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For a long time you could choose between one credit or two credits per month with Audible, and you were limited to that one or two books. With time they increased the price, but they also added plenty of books that were included with the membership. At this point, if you’re not looking for a specific book you barely need credits anymore.
An Audible Plan With Temporary Ownership
Audible has a Standard plan. With this plan you spend 9 USD per month and you have access to one new book per month. You are free to read as much, or as little of the book as you desire. If you stop paying for this plan you lose your collection of books.
Storytel
I believe that this plan is designed to compete with Swedish/European Storytel. Storytel too has a subscription model where you do not own books, but rather borrow them. You don’t pay for the books though. You pay for reading time. If you want to, you can read a dozen books at once, but once you run out of reading time you must upgrade, or wait for the next month’s reading allowance to open up. You can read ebooks and audiobooks.
Spotify
Whilst Spotify is similar to Storytel I would never consider it as an option. For me, 12 hours per month is not worthwhile. I read more than twelve hours per month. I don’t need access to the music catalogue either.
Kobo
Kobo has three plans. You can choose just to have e-books, or just audiobooks, or both, and there are no limits to the number of books you can read simultaneously. The choice is limited.
The Limitations
With Audible Standard the limitation is reading just one book in a month, and not owning it if you cancel your subscription. With time you may amass a library, that you never own.
With Storytel you pay an extra franc for going through iOS rather than Android and you can choose between 15, 30 or 45 hours per month. This ranges from 8 CHF per month to 15 CHF per month on Android. You have the freedom of reading dozens of books, but end up with nothing if you cancel the subscription.
The Kobo plan sets no limits on books borrowed, or reading time so it could be seen as the best option. In theory we’re dealing with Fnac when using Kobo in Europe.
And Finally – Libro.fm, Books Books Books and Audiobookshelf
Audible was a fantastic site, before it was used by Amazon. As soon as it was bought by Amazon I felt like I was helping a GAFA company, rather than decent human beings. When I buy books I want to support the local economy and small companies that care about my custom.
In the process of writing this post I came across Libro.fm and Books Books Books. Libro.fm is an online book shop that gets you to select a local book shop to support. In this case I am supporting Books Books Books in Lausanne and I feel much better about it. Instead of helping a monopoly I am supporting local people.
What’s even better is that I can buy a book, and within a few seconds I can download it and add it to Audiobookshelf and listen to the book via my self-hosted audiobook library.
In a mature market we don’t need to use the American first mover anymore. We can use the local current mover instead. The selection might not be as broad, but the local benefit is.
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