this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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Not piracy, but if you're in the US and get a library card, you can use the Libby app, which has tons of free audiobooks on demand. Definitely worth it, imho. You can download for offline use easily too, which makes it excellent for travel.
Piracy? I've been converting my epubs into html files and then using the edge browser's excellent voice to text to read it out to me, but that's my own special brand of insanity.
Libby works in Australia, too, fyi.
Libby often had any popular books often taken up by other users, so I couldn't read until someone else "turned in their copy".
I get libraries in real life that have limited stock of books, but it's a epub file hosted somewhere. The only limit is the server space and bandwidth costs.
Also the app was so laggy on even my (at the time) midrange device, that it felt like I was browsing books on molasses.
If they've fixed that, that's incredible. I haven't used it since, it left such a horrible impression. Trying to limit an endless digital supply, like making ebooks into early NFTs.
There’s better licencing options for libraries now that allow librarians much better control over getting their patrons the books they want, you should give it another go.
Libraries can buy metered access and one copy one circ, and depending on how the library’s consortium agreement is, usually home patrons holds will get advantage over same-system-but-different-home-library holds; so those will still have the ‘limited like a physical book’ restriction, but you’ll have priority if your library bought a copy. We also use Cost Per Circ, and so as long as our monthly budget hasn’t been met, any books I’ve added as part of our CPC collection can be taken out instantly by my patrons even if the wait time would’ve been months long due to how many people are on hold. If the budget has been met, those holds on CPC titles will be filled once the 1st of the month rolls around and the budget resets.
Give it another try, and put the books you want on hold. Librarians have a harder time knowing what their patrons want when they don’t have data because patrons don’t place holds. I’ll add books to CPC whenever I can, even if there’s only one or two holds on a title
Look, someone who's good at their job!