Is libby libgen?

@@deusexmaximum8930 no Libby is an app that many public libraries use for their eBooks or audiobooks. It’s free to download and is usable as long as your local library is apart of the service and you have a working library card.

What’s Libby?

@@johnpenaloza1797 an app you can use for eBooks or audio books if your library uses the service and you have a working library card

⁠@@johnpenaloza1797 libby is an app run by overdrive, it basically serves as an integrated interface for all of the digital titles your library might have. i have 3 library cards from my hometown, university, etc. and so have access to /all/ their e-books and audiobooks. your selection will look different based on which library you belong to. definitely get a library card if you don’t already have one!!

I don’t relisten to books unless I’m studying them. Yes, language study counts but in general I don’t relisten to books.

I understand. Let me tel (yes, 1 L) you a story. There's a book from my childhood that I've listened to at least 80 times... I tried to buy it on Audible. I paid. It was missing 2 chapters. I contacted them. They said they were "looking into it". They "looked it into it" for 2 years. The book then got its 2 chapters back. The book I'd paid for. Then they removed it from their catalogue. Gone forever. Storytel now has that book. With all its chapters. My point is, listening to things multiple times is not a reason to go with a corrupt service that forces you to commit to one book every month or pay more to get more.

I mean, that's half a Brandon Sanderson book though.

​@@AYoungdude20 hours is the LOWEST limit in most countries. At least 30% of the countries only have an unlimited tier and France is the only country that has no unlimited option.

Actually Turkey only has Turkish and English. There are countries that have Turkish and Arabic, and this is all the stuff I explore in the channel members' video.

@@daysandwords Thank you!

I prefer the layout and features of Storytel, which is why I switched a few years ago, but Nextory has some pros. To my knowledge, they don't offer Turkish though.

Okay, thanks! Good to know. Yeah, it was either Storytel for both, or Nextory for Swedish and some other app for Turkish. Sounds like signing up through Turkey would get me Swedish and English too though, so I’m off to look at that now! Thanks so much for this video!!!

@@Charlotte-ti2ykI tried to create account from Turkey (bcs I am Turkish) and hoped to see Swedish and German but unfortunately only English and Turkish are there.

Storytel and bookbeat

In my experience, I can't get Bookbeat to work from my country.

Jitsi is a free alternative and doesn't spy on you how Zoom does. It's also Open Source.

@@XVa-uj8m Wow! Thanks for letting me know. I'll check it out👌🏻

Yeah, someone should spend 2 days working out which subscriptions include which languages... wait, I already did that. You can just join through a different country. Colombia includes like 7 or 8 languages and is only slightly more than Brazil.

That would be great for me learning Portuguese.

Loved Storytel! It's worth it, I was just too beginner for it at the time. But will go back to it.

Each country offers a different set of languages and price options. All the information is available in the members' video.

@@daysandwords gotcha, thanks for the precious information! I might actually end up subscribing

Honestly I have a suspicion that they've got an arrangement with Audible that says they won't launch officially in the big English speaking countries. I can't see how Audible would allow them to licence content (which I am almost certain is happening) if it meant that Storytel were in competition with Audible.

The 28 minute channel members' video goes into how to get the languages you want. There are certain countries which have Portuguese and Finnish (like both languages through the same country).

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/bZ9-fKqhmcmRe6M.html

No, it should be there: www.youtube.com/@daysandwords/membership

Yeah, it's stupid, I know. You need two devices. Sometimes the second device will even boot the first device out of it if you're on the same account, so my solution to that is, on the device I'm reading on, you put it in flight mode after you've downloaded the e-book.

@@daysandwords appreciate the reply. Suppose you can’t have everything 😂. I’ll give that a go anyway cheers

There's 0 excuse for not having much in Swedish haha. Sweden records cereal boxes as audiobooks.

I have no affiliation with Storytel and have had no contact with them so there'd be no reason to link to them in the description. If you google the name the website will come up.

