Name: Everand: Ebooks and audiobooks
Rating: 4.49099 (25463 reviews)

User Reviews for Everand: Ebooks and audiobooks

4.49 out of 5

25.5K Ratings

2 years ago, Chriistiiinaaaa

Great Concept, Just Slightly Less Than Stellar Execution

Scribd has to be hands down one of my top 10 favorite apps. The subscription model to me seems too good to be true, especially when compared to alternatives. It's true that some titles are not available or are unavailable for a month or so at a time. However, I would say that I've been able to access about 90% of the titles that I'm interested in (mostly nonfiction). As for the unlimited feature, I've not had the same issue as other users in running into some kind of limit (I averaged a book a week last year). I've been a user since 2019 and since I've not really had crazy substantial issues. Most of the problems that I've ran into have been minor to moderate technical glitches (audiobooks restarting randomly, app not properly synching across devices, having to refresh the app occasionally) but nothing that would make me consider deleting the app. All in all, if you're on the fence I would highly recommend at least trying it the a few months and contrasting the experience (and the cost) to other alternatives. I hope this review is helpful!

2 years ago, Fix-this

Dishonest & Glitchy

I had subscribe to the service for about five months or so then decided to cancel recently just to find out the date it cut me off a day early. I just needed to save some money recently so I decided to cancel for a short period of time but I’m not sure I’m coming back after my experience. During the time I subscribed, I kept having issues that the audiobooks I wanted to listen to were unavailable until the next renewal date. I would still have 10 days left on my subscription and find out that I couldn’t listen to the next audiobook I wanted to listen to in the series because it wasn’t available until my next subscription renewal date. This happened three times and it was very annoying. While this service may be cheaper than Audible, the aggravation may not be worth it. The app is also glitchy. I had times when I would answer the phone and the audiobook would still play in the background while I was trying to hear phone calls. I would set up to play the audiobook sometimes, and it would just cut off by itself while I was driving. Which is annoying because I live in a hands-free state and can’t go back and reboot the app. The glitches seemed to happen more often after I decided to cancel for a little while. The audio player with clothes for no reason in recent weeks and I kept having to stop what I was doing to reopen it just to get it to play again. Probably won’t renew now after the recent experience. You should shop around.

5 years ago, belongsomewhere

Not “Unlimited”

Scribd sells their subscription as “unlimited,” which is true...if what you’re after is an unlimited catalog of books you’ve likely never heard of and have no interest in reading/listening to. You can listen to between 1 and 3 popular or recent books, and then you’re prevented from reading other recent literary and/or popular titles until the following billing cycle. This is fine if you know it going in (a big if, as they’re not upfront about the details of their model for obvious reasons), but disappointing if you learn about it the hard way. I read and listen to upwards of 12 books a month, mostly recent releases. I was hoping to find a better model for my audiobook consumption (I listen 3-5 per month), but Scribd is not the one for me. It may work for you if you read significantly less or have an interest in backlist titles you’ve probably never heard of. I’m sure there are hidden gems in the part of the catalogue that’s always available, but my purpose in trying Scribd was to work through my massive TBR, not to waste hours of potential reading/listening time sifting through a virtual stack of books, the vast majority of which have little to no appeal to me. I’m left wishing that Scribd were honest about the service they offer—a couple of audiobooks per month for less than the price of one from the most popular audiobook distributor. That’s not a bad service to offer! But the mendacity of claiming the service is “unlimited” chafes me, so I’m out.

5 years ago, War Eagle To The World

User beware, “unlimited memberships” are not actually unlimited!

My unlimited account is consistently shut down each month after week 2 or 3 because I “read too much”. They don’t notify you when you’re approaching your “limit” nor will they explain how many books you can technically access on an UNLIMITED membership before they shut you down until your next billing cycle. As a student who uses Scribd for school assignments as well as for pleasure reading, it is extremely frustrating to sign in to Scribd and not be able to open the books I’ve been reading and using for school assignments. They are known as the “Netflix of books” but thankfully Netflix doesn’t charge me full price and then shut down my account each month because I watch too many movies. “Unlimited” memberships are very much LIMITED, so don’t read too much or else you’re paying for nothing! They try to get around the fact that their cheating their customers by saying “while all of our titles may not be available, there will always be something available to read” but what they leave out is that by “something to read” they mean books that are 100 years old and are also available for free on every other platform because they’re free public access books like Gulliver's Travels and such. Nothing I would ever want to read nor PAY to read when I can access it for free everywhere else. Scribd is amazing for about a week or two, then it’s just a scam that takes your money without providing what you paid for.

