Hello my fellow ADHD cuties and/or fellow bibliophiles who love information and letting someone else read to you! I am actively “debillionairing” my life and my spending. Here’s a post about how I reduced my cell phone bill to 25 bucks a month and kept Verizon service!
By 2023 I got down to almost no Amazon money spent except for my $15 monthly audible membership. I joined audible before it was gobbled by Amazon when it was still indie. (Does that make me sound like a hipster? I’m honestly fine I do enjoy when I find something before it goes corporate.)
However tenuous “owning” digital copies of audiobooks on a proprietary app actually is; I didn’t have much concern over the effects of corporate and billionaire resource hoarding at that time. That changed and in 2023 I finally decided to see what happened when I canceled because I didn’t want to give a penny more to Bezos if I could help it.
I got to keep all the audiobooks I paid for–which is 113, almost ten years worth of my monthly audible credit. (I think I canceled a couple of times when I didn’t have a daily reading habit.)
I can still access my audible library (I had to keep the app) and listen to any of them. I frequently relisten to Brandi Marie Carlile’s autobiography–there are always more nuggets and it’s a soothing thing to have playing if I need “company” while I’m falling asleep.
I now use three resources for audiobooks!
The Libby App: This is through my local library!
Go get a library card! It’s so revolutionary to support these vital resources and simply having a card matters for each branch’s metrics. They don’t have every book but when they do have a book it’s nice to “rent” accesss to it for 2-3 weeks. (And it gets me to finish one book instead of listening to six at once.)
To get shorter wait times for holds on Libby, find out if there are any additional libraries that your library has reciprocity with. I was able to get access to the Seattle library system this way and the app automagically looks to see which branch has the shortest wait time for holds and they have a bigger catalog than my local branch system.
Libby also has digital books you can borrow (I want to call them Kindle books but there are other platforms to read digitally ack I don’t like having Amazon branding in my language like that).
My library also has access to an app called Hoopla which I have downloaded but not really used. There are audiobooks on there! And movies, TV shows and music. Reminds me of Brandi’s story of getting Elton John cds from the library as a kid and changing her life. I rented the Tales of the City miniseries from my library on VHS and changed my life.
The Libro.Fm app: This is an audiobook site that supports the indie bookstore of your choice! I support Charis Books & More in Decatur, GA because I want that resource to exist in a red state and feminist bookstores don’t have the kind of traffic they once did.
Their monthly membership costs the same as Audible. ($15 a month.) Join Libro and I get a little book credit so please use my link so I can get wiser!
While renting books briefly is nice I actually like being able to come back to books or take my time with them. And there are a few I wanted that Libby didn’t have. I’m slowly reading Love in a F*ed up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up and Raise Hell Together by Dean Spade and All About Love by bell hooks.
I recently got to visit Charis books and asked the owner if they get much from Libro and she said we get a bit and it helps but not a bunch. But that’s still better than the bit Bezos would get and pay for another yacht for his yacht.
Spotify: Spotify has audiobooks included in their premium plan. They actually have a lot of books, I was surprised. Part of my plan for withdrawing my attention from Instagram was putting my attention on the works of Octavia E Butler this year. I’ve whipped through her Patternist series and just finished the Lillith’s Brood series. I could only get a couple of the books on Libby so it was rad to find them on Spotify.
Warning: you only get fifteen hours of listening time for audiobooks per month. It’s hard to find your hour tracker on the app but if you click your profile pic, settings & privacy, click on your plan (my click says “premium individual”), then at the top of the list it has a book icon and you click to see how much time you have logged til your next billing date. I’m on hour 14 and voraciously reading Parable of the Sower.
I want to acknowledge Spotify is a corporation who robs artists (here’s an article about the CEO compensation). I would love to see a co-op of mega artists band together and buy Spotify, take it off Wall Street it and make it a fair wage platform for creators. My plan is to eventually move to Tidal which seems like the best streaming option for artists.
We are all doing the best we can where we are. A revolution isn’t a single event, it doesn’t even have to be a bloody war. It can be the radical act of all of us changing where just a small percent of our spending goes. And tipping more! Tipping is a revolutionary act.
Okay happy listening I hope this post was helpful!
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