What do you mean by "I couldn't listen to Spanish books"? Does it SHOW the title but say that it's not available in your region? Or do the Spanish books just not show up at all? If it's the first one then you need a VPN switched on to Spain while you are browsing. If it's the second one then you need to go into Settings • App • Languages and turn Spanish on. I have a Netherlands subscription right now and I can listen to English, Dutch, French, Arabic, Turkish, German, Spanish and Swedish.

@@daysandwords Thank you. In the list with the available languages Spanish did't show up so I couldn't turn it on. But maybe I was doing something wrong. A really weird question maybe: what has a VPN to do with an app? Or do you always use Storytel in the browser therefore 🤔

OK so just to be clear: 1. You created an account 2. You downloaded the app and installed it on a phone, and you live in NL? 3. You're logged into the account 4. You can't see Spanish in the list of available languages, even though you are signed in to an account that was created in NL? Because if those 4 things are true, then I have no idea. Because my current subscription is a Netherlands subscription and I have all the languages you'd expect (En, Fre, Ger, Dutch) plus Arabic, Turkish, Italian, Spanish and Swedish. (I forgot to say Italian before.) Is this on an iPhone?

@@daysandwords No, it's an Android phone. Weird... But I'll watch your longer video about Storytel. Maybe that will help. Thanks!

Did you create an account on the website first? Maybe do that (if you haven't already paid) and use a new email address but do it through BELGIUM because although they have the same languages, it seems as though you're running into some automatic language selection based on your phone's settings and/or location. From what you've said here, it seems to me that creating an account through the app might be the problem, because it's looking at your phone's settings and saying "Oh, a Dutch person in the Netherlands, therefore Dutch and English" whereas there's no way that it can do that if you create the account on the website, so it just has to offer all the languages that that country's subscription should offer (and therefore it kind of "kick starts" the phone to do that too). That's my guess but I do want to apologise for not knowing this, since I did make myself out to be an expert. In Australia at least, when you create the account on the website, it "ignores" the fact that I'm Australian. My app is even IN Dutch, which is weird because on my Swedish account the app was in English. In fact, bizarrely enough, the app is laid out differently between Sweden and Belgium/Netherlands.

Yeah Germany has Turkish but Turkey doesn't have German. That's why the highlight from the members' video says "If you're interested in English or Turkish then you might wanna consider signing up through Turkey".

Channel members' video answers this question. 😉

You can but only if you get a separate device, sign in on it, start reading the book, and then put it in flight mode while you get the first device and start listening.

@@daysandwords Thank you. Unfortunate to have to jump through all those hoops, but I appreciate the tip. :)

It sounds like more than it really is. But yeah I hope they change it.

AWESOME. That's a good sign, it means it's getting to the right audience.

Honestly I should do that video because it'd be easy haha. I always get myself wrapped up in really specific projects that no one cares about.

Yeah, I've heard a few reports of this (it not accepting cards from the US) but I've got other reports of people saying that they had 0 problems with paying via the US, and in fact paying IN the app where it converts it to a round US dollar number for you. So I think it might depend on the STATE... which would be bizarre but it might. What state is this in? At the moment it doesn't have the "narrate as you read" feature that you're talking about but it looks like it's not far away.

I'm not sure about French. There are many in Swedish and English, and quite a few in German and Finnish. The French don't seem to be very into audiobooks in general so it could be that.

In France and Belgium at least, all 7 Harry Potters are in French as a-books and a-books.

No no, you misunderstand. Needing a VPN really only happens at the very beginning of each book, and it takes like 4 seconds to connect a VPN (which I already have anyway). And that's not with every book. You also absolutely don't need to sign up through several different countries... I'm just obsessed with finding the "right" deal so I'm often changing it around. One of those was just to see if it would even work and it did.

Every country has different language options, so it depends where you signed up through. What language do you want to see?