6 years ago, urbansync

Fabulous service - even with limitations

Scribd truly blows Kindle Unlimited (and even Audible to some extent) out of the water, especially if you read a lot of serious non-fiction. They also have an amazing selection of British mystery audio books btw. I have to admit I have not run into the 'limit' problems some others have reported. I have no idea why, but this may well be because I don't tend to check out bestsellers or really popular titles. However, if you are interested in Art, History, Culture, Language etc., I can pretty much assure you that you have discovered Valhalla with Scribd. To me, it's like a massive digital treasure house set up for easy browsing. I often find obscure monographs here I can access nowhere else online for any price. Also rather than waiting weeks to checkout a title via our local library via Overdrive, I usually have instant access through Scribd. That said, I do still have occasional problems with the search function finding a particular title even though it turns up being included after all. Our excellent local library system makes a valiant effort to have many e-books available, but only has a tiny fraction of what I can access via Scribd. Anyway, 5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️'s - a great value and I am a very satisfied subscriber.

5 years ago, grassyhoppar1

NOT UNLIMITED-Used to be a great ap-now it’s CRAP

I’ve been a scribd subscriber since it first came out and it used to be amazing-even with a limited library the selections were enough to keep me entertained. Last few months they’ve started throttling my audible books every month to a seemingly obscene extent. When I brought it up to customer service last month they insisted I wasn’t being throttled but it had to do with licensing agreements and release dates for “certain titles” which is BS ... thing is there’s no way to “sample” an audible book without them dinging your usage-so if it’s a crappy book and I quit listening 5min, magically all the titles that WERE available prior to my preview are no longer available until the following month. You can’t convince me that’s not throttling-so “unlimited” audiobooks only applies under Scribd’s jacked up definition of the term. Ridiculously insulted at their scripted response from customer service trying to justify their methods and understand completely why you can’t CALL a customer service line🙄 you can only email and wait days for an unsatisfactory response. The product was way better at its conception. Gonna cancel my Scribd membership and double up on audible-at least they are transparent about exactly what you get for your money, you can preview a book before it counting against you, and if you have a concern-you can talk to a live person that actually values their subscribers and will do the right thing!

6 years ago, NoNoNanny

Shouldn’t Be Called Unlimited*

I love listening to audiobooks. It’s a great way for me to pass time at work and while commuting. I don’t have the time to sit down and read a book due to my hectic schedule. That’s where Scribd came in. The advertised ‘unlimited’ was great and understood that some title might come and go from availability. However, this month, I’ve only listened to one audiobook and already have restricted titles. I truly wish Scribd would take customers into account with this sort of thing and try to create a solution instead of their auto-generated responses. I’d be willing to pay an extra charge for “truly unlimited” or even if they offer “5 audiobook listens per month.” The fact that they say unlimited* with the asterisk puts everything up in the air. I wish I knew exactly what I would be getting each month. Perhaps creating a tiered program and being more transparent would avoid the upset customers because we would truly know what we are getting into for the price. Let me be clear, I truly enjoy using Scribd. My only app issue is that I wish it told me exactly how long I have left of a book instead of “7 hour” which could mean anywhere from 7 hours to 7 hours and 59 minutes. I think Scribd is an inexpensive way for busy bibliophiles to get their fix but I think there are issues that Scribd needs to hammer out if they want to keep their customers truly satisfied.

4 years ago, Jessbr1988

Good app.. horrible customer service

This app is the best I’ve seen if it’s kind. You have so many options and they have brand new books very quickly. However, I’ve had an issue with the audiobooks for almost a month. The sound quality was awful and kept skipping. I contacted customer service right away and never received a response. I got tired of waiting for help and cancelled my membership because of it. I can’t justify paying for a service where I only get half of the benefits because the company won’t help me with a huge issue. Update- Scribd contacted me saying they’re backlogged on support tickets. They asked me to update This review with my ticket number so they could escalate my issue to the top of the queue. However, I’m not sure customer service is as backlogged as they stated. I opened a ticket after never receiving a reply on my original one and the next day it said ‘ticket closed’. No reply. Nothing. Just closed as if the issue had been resolved or at the very least addressed. So, I opened another ticket hoping it was just a fluke. Same thing happened. It was closed. Someone in customer service closed the tickets. So, maybe not so backlogged if they could close out my tickets so quickly. The app worked great for me for the year I used it. But I needed help with an issue on the app. I tried every outlet I could to get help before canceling.

2 years ago, herasrage

Scribd will throttle your usage

Scribd is great sometimes, some months there will be so many great books that it’s hard to pick what to read or listen to first. However, you should know that some months it’s also going to be almost useless. You know how with cell phone plans they will tell you that you have unlimited data, but then they massively slow down the speeds after you get to a certain amount of gigs used? Scribd is like this with its catalog. This month the main options I have available to me are old books with expired copyright, random unknowns, and Scribd originals. I have the ability to see that some books I want to listen to are on Scribd, but they are not available to me until the first of next month. I just paid this month’s bill cycle but now I’m going to get pretty much no usage out of it because I don’t have the option to read any of the more popular selections. Sometimes it’s worth the $10 per month and more so it’s not really enough to get me to cancel my subscription but it sure is frustrating, especially since I just paid for this month and I know that I won’t be able to get much use out of it despite having paid. If Scribd were more transparent about this then it might be less frustrating.

