I can no longer recommend Everand as a Kindle Unlimited alternative.
Everand began its life as Scribd, then broke off a few years ago to become its own Kindle Unlimited/Audible-like service. For a time it was great, offering an all-you-can-read buffet like KU, with an audiobook service thrown in on top! All for just $11.99! Who could ask for more?
Well, apparently, Everand could ask for more. From you. And they now give you less in return.
Everand has recently changed (aka, killed) their subscription model from all-you-can-read buffet to giving you one (1) credit a month. Yep. That’s right. Just one messily credit to read one (that’s right, one) ebook or audiobook.
All for the low, low (sarcasm) price of… $11.99.
In terms of ebooks, that means you pay $11.99 for the honor of reading a single book, which might only cost $2.99 or $3.99 if you bought it. Who the fuck is going to do that? No one, that’s who. Literally no one. NO ONE. Do you hear that Everand? No one is going to use your service.
That 1 credit could also be used to get an audiobook, which is a little more sensible, as Audible costs $14.95 per month as of this writing and also gives 1 audiobook credit. However, Audible can cost as low as $12.45 per month if you get their annual subscription (at $149.50/year), and Audible also has a much bigger and higher quality selection of audiobooks than Everand.
To be far, Everand does have 3 credit per month subscription for $16.99, which if you are only interested in audiobooks, come to $5.66 per audiobook vs Audible’s $12 per audiobook. That may be of some value, if Everand has the audiobooks you want.
But as for ebooks? Paying $11.99 for one book, or even $5.66 for one ebook (if you get their 3 credit per month plan) is completely absurd.
So What’s the Alternative?
Everand was never really big, and they’ve just shot themselves in the foot with their new plan. So what’s the alternative?
The obvious alternative is Kindle Unlimited and Audible, which together would cost $26.95 ($11.99 for KU and 14.95 for Audible). And with that you get truly unlimited all-you-can-read deal, plus 1 audiobook credit.
Of course, you would not be reading this blog post if you weren’t looking for an alternative to Kindle Unlimited and Audible. That’s why people were getting Everand subscriptions after all!
Now that Everand completely sucks, what’s the best alternative to KU?
In Comes Kobo Plus!
Kobo is another ebook competitor to Amazon, and like Amazon, they offer an all-you-can-read subscription. That subscription costs only $7.99 per month for ebooks only, or $9.99 per month for ebooks and audiobooks. From what I read it’s unlimited ebooks and unlimited audiobooks for the $9.99 subscription, but the Kobo Plus audiobook library is pretty small.
But since I’m selling ebooks, I’m only interested in helping you (my dear readers) with getting the best ebook deal.
For just $7.99 per month, you get unlimited ebooks in their Kobo Plus eligible titles, of which they say are 1.5 million. But just like KU, not all titles are part of the deal. To see what books are available for Kobo Plus, you can sign up for Kobo (Kobo itself, not Plus) and browse their ebooks. Any ebook that says “Free with Kobo Plus” or has a link to get started with Kobo Plus, is available for Kobo Plus subscribers.
Kobo does have app, allowing you to read on your smartphone or tablet, and they even have an ebook reader device (like the Kindle). What’s not to love?
Please note that all of my books are available in Kobo Plus!
So let’s run the numbers (ebooks only):
Everand: $11.99 per month for 1 ebook per month, or $16.99 for 3 ebooks per month.
Kindle Unlimited: $11.99 for unlimited ebooks per month.
Kobo Plus: $7.99 for unlimited ebooks per month.
The clear winner is Kobo Plus. The undisputed looser is Everand.
Now, Kobo Plus will not have the same huge selection as Kindle Unlimited. Amazon, and KU, still has the biggest selection of ebooks over anyone else. If you are looking for my books in particular (and I hope you are!), you won’t find them on Amazon for reasons I go into in this post. But you will find all of my books on Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play Books, and yes even Everand.
In conclusion, if you are looking to read a bunch of my books, do yourself a favor and sign up for Kobo Plus (this is not an affiliate link, I’m not getting a kickback or anything) and start reading!
3 thoughts on “I Can No Longer Recommend Everand”
Thank you for refusing to sell through Amazon, and thanks for the review of alternatives.
JD you’re truly a bozo. I have just tried out Everand and chose the 3 unlocks program. 34 of my 35 wishlist books on Audible are in the expanded catalog. The price to be sure is steeper than the 84 dollars a year I was paying,but averages out to about 6 dollars a book. Audible has some great introductory deals. Customers should take advantage of it’s 3 months for 99 cents a month once or twice a year and keep cancelling. In addition, the samples on the new Everand are 1-2 hours long. I started listening to Superagency by Reed Hastings and decided to simply finish it as my third title for this month. Given the fact that they dont currently have an annual plan I’ll cancel and come back when I finish the stack of Audible books I got at a steep discount. Readers always whine that the selection at Everand isnt good enough,but I’ve never been short of compelling listens or reads for 10 years. I would suggest some readers try listening at 80% full speed to throttle themselves into fully enjoying the credits they’ve got. I wonder who these people are that have more than two hours a day to devote to devouring books.I still have a job five days a week. My long holidays are better for book juggling.
I’m complaining about their subscription in relation to ebooks, not audiobooks. I even said that their deal for audiobooks isn’t too bad. However, for ebooks it’s terrible. Looking at their pricing, for a $11.99/mo subscription, you can get 1 ebook. A $16.99/mo subscription gets you 3 ebooks (or $5.66 per book), and a $28.99 deluxe plan gets 5 ebooks per month ($5.80 per book, which is actually worse). Considering that a lot of ebooks are priced at $4.99 or under, these are terrible deals.
But if you’re only interested in audiobooks, and they have the audiobooks you want, then it’s probably fine for that.