@@daysandwords I want to sign up from Turkey, but I want to have the option to read in Italian. I only have the options of English and Turkish. Or if i try to sign up in Italy I only have the options of Italian English and Spanish, I would like to have Turkish as well

​@@aycazeynepcnar705​There are countries that have Turkish and Italian but learning what they were and which ones were the best price for what you get took me a really long time so that information is available in a really long video that I made for my channel members.

Well it depends which book. What you're asking is if they have translated books or books originally in French and the answer is both, of course. French people read books by French authors but also by authors of other nationalities that are then translated into French, so that's what is on Audible. For the most part they'd be in Parisian French but I'm sure some of relevant books (i.e. books from Canada) are in Qubecois.

You can probably sign up through Spain though, which has Portuguese. (And most of the books will still be in Brazilian Portuguese rather than European Portuguese).

@@daysandwords Thanks a bunch for taking the time to respond, I'll give that a try and see if it works.

Ah my apologies - I just checked my sheet and Spain doesn't offer Portuguese. Mexico and Colombia both do though, and they'll be cheaper than Spain.

@@daysandwords cool, no worries. I'll give those a try then.

Depends which country, of course. Iceland and Norway are pretty expensive, but yeah... I find it so reasonable that I'm currently signed up through Belgium AND Mexico haha.

Yes, you've got to create an account on the website FIRST.

It's a convenience thing. Some subscriptions offer 14 languages, so unless you actually spoke all 14 of them, imagine how annoying it would be to have to sift through content in the 12 or 13 you don't speak just to find the books you were looking for? I explain that in the bit about Jane Harper. I don't want to search and author and be like "Oh sweet, they have her books!" and then realise that they are in Danish. So I just switch Danish off.

Right, so... no actual CONTENT for the price, just the ability to have it read out loud, if you already own it? Kind of comparing apples and amplifiers there buddy.

Weirdly, you sign up through an unlisted country. The channel members' video goes into this detail.

​@@daysandwordswhat do you mean by unlisted country? Looking in the app I don't see that in the list of countries it seems like you have to pick a listed country.

Yeah, it's complicated, that's why there is a full guide in my channel members' video. And it's not even that I'm "paywalling" that video... but it's 28 minutes of detail about that stuff, so it doesn't really belong on KZfaq.

You've already asked about my members section, which answers your other questions. Storytel did absolutely NOT buy Audible... that would be like me buying Microsoft.. I thought it might be the other way around, but no, "Audiobooks was acquired by Storytel on Nov 12, 2021." - Audiobooks, not Audible. Not many letters different, but a very different thing.

There's a book from my childhood that I've listened to at least 80 times... I tried to buy it on Audible. I paid. It was missing 2 chapters. I contacted them. They said they were "looking into it". They "looked it into it" for 2 years. The book then got its 2 chapters back. The book I'd paid for. Then they removed it from their catalogue. Gone forever. Storytel now has that book. With all its chapters. My point is, listening to things multiple times is not a reason to go with a corrupt service that forces you to commit to one book every month or pay more to get more.

@@daysandwords I don't use Audible, anyway. I got that audiobook from the library. If Audible really is "pay $10 a month to get a book every month", that's really bad. That's like forcing you to buy books you don't want!

That's exactly what Audible is. But it's Amazon, so they're just very good at using words that make it sound like a better deal than that.

Yeah, "quickly" being the issue there. The lists are actually wrong, I know because I manually checked them all. I spent 2 days working out which countries had which languages. Which ones are you interested in?

@@daysandwordsGreek and japanese for me (and german and Spanish) ! Which country should i sign in from ? That’s great !

Cheers! I actually recorded the A roll for this BEFORE my last video so my last video is actually what I look like more recently... But it's amazing what a cricket top will do haha. But yeah I do want to do something like you suggested.

