I recently saw a post online that gave me a bit of pause:
On one hand, I can totally get wanting something like this. Reading is expensive, and has only gotten worse in recent years as reading numbers are down while inflation is up. There’s tons of pressure on publishers to make more from less, and usually those costs get pushed on to people trying to buy books. While on a trip last year, I ended up buying a hardback book from a local bookstore — because I’m the type of person who likes to go to and support local bookstores when I visit a new city — and I was a little shocked by the $30 USD price tag. In the face of that, paying something like $12 for Kindle Unlimited or a similar hypothetical service from Apple doesn’t seem too bad. If you read more than 1 book a month, it’s almost guaranteed that you’ve saved yourself money in the process.
The reason this gives me pause, though, is because… libraries are a thing and have been for a very long time. If you have a local library, they have access to tens of thousands of books that you can read for free. Even better is that most libraries also have a collection of ebooks and (shudder) audiobooks. I’ve read hundreds of library books from local libraries in 2 different places that I’ve lived in without ever physically setting foot in any library location. I did everything online and read on my iPad.
The downside is that this is obviously going to be very dependent upon where you live. Each local library is going to have a different selection, different policies, etc. In the US, I always recommend Libby to folks. You can punch in a library card number, it syncs with the local library, and within a minute you can be renting out books. Their e-reader is honestly very nice, though if you’re partial to Kindle you can have most books transferred there. You can lease, read, and manage loans all in the same place from Libby. Depending on the policies of the library, you can sometimes even register for a library card straight from Libby, something I’ve been able to do in my past two locations. If that’s not an option due to the local library’s policies, you’ll simply have to stop by just one time to register. Even better is that some very large libraries in the US make their collections open to anyone, not just residents, and Libby allows for the adding of multiple library cards in the app. It’s able to search across multiple libraries when looking for a book and let you know which one will allow you to get your hands on a copy the fastest.
Libby only works with US-based libraries, so outside of the States I couldn’t venture to guess at what the process looks like, but tons of places all over the world offer public libraries, so it’s definitely worthwhile to check out what options are available before pining over the ability to pay a monthly fee in order to read what you want. While your library may not allow you to immediately read that one book you really want at the current moment — when something popular comes out like a movie adaptation, it’s not uncommon for libraries to have a massive backlog for the book — with tens of thousands of options it’s certainly possible to find something else to read in the meantime.
I’m not saying the library is always the perfect solution, and for many people paying for a subscription service to read ebooks could certainly be justifiable. But for many people who just want to be able to chip away at their reading backlog without breaking the bank, leveraging a service already provided by the community and likely supported by your tax dollars seems like a terrific place to start!