2 years ago, jemidiah

Underhanded Limits on Titles

I did a free trial and was initially impressed. I read 20+ books per month and this seemed like an inexpensive way to access more books. However, as you use the app they throttle your content without warning and make most titles unavailable until after your next billing date. It’s underhanded and annoying - I would rather have known up front about these limits before I made a “to read” list of 100 books, none of which I am able to read before my free trial expires. I’m going to keep this and pay for one more month to finish a series but then cancel my subscription. Additionally, there are copious amounts of illegal ebooks on the site. I would search for a work or offer and find it offered as an epub uploaded by a random user, not an author or publishing house. Book piracy is bad and detrimental to authors and it doesn’t seem like scribd cracks down on it very much from my point of view. There is no way to flag or report a pirated book within the app. (If you read this, please do not search for pirated books. Get a library card and request titles, maybe borrow a friend’s library login to see more ebooks, take advantage of free books on kindle and other platforms, etc. Pirating books disrupts the entire ecosystem of the book world, hurts authors, and can prevent your favorite authors from publishing more books due to a lack of demand.)

11 months ago, adelle.db

Terrible functionality and outright scam

I was a proud scribd user, I tried to convince all my friends to use it. But now I'm canceling my subscription and feeling passionate enough to write a review to warn others to stay away from scribd too. This app worked so well for me the first few months, but it has gotten so much worse lately. I mostly used scribd offline, and the functionality was awful. I couldn’t use bookmarks, highlights or notes, and as soon as I connected to internet my place in my book would be lost. If I swiped away from the app or closed my phone it would boot me from the app and I’d have to get back on it again, a task that took anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes (whether I was using internet or not). Imagine waiting 5 minutes for an app to load in 2023. Then there’s the bit everyone will warn you about, the fact that they advertise their service as unlimited but will randomly take all the books off your shelves and leave you only porn and uploaded documents for a week. Every single month. They don’t disclose how many books it takes to reach this point, either. One month I read over 10, this month—my breaking point—I think I was allowed two. I am not paying over 10$ a month for access to two books. Save yourself the frustration and find your digital books and audiobooks somewhere else.

6 years ago, BloomyBlondeHearts

Customer Service Doesn’t Exist!

This would be a fantastic app if it wasn’t for the few issues I’ve had. It started when one of the books I was listening just mysteriously disappeared from the Papp with no warning at all (even though they’re supposed to tell you if it does, which will be an important point for the second issue). So I sent them an inquiry about it a few weeks ago and have yet to hear a reply. The BIGGEST issue came when I was listening to the The Wicked King. Now for this one, they were they actually sent me a notification saying the audiobook would leave Scribd on 2/16. An email I still haemve my copy of, by the way. Anyway, I tried playing The Wicked King one day and low and behold it stops working and I keep getting this message saying it’s not available. Well, this goes on for days and I send in another request for Customer Support. I hear nothing for weeks and so I email them about both tickets, and they email becomes a ticket number! I’ve never seen Customer Service take this long! I don’t think they even exist! Also, if you try to search for The Wicked King before 2/16, like I did just now, it doesn’t show up at all! Why say it’ll be there on until 2/16 when that’s clearly not true! Why don’t you send any emails out about these issues and update your customers? Customer Service just doesn’t seem to exist.

5 years ago, Lauren20132013

Scam

It’s not unlimited. I can never read past 3 books without everything I have saved (over 270+) books becoming unavailable until the next pay period. As you listen to books, they start trickling away to be unavailable until If you are lucky enough to listen to a third book, they are all unavailable. They always say their catalog “rotates as you listen” but that is not true. I paid for two months and didn’t listen to one book to see what would happen and guess what? Nothing happened. No books became unavailable and not one over my 270+ saved books became unavailable until the next pay period. But guess what? I listened to one book this month and 70% of my saved books became unavailable right before the book was done. Then midway through my second, all of them became unavailable. Sometimes I’ve even had the second book I am listening to shut off halfway and become available next pay period. If you are someone who listens to a book a month maybe two if you are lucky, then sure, this app would work. But for someone who downloaded it and wanted the “unlimited” books, it’s a scam. And look at their real reviews and twitter complaints. People will cancel and still get charged. I mean hundreds of comments complaining of this. I think most of these high ratings are people who haven’t ran into this problem yet or only listen to a book a month.

4 years ago, Cest me

Wanting more clearity about what content is available after saving tittles

It seems like a good app, but it’s important to know the limits on how many books you can have. I wish the app developers would build in a stratified system in which you can read or listen to a certain number of books before the second “unlimited” level becomes the only one available. I acknowledge it is probably difficult dealing with publishers, or even perhaps having publishers as a second “costumer.” Im assuming these relationships simply require too much complexity for the average user to understand. On the other hand, I’m wondering if there is a secondary gain to being less than up front about the service. To be fair, the first month is free, and they started pulling titles three weeks before the end of my trail month. I bet statistically fewer users back out once they have signed up though. Foot in the door technique is an old advertising game. I think most literary users can smell it and feel an animosity towards scribd even if that isn’t the developers intent. Who wants to feel anxiety about making the right choice on a book before the various content cut offs engage. Please read other review to learn more about the positives. Besides this complaint, I’ve been enjoying the app.

