I just finished Intermezzo, by Sally Roony — read my thoughts over at Books. This was the second book I read with Libby, the Kindle alternative that serves up e‑books from your local library. A dear friend and former librarian tried to turn me onto Libby years ago, but my library card had lapsed and I was too lazy to deal with it. For decades, I have purchased and read books using Kindle on my phone. But as Amazon becomes more and more of a monopoly, and as its CEO Jeff Bezos increasingly cozies up to a lawless authoritarian regime, I finally renewed my library card.
My Amazon exit strategy for books started with Kobo, a Canadian e‑book retailer with associated hardware and mobile app that gives Amazon some much-needed competition. I liked Kobo and read a few books on it, but the relationship soured when I tried to read on an airplane and found that Kobo would not let me read without an Internet connection. Not even Kindle does that.
It was then that I suffered through renewing my expired library card (it took me all of 15 minutes) and gave Libby a chance. The mobile app is a pleasure to use, it works offline and best of all, the books are free. Libby is definitely my first stop for books going forward.
There’s just one problem: I’m a very slow reader. Not only do I actually read slow — sounding out the words in my head as I read them — I also seldom read for more than an hour a day. For Intermezzo, I scrambled to finish the book before the end of my first renewal period. This book wasn’t in high demand, so I could have renewed a second time. But I was close, so I powered through. A silver lining of library lending periods is motivation to actually finish a book within a reasonable amount of time. However, the next book I wanted to read, actually the next 3 books, all have a wait list.
Libraries only own so many copies of each e‑book, and can only lend out the number they own at any one time. This means popular books — especially new ones — often have a wait list. This isn’t so terrible, except that books with a wait list cannot be renewed. My library lends e‑books for 2 weeks, but it usually takes me at least a month or two to finish a book. Without a wait list, I can renew a book twice for a total of 6 weeks, which should generally be doable. But if I borrow a wait-listed book, I’ll only have 2 weeks to read it unless I’m the last person on the wait-list and nobody else requests it while I’m reading.
This caused me to search for a backup I could turn to for books that are in high demand. That led me to Bookshop.org. Like Kobo, Bookshop.org sells e‑books at very reasonable prices and has a capable mobile app for reading. Unlike Kobo, the mobile app works without an Internet connection once the book is downloaded. The icing on the cake is that Bookshop.org is a Benefit Corporation, giving 80% of its profit directly to brick-and-mortar book stores.
So it’s Libby for me going forward if the book isn’t wait-listed at my library and if I think I can get through it in under 6 weeks. Otherwise it’s Bookshop.org. I just purchased Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro for $2.99. Definitely worth three bucks to not feel pressured to finish the book in 2 weeks.
So do the book industry a favor and give Amazon’s competition some love. And do us all a favor by supporting local libraries and bookstores.