Was surprised to find this to be correct... well, it's called "Mofibo - A Part of Storytel" but honestly I think it's just that all words sound the same in Danish anyway. That's probably just what the Swedes hear when the Danes say Storytel.

@@daysandwords Danish is an odd language but Sorytel - Mofibo aren’t that simular 😹 Anyway Mofibo is a big deal here because Audible and other services rarely have danish audiobooks - and when you can find them they are expensive

Yeah so it depends on a few things. 1) What country's subscription you want. Some countries actually don't let you create the account on the website, rather forcing you to download the app and subscribe that way. They are the cheaper countries, e.g. Colombia. So I found that to make a Colombian account, I needed the VPN on my phone (it may have been another country, I might have misremembered). 2) What languages you want books in. On my Swedish account, almost every book in English is blocked, but not when I connect to Sweden or anywhere else in Europe (apart from UK). This is the same on my Mexican account... and basically any account. But also, sometimes even SWEDISH and Spanish books are blocked, even though it's a Swedish or Mexican account (I have both), because it picks up that I'm in Australia... So yeah, if you have a VPN anyway, which I obviously do because it's just a straight up no-brainer, then I just put Surfshark on my phone to sort this out too.

@@daysandwords ok I may need to watch those nerdy details. I'm in the UK but created a Finnish account (UK wasn't even on the list) in the app. This works fine, but there are no books in Portuguese.

You don't need a VPN to create an account and subscribe, you can do that on the website and the country you do it for will be your subscription. Then you just need a VPN on your phone to access ALL the titles (but many with be available without a VPN anyway). What language is this for?

@@daysandwords it’s for swedish 😌

OK, cool! So, the only issue you MIGHT have with being in the USA is that I have heard of Storytel rejecting certain credit and debit cards from the USA, but I have never ever had that problem and I know many Americans who use it without a problem. But, just go to the website, www.storytel.com/se - and they'r actually running a deal at the moment that means you get 45 days for 9 kronor which is like one US dollar. And you just create an account and sign up, remember what password you used, and then download the app on your phone and sign in using those details. When you search certain titles, you'll see it say "We're sorry, this title is not available in your region" and THAT'S when the VPN comes in. You have the VPN on your phone, go out of Storytel, connect the VPN to Sweden or Germany or anywhere in non-British Europe I think, and then go and search the book again and it should come up and have no problems. You don't have to do it every time, because once you've downloaded the book it just sits in the "Now Playing" window.

Yeah, I've heard one report of this, but I've got other reports of people saying that they had 0 problems with paying via the US, and in fact paying IN the app where it converts it to a round US dollar number for you. So I think it depends on the bank/card.

I'd try a debit card vs. a credit card, or vice versa.

There's Google Books, but there's no discount for buying both as far as I know. There's auto-narration, but it sounds a bit robotic.

The closest thing there is to what you're asking is Storytel. You pay less per month than you would for one book so, really, it's not gonna be better than that for a while.

@@daysandwords but they only have the audiobook for many items.

It genuinely is. And Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden are all offering discounts for new customers at the moment. The Dutch countries are doing 3 months at half price and Sweden is doing 45 days for 9kr (which is like $1 US).

See I didn't even know that. So basically it's a subscription AND a purchase... seems fair to me, and by me I mean Jeff Bezos.

Not exactly. You can download the audiobook, it stays downloaded when you cancel. In fact, I can even go to my account page--where it shows my subscription as ended more than a year ago-and click on "Library" and it shows the audiobooks I have bought, still with download links, I guess in case something happens to the device I have them downloaded to. Looks to me like a real commitment to the proposition that I bought the books and now own them. (Plenty of other things I don't like about Audible, tho...)

@@delightfulgenius4635 “ummm” lol “has access to” doesn’t mean can do both at the same time. I ask cuz bookbeat has the same feature but if you play the audiobook you can’t turn on the ebook. If you do it shuts off the audiobook and vice versa.

I talk about how to do that in the members' video. It IS like that but there's a workaround.