2 years ago, V.El.

Service is great but

The app itself is a technical nightmare. My two most common issues are that the audio will just stop playing entirely and I have to restart the app in order to get the audio working again. Sometimes I have to close it multiple times and after 3 or 4 times will usually just give up and keep the app closed for a while because the audio just won’t come back. This is a problem whether the book is being streamed or is downloaded, and it’s not a problem with being connected to Bluetooth, as disconnecting doesn’t fix it. The audio is still there. You can rewind and listen to other parts or skip ahead and listen ahead but randomly there will just be a chunk missing that will only come back after restarting the app. The second biggest issue I’ve run into is that I will pause my book, the app will freeze when I go to start it again, and sometimes it will just start my audiobook from the beginning and have no bookmark or anything of where I was. Overall, I really like the service itself and have been a customer for over a year, but the app is always a point of frustration and I wish they would just figure these bugs out for good.

2 years ago, Song of a Siren

Just get a public library card

If you read sparingly (1-3/4) books/magazine a month this service will be fine. I joined during the middle of winter to provide some entertainment and escapism during the dark days and to get through some stressful family moments. In these periods I read frequently - too much apparently for scribd. Any magazines or book that I borrowed briefly to preview seemed to count against my item or pages (not sure which way the company limits users as they don’t disclose your limits) which then led to me being unable to finish books I was actually reading. As I read, more and more items from my wishlist would disappear to the ‘available soon’ (can’t remember the actual title) and I would be unable to access these - which eventually consisted of my entire library - until the next payment cycle began. Seriously, just go to your local library and sign up for a card and use their ebook services. You probably get a greater selection and you will never read “too much” in a month! I hadn’t had a library card since childhood, but this experience left such a horrible impression on me that I finally made my way back to the public library. Don’t waste your time or money on this service if you read regularly.

2 months ago, bfchris

Great service; loading could be faster

Everand has a terrific collection of books, limited only by publishers who are foolish enough not to list their books on the service (why forego a wonderful opportunity to reach avid readers?). As a professional involved in animation development, I fail to understand why the audio version of a book makes it to Everand so many months before the “reader” version, but that is not Everand’s fault. (Doesn’t the written version of the book have to be completed BEFORE the recording of audio? Publishers in the past couple of years imply they publish the dictation, then take the time to make a transcript to edit for a book!) For the month of May and June 2024, Everand’s website would not let you read a book on desktop if you were using Brave browser, but that has been fixed. All is well, and I highly recommend Everand. They have also made some tweaks requested by users, primarily: the first row of books on the Home tab shows “Continue Reading” instead of requiring users to scroll down a row or two to find that. Bravo!

6 years ago, Dkgp

Unlimited, mostly.

It is unlimited, but it seems that certain books have limits imposed by the publisher, so if you don’t DOWNLOAD the book you want, you just save it (so basically it is on your reading list, but not downloaded), it can be sort of out-of-stock before you get to it. I waited a few weeks until 9/4 for some books I wanted, then a few days after 9/4, some of them already said not available until 10/4, then the date changed to 10/5. I started to worry it was a scam, but on 10/5, I was able to download about a dozen books I’d been waiting for. It is a good value, as long as you are willing to be flexible and wait sometimes. It’s a bit like waiting for books to come back in to the library. But considering the cost of audiobooks retail, it’s a good deal. ** That said, the latest update seems to have a glitch, and keeps crashing about 20 seconds after I start my book. I can listen from my computer, but that is certainly not as convenient. I’ve enjoyed this app for months without a problem, so I really hope they fix this ASAP!

5 years ago, Bethh32

Not unlimited

I watched available titles dwindle daily as everything listed my next billing date as the available date. I sampled several books, but only read a couple of audiobooks in a months time. Meanwhile, I can’t even search for books because unavailable titles are excluded from search results and literally everything I was searching for was unavailable. I’m talking about entire topics, not just authors. The language they use is vague and misleading at best. They reference materials being unavailable, but it’s basically everything I was looking for. Books already begun would switch to unavailable also. They make it seem as if the availability is arbitrary instead of clarifying exactly how availability works. I asked for clarification and was told to read the vague articles instead of getting an answer with details. Clearly they intend for the process to be mysterious, vague, and arbitrary instead of telling you that the number of items you open is limited. There’s no option to return bad books and actually read something else either. They should have named it enigma. They keep specific mechanics a mystery so they can sucker you into paying for a month or two before you realize what’s going on. We might be able to make the most of it if we knew how to avoid turning every title to unavailable, but that’s top secret.

5 years ago, Imaldo10

Scam! Do NOT use.

