Any good suggestions for alternatives to Kindle and Audible? I’m looking at storytel, tolino, libro.fm, and also places like Casa del Libro, wondering if anyone’s used them and if they’re good?
Or another service?
Usually a local library will have an free affiliate website for listening to and/or downloading audio books. “Overdrive” was the one I used in Canada.
I’ve used Nextory which was fine, didn’t use it enough to keep the subscription going but their library quite alright. Often only audiobook or only ebook which was a bummer from time to time, but considering they had a lot in my language it was fine.
Check your local library. My city’s library has online services for ebooks and audiobooks which are included in the yearly fee.
Yep I got Borrowbox but the selection was quite limited and popular books are often unavailable and must be reserved.
I’m given to believe that Libby is better but unfortunately my library only has Borrowbox for now. Not a bad service by any means, just some in-built limitations 🤷
Depending on where are you based there are libraries that lend digital assets in the US regardless of your geo location, I think NY Queens and Houston TX public libraries have programs like these. Haven’t tried them but my local library system has Libby and is hella good with their selection.
Kobo for ebooks, not becuse it’s an alternative to Kindle, but because it’s better
Given the community here, I will just add that Kobo is not European.
True, it’s Canadian and Japanese
Rakuten Kobo for ebooks is pretty good
I think the implication from the community this was posted in is that OP is looking for a European alternative. Rakuten is Japanese and Kobo is a Canadian subsidiary.
Yeah I never really looked into it and somehow thought it was European. I’ll research first next time
An alternative to Kindle would be PocketBook, originally Ukrainian, with its current headquarters in Switzerland, and manufactured in Taiwan. I’ve used their ebook readers for years now, great stuff.
Apart from Storytel, I also know Bookbeat, but haven’t tried the latter. Storytel was good though, reliable, decent selection, nothing special beyond that.
Definitely gonna check out pocketbook, it was mentioned by another commenter as well :)
PocketBooks use Android, which can be a positive or a negative. It gives you access to Play Store, but it’s also Google.I don’t think that’s exactly true. Only InkPad X Pro, InkPad EO and Color Note are on Android, but I think all other readers are Linux (non-android). On the other hand, some services only work with iOS or android (for example the Finnish e-library) so this may also be good to keep in mind (I had no idea pocketbook even have android versions until now).
Good to know. I guess I managed to only look at their Android offerings.
I use storytel for some years now, it is good, it has content even tho less than audible. Some more popular books are missing, but they seem to be expanding their collection. There are also some very stupid features like you can’t bookmark offline for some reason. And once they deleted a book that I was reading, it wasn’t good book, but I wanted to finish it 😁.
Interesting that popular stuff is missing. Can you submit requests for missing content afayk? Qobuz has a request feature for music but so far nothing I’ve requested has been added 😫
I haven’t seen any so it is at least not advertised, but maybe there is some way.
I already had a kindle reader so I’ve chosen not cause more pollution by replacing it.
Now I buy my books from smaller local bookstores as digital editions, use a small tool called knock to change it a epub then use calibre to put it on my kindle for reading.
I particularly like that this way I can also share it with my friends and family as if it were a real book.
If you haven’t updated your kindle to 5.18.1, you can also jailbreak it and install koreader which allows you to read epub natively on the kindle, see https://kindlemodding.org/jailbreaking/WinterBreak/
Calibre can also convert between various file formats, and with DeDRM plugin, it can also remove Amazon and Adobe DRM.
Oh interesting, I’ll check out dedrm, thanks.
I’d say I’ll do the same and keep my current kindle which is second-hand anyway. Thanks for the tip with knock.
See also https://lemmy.ca/post/40253303
Thanks :)
As far as I can tell, the closest thing to a European supplier of ereaders is Pocketbook. They have much better privacy policies than most of their competition. From what I gather most of their line up is pretty good, I didn’t read great things on their note-taking 10" device when I checked it around Christmas time (pretty slow, apparently).
Tolino devices are for the most part rebranded Kobos, though I’m not sure how much the firmware differs, and it may very useful if you desire a high Integration wirh the european bookstores, which should at least have to respect GDPR to a meaningful degree.
All non-kindle eBook stores use the same Adobe DRM anyway.
On any ereader, the first thing I would do is still install Koreader right away.
Yeah the integration with the bookstore has been great with Kindle and very convenient, but a big barrier to migration which gives me some pause before simply ditching one closed ecosystem for another.
Will check out koreader for sure
There are stores in many European countries that sell DRM-free e-books in local languages. They might use the term watermarked instead of DRM-free. See if you can find one in your country. Because they are DRM-free, you can use any device to read them.
Many libraries also lets you rent audiobooks and e-books. Many European libraries have moved to using Readium LCP DRM for e-books. You will probably have to use their own app to read them, which means you can’t use e-readers, such as Kobo to read them.
I think this is worth looking into anyway. One of the things that attracts me to Storytel is the “unlimited” verbiage, i.e. not having to buy each book individually. Nevertheless you’re limited by what they have in their collection. I guess it’s a little extra effort to use a DRM free service and side load them to a device, but the advantages are obvious in terms of the actual ownership of the content.
Also subscription services typically pay the actual authors only pennies. If you want to support the authors, buy the books or use libraries.