I addressed that in this video. Storytel does that without having to pay for an overpriced Kindle.

Plenty of the countries offer Portuguese as a language, and so long as you can get Portuguese, yes, some of the books will be in European Portuguese the same as some of the books are in British English, some are in American English, others in Australian English etc etc. In other words, I can't say what titles happen to be in European Portuguese but I can guarantee there are some.

European Portuguese is significantly different from Brazilian Portuguese-more so than the varieties of English, and more so than the varieties of Spanish. Especially in the pronunciation (which is why I'm looking for audiobooks). Also, there seems to be more of a tendency for people on each side to see the other's grammar & pronunciation as just wrong. Or as not understandable. Considering that there are 200 million Brazilians and only 10 million Portuguese, it is natural that there's a TON of Brazilian Portuguese and very, very little European Portuguese. (But, due to details I won't go into here, it is possible for me to retire to Portugal and not possible for me to retire to Brazil--though I could live comfortably either place.) I was trying to locate a Storytel outlet that seems to consider Portugal as a market or sub-market. Spain (for example) is just next door, so you might think...BUT the Spanish site just lists a few language-learning books--with Brazilian flags all over them. @@daysandwords

Yes but you are misunderstanding me. I am not at all suggesting that they are the same. Whether they are very very very different or completely the same is IRRELEVANT. Read carefully: - What you need is to test select of the countries that offers PORTUGUESE as a language. The fact that Euro Portuguese is different is irrelevant as long as they have the same name. - Then, once you have Portuguese as a language selected in the "app" settings, you browse titles. I would start by looking for titles that are like "The History of Portugual" or something. Or you could look up a list of Portuguese authors and search their name. - Once you find a single title in European Portuguese, click on the narrator. You keep going like that. IF (and only if) European Portuguese had different names (like Norwegian and Swedish), then you could just search the language... but they don't have that, so you're going to have to do it the hard way, which I've just described.

Also, if you're after language LEARNING books... then I wouldn't recommend Storytel at all. I'm saying Storytel has BOOKS (actual books to listen to, not "language learning" books) in European Portuguese.

Thanks for the clarification. The needle-in-a-haystack method, btw, would probably work pretty well with, as you suggest, Portuguese authors. Less well with my initial methodology, which is translations of books I know well. (= My preferred way to get comprehensible input, since, well, show me a graded reader that has made a best seller list...they vary from not-too-horrible on down. In my cranky opinion.) @@daysandwords

And you can still do that, but an affordable subscription platform makes a LOT more sense than a "one credit a month" system, especially when half the books or more don't seem to eligible to be chosen for that credit every month.

Um... Honestly your description of your experience is SO different to reality that I think you must have a different app or something. None of this occurs when I log out and re-download the app or put it on a new device. Also, I did a 40 minute deep dive on which countries to sign up through to get various languages etc. and put it on my channel members section... If you wanted to get the info from someone who spent the equivalent of a week straight figuring this out for $3 Australian...

@@daysandwords actually this was all with the website, I un-gave up and tried downloading the app and I found it instantly 😅

Oh, yeah, the website is not very revealing on the languages that each country's subscription has, which is why I made my members' video. If you tell me what languages you're after I can tell you which country would be best to sign up through (and it's "safer" to do that on the website).

@@daysandwords oh I appreciate it! I'm after Korean, it seems like it probably makes sense to just sign up with the Korean version? (I'm living in Korea now too, so I wouldn't even need a VPN). By the way, the reason I was even looking for something like this was because discovering your channel and watching some of your videos finally pushed me into actually reading and listening to Korean content instead of always putting it off because I 'wasn't ready'. And shocker: it has been working great so far 👍

Yeah, so, in my spreadsheet, I've got South Korea as being the only country to offer Korean, at 11,900 WON per month, but that could be outdated. Lots of them are often offering deals of 3 months at half price or something. I'm currently on Mexican Storytel for 12 months at half price.