I signed up for the 30 day trail to listen to an audio book. I put in my credit card information. Standard stuff. Well, I forgot to cancel within 30 days and got charged a monthly fee. That’s my fault. Here’s where the issues arise. I log on to the website to cancel my membership and neither email that I have was recognized when I tried to log on. No sweat, I clicked forgot pasword to retrieve my password. NEVER received a recovery email. So, I submit a request to see if someone from customer support can assist. After submitting the request, I get a response 8 hours later from TESH, stating that he is unable to locate the account with the email provided. How am I being charged each month if I don’t have an account. He then asks for the last for of my credit card that I used to set up the account to assist him in locating the account. Never hear back from him. That was 2 months ago. I am still being charged monthly and I have no way of canceling the membership because I don’t have an “account”. I’ve submitted multiple help tickets since and I have never received a response back.

4 years ago, Carey5898

Questionable Service

I listened to two audiobooks through this service in the first week of my free trial - it was amazing the collection they had and I thought I had found my nee favorite service! I was eager to add about ten audiobooks to my library as reminders for what I wanted to try and read next. However, after I finished my second book all but maybe 2-3 books were marked as unavailable until my next billing cycle. I was shocked because earlier in the day they had been available and I had no problems with their availability during that first week. The excuse the app provides is that it‘s due to the publisher, but the books had a wide variety of publishers and why would they suddenly be available the day after I renew my subscription? How does my billing date have anything to do with their publishers? The app clearly puts a cap on what kinds of titles they will allow you to read and their advertising is just blatantly problematic to suggest this is not the case. Also, I noticed as I was looking through ebooks which were about the only things I could find available a lot of them are uploaded by random people in odd formatting, so I feel like something much more questionable is going on with this service! Overall, I would not recommend any avid reader or listener use this service, clearly some type of scam!

6 years ago, sailpamc

Have to agree with the other reviews about audio books

3/7/19- though I am disappointed in the limit on audio books, if they had just explained up front, what the * means in regard to them instead of having us figure it out, it would not be so upsetting. So, if you do listen to a lot of audiobooks and not take advantage of the e-books, magazines and other materials, be aware that you may be limited. Third month in and I guess I listen to too many audiobooks because all that appears now are old classic books with black covers no matter what category I choose. For instance The Boxcar Children appears under Contemporary Fiction, Scribd recommends, Mystery, Bestsellers, Mystery, Romance and every category there is. The daily recommendations has disappeared and the top lists have remained the same for over a month. I also get variations of the same canned response when I submit a ticket. This is sad for such poor customer service. I am going back to the public library for my audiobooks. Enjoy the free month and maybe the first paid, they are worth it but beware after that.

11 months ago, Grayson Dolans girl❤️

By far the best!

This is my absolute favorite book app, they may not have all the books all the time but it’s worth the subscription price because you get unlimited books! Like I said the best app for audio books and ebooks unless they don’t have the book your looking for but still have a wonderful variety of books :) there isn’t a lot of popular books all the time but why not give lesser known authors a chance, I for one have listened to quite a few audiobooks on the app that turned out to be absolutely wonderful and even some of them I’ve listened to multiple times because I liked them so much, I have yet to have a problem with this app besides a few glitches here and there and I’ve had this app for about 2ish years maybe 3. Most of the time I can fix the glitches by restarting the app, developer: thank you for this app, I do wish there were certain other books in here but I still love this app so much, it helped me get through boring slow days at work and hard times with my ex, thank you <3

4 years ago, elzia2020

Scribd service is good, the App is terrible

I’ve started listening to audiobooks to help me fall asleep at night. With every “update” of the app, a new glitch seems to occur. The last time, all of the books on my Saved list would shut the app down each time I attempted to open them on my IPhone. Customer service was exactly ZERO help in resolving the issue. It took them nearly a week to even respond, and even then, it was with an article “related to my issue”, which was not related to my issue, nor was the advice helpful. I finally resolved that issue by deleting the Scribd app from my phone and then reinstalling it. A fix they never mentioned. Last night, all of the books on my Saved list that I have not finished now sound like they are spoken on the other side of a large fan, quiet, loud, quiet, loud, quiet, loud...with some words being cut off...like a strobe light for sound. They are unlistenable! Only books I’ve completed do not have the issue. Deleting the app and reinstalling had no effect, nor did doing a hard reboot of my IPhone. So variety and price of Scribd is fine, although I wish they’d add new titles more frequently. But the customer service and iOS App are terrible and I’m reaching the limits of my patience with them.

9 months ago, tucker bear

Longtime user

It has good content that in not found in local library on a broader range of subjects. 5 stars for that. However, two problems interfere significantly with my use so I have to downgrade. New yellow splash screen is horrible in the middle of the night if you wake up and need to listen to an audio book to help you fall back to sleep. I have dark mode enabled, but it doesn’t seem to stop it. Another really big one is the audio speed. The lowest speed Scribd offers is .8. Library app offers a speed of .6. This is important to people who use the audio books to sleep, have ADHD or other disabilities, or just need to slow down fast talkers. I have reported this issue several times over the past year to customer support. I continue to hope that someone will listen. I also had some titles disappear after listening to several books. It appears to be unlimited to having audiobooks, but not to having all the content available to you depending on your use. It should be more straightforward about how that works, like how many ‘premium’ audiobooks, before content is throttled. despite my comments, don’t let that deter you from checking out the app.

