Are you an avid reader? Do you find yourself spending too much on your reading habit? A subscription service such as Kindle Unlimited may be the thing for you. While Amazon offers unlimited reads, the books are mostly self-published books. The traditional publishers opt not to make their books available on Kindle Unlimited with the exception of older books which have had their run. You will not find a recent best-seller on KU.

Lately, I’ve gotten hooked on the Sebastian St. Cyr mysteries by C.S. Harris. The entire series is listed at $107.00 on Amazon. That’s a serious expenditure on books, especially when I also read many other authors. The books rarely go on sale and never in reading order. I do have a solution to the problem.

I whip out my dedicated reading device and open up a sweet little app called Libby. You can download the app from the Google Play store, your Apple App store, your Kindle App store, etc. It works seamlessly with most of their reading devices.

Libby replaced the old OverDrive app, which I also loved. In order to use Libby, you must have a library card from a public library: any public library in the USA that is listed in the Libby directory. I believe just about every public library is listed.

You open Libby, log into your library, search by author or title, and borrow the books you want, provided the library owns them. If the book is already borrowed, you can place a hold on it. The library will send you an email when the book becomes available.

I did a quick search on my library, and just about every book by J.R. Ward, another favorite author, showed up in both ebook and audio book format. When you borrow the book, you can choose Epub or Kindle. You can choose to read the book using Libby itself, or you can choose to read using Kindle.

If you choose to read using Kindle, the site takes you to your Kindle account where it shows as a borrow. Click on the book, and it downloads to your Kindle device of choice (such as Kindle App for PC). Remember to delete it from your Kindle account after the borrow expires or is returned.

My library did not have every book in the Sebastian St. Cyr series, but it owned  many of them. The books are checked out to you for 21 days, and you can check out multiple titles at the same time. You can also renew a borrow.

Best of all, there are bestsellers and novels by popular authors. You are limited only by what the library has. If the book you want is not on the list, you can recommend to the library that they purchase the title.

Are there negatives? The only one I see is that the latest releases are grabbed quickly, and you usually have to wait a few weeks to get them. If you are willing to wait for them, you can read them for FREE! Really for FREE with no strings attached.

At this time, I feel it’s important to make clear that I do not work for Libby. I am not connected to or, in any way, make money from this post. I do not in any way profit from recommending the app. I honestly like it and feel that my readers deserve to know about it.

Click on the link below to visit the OverDrive site and download Libby. 

Get Libby