BookBeat Review - Better Than Audible and Scribd (Everand)?
Here’s my honest review of the book streaming service Book Beat.
Use my link for a 60 day free trial of BookBeat.
The online audiobook streaming service, BookBeat, was launched by Bonnier Books in 2015. The brand expanded their service into the UK in 2017, after initially seeing success in Finland and Sweden.
According to BookBeat’s CEO, the UK was Europe’s fastest growing audiobook market, which made it an obvious next choice for their expansion.
I became intrigued by BookBeat after seeing lots of bookish content creators on Instagram recommend the service. As someone who has used Audible and Scribd in the past, I was interested to see how BookBeat would compare, and which I would prefer.
Here are my honest thoughts on whether the service is worth using, and how it compares to its competitors.
How BookBeat Works
This audiobook service uses a subscription model where subscribers pay a monthly fee for a fixed number of audiobook listening hours.
For example, subscribers can choose from a number of options:
£6.99 for 20 hours a month (Basic tier)
£10.99 for 40 hours a month (Standard tier)
£17.99 for 100 hours a month (Premium tier)
Subscribers can then choose to use these hours however they like across the BookBeat catalogue, with no limit on the number of titles. This means that you don’t have to commit to a particular book, and can switch between different reads as you please.
BookBeat’s audiobook catalogue is extensive, with more than 1 million titles available to listen to, spanning across fiction and non-fiction in a wide variety of genres. If you enjoy reading, then you’re guaranteed to find something worth reading in their library.
Listeners can enjoy audiobooks both online and off by downloading an app to their mobile device. For families, an account with multiple profiles is available for an extra £4.99 per profile, per month.
Subscriptions to BookBeat can be changed or cancelled at any time, should you change your mind or your circumstances change.
How does BookBeat compare to Audible and Everand (formerly Scribd)?
As a former subscriber of both Audible and Scribd, I was excited to try BookBeat to see how it compares.
Audible
Owned by Amazon, Audible operates on a subscription basis, where subscribers pay a monthly fee for a certain number of credits. The price starts at £7.99 a month for one credit, £14.99 for two credits, £69.99 annually for 12 credits over the course of that year, and £109.99 a year for 24 yearly credits. An additional fee can also be paid to purchase extra monthly credits.
Once purchased, credits can then be used to redeem audiobooks (one credit = one audiobook), and these can then be used by the subscriber for as long as they like. While BookBeat operates on a borrowing basis, Audible subscribers own their audiobooks and can listen to them as many times as they like without incurring an additional fee.
This is a great service for people who are likely to listen to just one audiobook per month, and might be interested in re-listening to their books in the future. In comparison to BookBeat, Audible subscribers can listen to fewer titles each month, unless they pay an additional fee.
Audible also has a large library, with hundreds of thousands of titles available to listen to in exchange for credits. They also have an Audible Plus service available to all subscribers that includes lots of free and exclusive content including audiobooks, podcasts and Audible Originals. Unlike the audiobooks, this can only be accessed by people with an active Audible subscription.
My Verdict
If you want to listen to a higher volume of books each month, and are not bothered about owning the audiobooks or re-listening to them, then BookBeat would probably be a better fit for you. However, if you particularly want to own the audiobooks that you read and may want to revisit them in the future, then it may be worth trying Audible.
Scribd - Now rebranded to Everand
Similar to BookBeat, Everand uses a subscription model that allows subscribers to access a certain amount of content each month.
For a monthly fee of £10.99 subscribers can access audiobooks, ebooks and podcasts from their extensive library containing more than one million pieces of content.
I previously subscribed to Everand when it was still called Scribd, and my main issue was that it advertised itself as a platform for unlimited audiobook listening, but in practice, this wasn’t actually true. While subscribers could technically listen to as many hours of audiobooks as they liked, this did not include their entire catalogue.
The Everand website explains that there are monthly limits for some titles, although it is unclear exactly how that works. I would be interested to hear from someone who has used Everand, and whether their experience was similar to mine before the rebrand.
My Verdict
Scribd - now Everand - could be a suitable alternative to BookBeat, although the monthly listening limits seem unclear. From a glance, BookBeat is a lot clearer in terms of what you can access for your subscription fee.
Getting started with BookBeat
BookBeat begins with a free trial period, and the regular free trial entitles you to 20 hours of audiobook listening over 30 days. This gives you the chance to try the service free of charge, before you pay any of your own money.
Use my link for 60 days of free audiobook listening, or sign up using the code shereadsandtravels.
Leave a comment and let me know if you’re a BookBeat fan!
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