6 years ago, Katcar36

Good and Bad

So there’s both good and frustrating sides to this app. Good: 1. Its cheaper than audible or other services I’ve found- and most books I don’t really care to add to my library anyway because I’ll most likely only read or listen to once, so I don’t need the audible purchase option. Bad: 1. It says “unlimited” but in reality it’s only “unlimited for the first 2 weeks. After 2 weeks most of the books I have bookmarked (that were showing as available) will all of a sudden say “this title will be available on (whatever my renewal date is).” I sent a query about this and was told that it’s because titles are constantly rotating, but I looked on a friends app and the titles I wanted showed as available to her. It’s really just a ploy to get you to renew your subscription each month. Super frustrating!!! (Note: There’s still books available to me at that point, just none that I specifically want). 3. The player works well about 65% of the time. Lately it’s been stopping at the end of every chapter or jumping back two chapters and I have to re-find my place manually— also annoying. For how many books I listen to, it’s still the best deal though.

3 years ago, JcSstop

Highly Restrictive Caps on Content - Throttling

Scribd throws a a lot of misleading terms at you (looking at you “rotating content”) designed to confuse, but the more you read or listen to any current books they put caps or throttle your content. You won’t know when it will happen but suddenly you won’t be able to read or listen to the next thing until a future date (next month). Scribd says well you can find something else then. Like you didn’t sign up to actually listen or read what you want instead of some cruddy piece of content they’ll actually let you access. Essentially they are cheap and instead of better contracts with publishers which would improve access for all they take your money and then throttle you. If you use Libby, Overdrive in conjunction you may be able to avoid also having an Audible account; but be selective so you can try to get your priority content when you want it. Careful with fallback titles while you wait tho, it can push back dates for the stuff you want without any notice whatsoever. Scribd, if you really want to please your subscribers, improve your publisher agreements, make your throttling caps transparent and stop using your shady language to hide what everyone already knows. Grow up and treat your subscribers better please.

5 years ago, Micah dunn

Getting frustrated

I love scribd, I really do, but for those that have time to listen to multiple books this service is starting to go downhill very fast for me. I usually listen to between 3-6 books per month, easy to stream while at work. 5 months ago I could get into a series and listen to it fully. 3 months ago I could get 2 books into a series then the rest would not be available until the following month. Now I can listen to the first book in a series and can’t listen to any in that series til the next month. I start a separate series and the same thing and the library gets smaller, and smaller, and smaller til now I’m at stuff that I guess is public domain so anyone can record and put it on here and the quality and speech is horrible. I still love this service for its ease and the cost is wonderful but I’m getting frustrated with how much it seems to be penalizing for listening. I contacted customer service, who were great, about this and they said it was due to the way they set up licensing with publishers. It’s getting to the point where my frustration is wearing me out more than it’s worth. I would gladly pay more for a fuller experience.

6 years ago, Smoking 409

Not unlimited...

I feel like the person that posted before me. I would be willing to pay way more for a service that actually let me read what I search for. The first few months were great! I loved this service so much, until a few months back when I began getting limited on available books. Nearly every book I searched for was suddenly not available until the renewal date and many times not even then. Now if I do an author search right before my eyes they ALL change to the next month's renewal! What's this about? The only ones it may let me listen to from the author is the Abridged versions which I do not want. It was just audiobooks but as of this morning it's books as well. I do listen a lot but there's just no excuse for saying UNLIMITED and READ WITHOUT LIMITS in the advertising and it being untrue. I have written in several times and each time it's just a lot of nonsense thrown at you with no real help. And I would LOVE to just SPEAK TO A REAL PERSON but they have no telephones. Kinda strange... LOVE the idea of this service and LOVED this service in the beginning, still love it when it works out but it is getting increasingly harder to deal with. Bring it back to the way it was, please guys!

4 years ago, musicmankeys3333

Sheet Music Too Small and Blurry When Zoomed In

There is an excellent selection of piano sheet music on Scribd that includes many styles and genres as well as method books. As someone who love playing new music each day I was excited about their large collection of music and being able to easily access music through the subscription. Unfortunately, the music is small and difficult to read. When I zoom in, the music become larger but blurry which makes it difficult to read the notes on the staff. I have tried reading the music from a 27” screen directly in front of the keyboard and also on an iPad placed on the music stand. It is difficult to read the music from both screens without straining. There needs to be a way to enlarge the music. Scroll view is slightly better than horizontal but more difficult to turn pages as you play. I hope the developers will add better reading features for sheet music. With better viewing options, this subscription would absolutely be worth 5 stars with their wide selection of piano music. For now, I will hold off on subscribing to Scribd for sheet music until there are better viewing options.

5 years ago, Honeschool

NOT UNLIMITED!!!

