Book lovers, this is your moment! Readers have more company than ever. Post-pandemic print book sales are up nearly 9 percent, and e-book and audiobook sales increased by more than 30 percent since 2020. And the hashtag #booktok, which has more than 108 billion views on TikTok, has contributed to book sales. It’s a great time to be a reader. Now let’s make it a cost-saving time to be a reader.
As an avid reader, I have consumed books in every form – print, audio, and e-readers – often a couple of formats and books at once. And I love local bookstores, so not only have I purchased books from the bigs like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, but I’ve also had a Libro.fm subscription that supports my choice of local bookstore.
But I’m here to sing the praises of Libby and your local library as a way to read books for free in any format you like. You’ll save money, and you won’t compromise your reading experience. You know at Plinqit that we are big fans of saving!
Libby is a reading app that is free with your library card, which is also free. With it, you can check out books and listen to them via the audiobook function on Libby, read them digitally within the app, on your Kindle device, or via the Kindle app, or check out OG hardcover and paperback books. As with your library card, you can place holds on books that are in your TBR (To Be Read, in reader-speak) list, and you can adjust the hold times or checkout times to fit your schedule. It even has digital magazines. All the reading things.
According to the Libby blog, “Last year marked the 1 billionth book checked out on the Libby app, and readers aren’t slowing down, borrowing 662 million ebooks, audiobooks and digital magazines from libraries in 2023 – up 19% from 2022!”
Only you know what brings you joy and what is worth your very valuable dollars. So if you enjoy Audible and Libro and you can afford the subscriptions, keep using them. If, however, you are looking for ways to save that also happen to have a great user experience, I recommend Libby.
Did I mention that it’s free?