Yeah mine rang me about it too.

Subscription models can absolutely benefit the artist IF the compensation model is fair. We know that Audible's is not, and I doubt that Storytel is exactly a saviour, but the small amount of info I could find suggests it is at least better.

It depends which content and where you are. Given I have an use a VPN anyway, it doesn't really change the app for me.

@@daysandwords but the app doesn't allow me to log into that foreign account, even when using vpn...

​@@tobisbesteI'm not sure what you mean by that. I have used the app to login to 7 foreign accounts over the years and I know people in the USA who have it working fine as well.

They do. Watch the extended explanation.

@@daysandwords Ok, i like your content so I'll pay for a few months :D

Yeah, I just searched "Review of Audible" and she was on the first page.

France is the only country that has a limited subscription as the only option with Storytel. Every other country has unlimited options, not sure where you got that the limits were normal/compulsory, because I never conveyed that idea. Also not sure what inaccuracies I have in this video. $6 per book is a lot more than I pay, and Audible has stuff all in Swedish anyway. Besides, "knowing how to use it" basically sounds like you need to play the game a very specific way that Amazon decides the rules of. There are definitely cheaper ways to get books on Audible, but that's the impression they give you: "Just do these things (that most people are unlikely to actually do) and it'll be cheap." The fact that one person did them doesn't make it good value. By that measure I could argue that signing up through Storytel Turkey makes it absolutely crush Audible for value... but that's not a fair fight now is it?

Have you made this comment on the right video?

Yeah and watching the same film 50 times would really be a very normal thing to do that ordinary people who don't make language learning videos would do all the time... Not to mention that audiobooks are an average of 6 times as long as movies. I've only ever listened to one Swedish book on this service TWICE.

@@daysandwords Maybe it's just me then but I enjoy re-watching/reading/listening to most of the recourses I've used because the second or third time I understand a lot more. Sometimes, a couple of months after listening to an audio book, I feel like listening to it again just to see the progress I made in the meantime. This is obviously more expensive in the long run but I also like buying physical books just because I "cherish" them more when I know that they belong to me and I don't have to worry about not being able to pay my subscription. There's also the fact that I still see audio books in my target languages as a learning source primarily and not as entertainment directly so yeah That being said this app's pros definitely outweigh the cons and I'll definitely try it out so thank you for sharing it

Don't get me wrong - if Storytel didn't give you the option to relisten, then that would be a HUGE con for me... but it's not like you're paying for every time you rent the audiobook... It's the same as Netflix. That's what makes Audible such a scam... they act like it's a Netflix kinda deal but it's really a buy PLUS subscribe kinda deal where you get a "credit" each month that you then have to decide carefully how you spend. That's ridiculous and it's obvious that they do it because it's more profitable.

I am in the process of reviewing some apps at the moment. Some are free, or freemium, and some of them have Irish I think.

There are cheaper ways to get Italian.

Sorry but my LA hat is too small, so it's my son's now. I wear different baseball hats in different videos.

Nah actually someone got a LEGIT comment in before you wrote this!

knee wrote _"First!"_ Why is this even a thing? I've never understood it. There's no prize to be won... no advantage conferred... no points to acquire or discounts to earn or... wtf do people still care about 'first' in 2023 ???

If it's on a big enough channel (I don't think mine counts) then I actually get it. You're just saying that you happened to have the video show up in your feed within a few seconds of it being uploaded... it feels kind of personal and close to the creator. I'm not saying it is the same as an ACTUAL achievement, but think about if you were just walking around in, say, Sydney, and you spotted Christopher Nolan scouting for his next film... You would tell people about that, even though it had nothing to do with your skill. It was just a random thing... if you are genuinely the first (which this comment wasn't anyway) on a video that will get a million comments (again, not this video), then it's kinda cool. It doesn't mean anything, it's just cool.