I have been a Scribd subscriber for at least 6 years it used to offer “unlimited” books to read and gave you 3 audiobooks each month. Then, they changed their marketing to say that everything was “unlimited”. THIS IS NOT TRUE! After you have listened or even sampled about 3 audiobooks, they make their audiobooks “unavailable”—they don’t say that though. You just go in to search for another book and all titles disappear and the only thing available are Librovox titles (free to public on other sites) and a few meditation books. Even your saved books will not work. I like the app but I wish they were honest about what they are doing!! It would be better to go back to the old way where you knew exactly how many audiobooks you had left for the month. Now, there is no warning and you don’t know when the titles will disappear. This is very frustrating!! Oh, and if you just sample a book—it counts as one of the audiobooks you get. I’ve been reading reviews on other websites and they have a lot of unhappy customers and people closing their accounts. Customer service just gives a scripted answer denying that this is what they do. Read the other reviews.

5 years ago, M88key

Be prepared for a lot of frustration

The selection is quite good, and I want to love this service, but it has a fatal flaw. When listening to audiobooks, the app advances to the next chapter maybe 50% of the time (if that). At the other times, it freezes, skips backward in chapters, or just locks up with a message of “loading” (whether or not the audiobook is downloaded to the device). I am running an updated app on a brand-new iPhone XR with tons of free space. The app has been like this for a couple years, through many updates. It was like this on my last two iPhones as well. It does this with every audiobook (I have listened to dozens). If these inexcusable and usability-impairing issues could one day be fixed, this could easily be a must-have. For now, just be prepared to deal with these issues. To manage, I close the app and restart it every 5-10 minutes, often sorting through my whole list of audiobooks to find the one I was just listening go and trying to select the right chapter out of the table of contents. I keep the service because I listen to more audiobooks than my audible credits will ever allow, but it is extremely frustrating and just nonsensical why these software issues have persisted for so, so long.

4 months ago, Sarah Rudkin

A couple suggestions

I really love this app and use it all the time. Way better than most audiobook apps by far. I just wish you were clearer with what is included in each subscription level - we know it’s about rights and how many listeners/how much you can listen per payment cycle- but it needs to be clearer to the user. The user experience of simply not being able to find a book or a title that I KNOW is available, just because it’s no longer available to me during that cycle is infuriating and frustrating. Just gray it out or put a banner over it. There’s no need for titles to simply ~disappear~ when your licenses are up for the cycle. Please consider changing this. It makes me, and many of my friends who are also users very annoyed and caught off guard that the series we’re listening to or reading suddenly is gone. It’s totally understandable for titles to become unavailable due to licenses during that cycle, please just make it more clear to the users and keep the titles visible but unplayable. Thanks.

1 month ago, JALover!!

Okay

At the end of every month when I’m trying to get last minute reading done, I can’t because the app takes my titles and and says they’re available soon. Meaning the next month. This isn’t the first time it’s happened. It also deletes my saved titles and makes my list significantly lower. Which isn’t fair. I’m a forgetful person and I like to visit my saved list and sometimes titles are missing and unsaved. It is a really good app (despite my rant), full audiobooks with non robotic narration! I love this app and it’s helpful with getting to my reading goals…but I had 146 titles saved, and right now I have 6 on my saved list because everything else is “available soon”. Again, I do appreciate this app. That’s why I gave it such a high rating but is this a bug issue or what? UPDATE: I just looked and I have a message on the app saying “you’ve reached your limit for the month” this is a monthly subscription that I pay for. $12 a month. And you get limited on how much you can listen to? Thats kind of weird.

2 years ago, ArveyinPDX

Very disappointing - an update

After wading through multiple emails of tech support supposedly trying to help- by suggesting I uninstall and reinstall I continue to have the same problems. And have to continue to pay for 8 more months because “ Per leadership, we are unable to offer a refund on this purchase as premium content was accessed after this membership was redeemed in your account”. Is that double speak or what? So because I used the app and was unhappy with it almost immediately I have to continue to pay a monthly fee. Really the worst customer service. I got a subscription as a gift and it has been pretty bad. I am locked into a year because it was purchased for a whole year (???) not sure why they won’t refund but they won’t. Terrible selection compared to Audible and Libro, the players stop for no reason on both my new iPhone and new iPad, syncing is complicated, the interface for ebooks is clunky, the selection seems to mostly be magazine articles, most of the books I have looked for are unavailable, (new or older) the search is also frustrating-you search for an author and get random other people’s work that has nothing to do with who you are looking for.

6 years ago, MinionCat

Almost nothing available in the audio book library now!

Agreed with everything said below, Scribd had less and less books available each month in their library now! They started to pretty much make majority of the audio books unavailable now, does not matter whether you saved it or even already downloaded it, does not matter the date that they told you that book will be available. If you browse their audio book library now, there are only some very old books or short stories available while everything else said are unavailable now until next month ( which most likely won’t be available next month, or the next either！） They don’t care whether you downloaded the book and were listening to it now, they will just take the books away and make them unavailable whenever they want. I started to wondering maybe they were run out of money paying license fees for these books and therefore could not make them available and have to take them away. Well, too bad for us who already prepaid the annual subscription fee since I don’t think they will refund you even when they failed to provide any books you interested. No way I am going to renew my membership when it expired!

