Two weeks ago I subscribed to Scribd, a subscription service which gives you (unlimited) access to audiobooks, books, articles and magazines for $8.99 per month. You can try it for free for the first 30 days and cancel at any time.
I was quite happy with my previous audiobook subscription service (Storytel) but, since it was a Dutch service, their collection of English audiobooks was more limited than the number of audiobooks which are offered by Scribd. I was curious to see how the two services would compare. And even though it’s only been two weeks, I already have some strong thoughts.
define “unlimited”
Let’s immediately start with my biggest issue with Scribd. It’s advertised as giving you unlimited access to their titles, however, this comes with an important sidenote: “For a small percentage of Scribd users who consume an unusual volume of materials, not every book or audiobook in the library will be immediately available.” I was aware of this regulation when signing up for my account, and it seemed very reasonable, except Scribd and I have a very different definition of “an unusual volume of materials”.
I’m an avid reader and audiobooks are a big part of my reading experience. I listen to audiobooks every day before bed for 30 minutes to an hour and I’ll occasionally listen during the day when my health lets me down. This leads me to consume between 3 to 5 audiobooks per month (depending on their length). This seems super reasonable to me. Unfortunately, Scribd started imposing their restriction on me after listening to only three audiobooks.
This restriction means I no longer have access to the far majority of audiobook titles on their service. I have 50 audiobooks on my TBR and I can now read none of them. I can still access some other audiobooks but they are mostly obscure and unpopular titles and I have no desire to listen to books I’m not truly interested in. All in all, I now have to wait 2 weeks before I can listen to the titles that I want to listen to. I am annoyed, especially as I’m heading into a bad cold and audiobooks are my main source of entertainment when my brain is foggy.
So, does Scribd offer unlimited access? Yes, just not to the titles you are probably most interested in. If you’re a big consumer this is definitely something to keep in mind when subscribing and you’ll have to consider for yourself if this limitation makes this service worth your money.
part of a series?
Scribd gives you absolutely no information about whether a book is part of a series, and if so, which book in the series it is. This is something that definitely frustrates me because there’s a risk of coming across spoilers when reading the synopsis of a book that turns out to be the third in a series. Moreover, you’d have to go to google or goodreads to figure out what the title of the first book in the series is. It seems like a small thing, but it’s really a downside for me.
great audio player and e-reader
Scribd is not all bad though. There are certainly some things that I do like, such as their interfaces and options for listening and reading. The audiobook player shows you how many chapters there are in a book, which chapter you’re listening to and how long that chapter will take. It makes it much easier to decide if I want to finish a chapter or simply go to sleep. There’s also a sleep timer and you can change the reading speed up to 3x its normal speed. You can create bookmarks and access the table of contents, so for me, there are no functions missing from this player.
The e-reading interface is equally extensive. You can chose between multiple backgrounds to suit your reading preferences and you can change the font and its size. Flipping pages is easy and you can create bookmarks, highlight sentences and take notes. No complaints here.
conclusion
Although the reading and listening experience Scribd provides is great. I do have an issue with their definition of unlimited. I think I will try another month at least but I’ll likely switch back to my old Storytel subscription which really did offer unlimited access.
readnothingyet 