Picking the next listen (or read)

Muse #125 - it’s a complicated ever improving process

It’s a complicated process to figure out the books to listen to and to read once you have finished your previous ones. Each week there’s a deluge of titles added to my various lists so I have a process to buy and start on a book. I have talked about my book readings before including book chains but today’s more about the picking process.

When I need to add any book to my lists, I need to scour through multiple sources. The first stop is Scribd.com which is like Netflix for books. Scribd is a fixed price a year for unlimited reading/listening so there is no additional cost to pay.

If the audio version of the book is available it’s my first choice. Scribd has saved me thousands of dollars each year in reducing my spending by not buying the Audible, Kindle, or paper versions of the books. A second option is the electronic version of the book to read on Scribd. All I have to do is to add these to my Saved list.

The next stop is Audible. If it’s there then it goes on this wish list. If it’s not there, then I look for and bookmark the Kindle version on Amazon’s wish list. If no electronic sources are available then I look to buy a used copy of the book. If it’s cheap and I would get around to reading or browsing it then I buy it straight away else it goes into another Amazon wish list.

So far it’s only the bookmarking process of collecting lists of what I might potentially read one day. No book is actually bought yet.

When I want to actually start on a book, I pick the most important book from all of my lists. Then double-check to see that this book is on Scribd, in which case I start on the book either in audio or electronic book form.

If it’s not there, then I use an Audible credit to buy it. But of course, an additional step is to verify that the book is not being sold at a lower price than the credit itself, in which case I pay for the book instead. Then I start it on Audible.

The next stop if it’s not available above, is Kindle. But before I buy the book, I verify whether the book can be rented from the Kindle Unlimited library.

The last stop is paper books. In the order of used books first, unused books last (very few are actually bought this way at a higher price)

I’m sure too would have some kind of book identification and buying process. How far do to go with it?

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PS: I used to complicate this more with additional sources like Kobo but have given up on it after I found it ineffective and not worth the effort for any additional cost savings.