Kindle Unlimited vs Audible and Readly

[useitorlose]

I have an Audible subscription at £8 and a Readly subscription at £10/month. The Readly is unlimited and the Audible is one book, but they also do lots of free members-only books, some of which are excellent, and some other shows and podcasts. I find I'm not using the Readly subscription a great deal now. I read a lot when on holiday or by the pool (live overseas so this happens more often than you would think!) but much less at home, which contributes to the limited use of Readly as I can't read outdoors like I do on my Paperwhite.

So, should I ditch the two and switch to Kindle Unlimited instead?

Personally I couldn't find much I wanted to read on Kindle Unlimited but I cancelled Audible and Readly because my library has a great selection of audiobooks and magazines for free on the Borrowbox app. Have you looked at that?

It depends on the type of books you like to read. Similar to pp there isn’t enough in the KU selection for me. I suggest you browse the KU books to see if it suits you. You can get a free trial so why not do that alongside your existing subscriptions and then decide?

I have a subscription to Scribd which is unlimited audio and ebooks. I mostly listen to books but do use the ebooks for reference books on my computer screen (quilting, gardening and cooking mostly). I periodically go back to Audible if a book comes out that I can’t get on Scribd.

If you cancel Audible they will usually offer a few free credits or a few months at half price to keep you. About three months after cancelling they always send me an offer for a few months at a lower price, I keep that email because the offer stays valid indefinitely and I can use it if I want to go back for a particular book.

I use Kindle Unlimited if there’s an offer on, but generally the choice isn’t great so wouldn’t use it long term.

I signed up for a daily email from BookBub, I told them the genres that I read and they send a list of books that are on offer or free that day from Amazon (also other sellers but I read on my Kindle so only buy from Amazon).

Unfortunately, I don't have library access as I don't live in the UK at present. I used to use my local library a lot - even borrowing audiobooks on CD to listen in the car back in the 90s/00s!

I have three audible credits to use so I should probably do that before cancelling, and see what offers they tempt me with!

If you have Audible credits to use up but don't have anything you want to buy at the moment you can pause your Audible membership for a few months (I think three months). You can't access any of the free members stuff, but you don't lose your credits.