

Ms Thorpe added spoken word books are still free to children and the visually impaired.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.