The Allure of Public Libraries with E-Books

By joining a book club and hearing people speak about borrowing books, rather than buying them I was at once asking myself the question "Why wouldn’t you buy a book when you can afford it?" and "Why wouldn’t you want to own the books you read?" Since then I have changed my mind.

Paid for Lending Libraries

As I wrote two or three days ago Audible, Kindle, Kobo and other platforms allow you to borrow books. Usually the cost is from 10-12 CHF except for Audible where the cost is over a hundred CHF per year.

The key point with Audible is that you pay a subscription to buy books at either a member price or in exchange for credits. I calculated that once a book is more than 12 CHF or so it’s worth paying for with a credit.

Audio books are expensive compared to normal e-books and paperbacks. A book might cost 10 CHF and the audio version will cost 20-30 CHF per book, if not more.

Free Libraries

If you like books, as I do, then it is easy to buy books faster than you can read them. I often say that it takes a few seconds to choose to buy a book, or borrow it, but each book takes 7 or more hours to read. That’s why it is so easy to get a long back log of books that you own but haven’t read yet.

If you borrow books from a physical library then you need to wait for them to open, and you need to return the books before the return date. If you fail to do this you may get fined.

I was testing e-bibliomedia and I enjoy that it is so easy to browse and borrow books. The experience is smooth and efficient. You can do it directly from the website or you can do it via the Cantook app. Borrowing books and audio books is quick and intuitive. You can then download and read a book. It will self-delete once the 28 day lending period is over.

With audio books the experience is good too but it requires playing from a web browser, rather than an app. You can’t delete audio books so you need to have a data plan if you’re on a walk, driving or doing something else. It does not keep your progress so it makes sense to stop at the end of a chapter and remember which chapter you are on. You can access your audio books from the cantook app by pressing read online and logging in.

A Smaller Collection

When I searched through the collection I noticed that a few books I looked through were not available. Having said this their collection added one hundred and fifty books in January and has almost ten thousand books in total across at least four languages.

When you compare ten thousand compared to half a million, it seems like a small collection, but when you consider that this library is ten years old it has a broad choice and it is constantly growing.

And Finally

More often than not I don’t know what I want to read so having a choice of new books is an advantage. It means that I can choose what to read more easily, and if I do not like a book I can return it early. I can borrow and return books within seconds without waiting for opening times. I used to love borrowing books and finally I can return to this habit.