4 years ago, P.Juhl

Love, but some bugs

Scribd is my favorite app. I got the trial several months ago to look at some pdfs, with the intention of canceling it after, but then I realized that it has audiobooks and I’ve used it every day since. There are, however, a couple of bugs that need to be worked out. For one, if you ever pause the book you’re listening to, the app almost immediately closes in the background. So, if I pause it to talk to somebody, and then go right back, I can’t just hit “play” to resume; I have to actually reopen the app and wait for it to load, and then start listening again. The second one is that audiobooks have a common tendency to skip back when you are away for a while—sometimes skipping back more than an hour. I’ll be listening one night and be, say, 5 hours in, and then I’ll come back the next day to find that it has reverted back to 3:45. This is very frustrating because I listen frequently for short stints, so if I am listening 4 different times a day, and, every time, I come back to find I have to skip forward 30 seconds at a time to find my place again, it takes a good 8 minutes every time to find it. Giving one star until the problem is resolved, then I’ll update to 5 stars.

2 months ago, GabbsE

I love it but!

I love this service. I truly do! The price is perfect for everything you get. The only reason I am writing this review and giving it 4 stars is because of the amount of time this app freezes and gets stuck on “buffering”. Every time I open it it gets stuck then I need to fully close it and open it again in order for it to start playing. It would usually be no big deal but it does get bothersome when you have to do it every single time. It happens even when I have full cellular service or full wifi connection. I don’t know if others go through this but I certainly do. I’ve had the app for a while now and I tend to take breaks from it because I get so annoyed. lol. Then I get mad at my self for paying for it monthly and not using it for months at a time cause of the freakin buffering. Hopefully one of these updates will fix this issue. I cancelled Audible when I got this app and service. If it wasn’t for the constant buffering, I would give this service 5 stars.

11 months ago, Tweet211

Great but…

I’ve been using Scribd for 6ish months now and have loved it. There’s a great variety and as a stay at home mom I just don’t have a much time to sit down with a book as I used to. However, over the last couple weeks the app has been so glitchy. It’s been restarting books from the middle and I have to try to get back to where I was or it’ll randomly say that it can’t play a book. It’s not a service issue. It’s happening to books I’ve already downloaded. I actually started making sure I downloaded every book before I listened because of this issue. Also, had a problem with re listening to books. I could not play them back again until I had downloaded the book. All of these issues have only recently started for me so perhaps it came with the last update. Up until a couple weeks ago this would’ve been a five star app for me but, I’m getting a little irritated spending so much time just trying to get a book to play or trying to figure out where I was at after it starts a whole book over for no apparent reason.

1 year ago, README THX

Overall it’s very great!

I’ve been using this app for about a week or two now. This app is a great bang for your buck and has good quality audiobooks! I’ve been using audible for a couple years but it’s too expensive ($16 a month and only some of the books are covered by the subscription). I listen to books too fast so I needed something more financially sustainable. I heard about this app from a friend and I love it! It’s so cheep, especially as someone coming from audible. All most of the books I’ve looked for are in audiobook which I love! I do run into the limit some months, but I can’t complain too much because I have always gotten my money’s worth before I hit the “this title is not available until X date” issue. There are occasional app functionality issues that are annoying like randomly restarting my audiobook from the beginning out of nowhere so I have to hunt for my spot again. But I still like the app enough to keep it 5 stars c:

3 years ago, Kvallotton

Have not been able to get a hold of anybody.

I would love to give Scribd a five star review because I’ve been very happy with it myself. So much, that I purchased five subscriptions for my friends. I have been trying to purchase two more for Christmas presents and it keeps saying I need to try another credit card. There’s nothing wrong with my card! I also tried calling the headquarters and they don’t except phone calls that just reroute you back to their website which does not answer this question. I see that there are people responding back to negative reviews so I decided to leave one also hoping that I can change this from a one star to a five star once I hear back from you. Update: it is now January 3 and I still have not heard back from you. I can see their other subscribers that I’ve had the same issue. I ended up buying three more subscriptions from Audible with no problems at all except for I had to pay $90 per subscription. It seems like you are losing quite a bit of money and it would just make a big difference if you would respond to our inquiries. I can’t imagine you staying in business this way. Really disappointed!

4 years ago, courtnaymarie

Beyond glitchy app

This app is so glitchy it’s ridiculous. Shuts down for no reason all the time, will buffer randomly for very long periods of time that no amount of restarting will solve (5-10 mins frequently on my iPhone 11 and is not related to my wifi, data plan, etc, I’ve checked all that). Also, there is no discernible rhyme or reason on how to choose books to listen to without losing access to other books for weeks at a time. I understand that to keep the cost low they need to limit popular titles but I’ll listen to 20 mins of a book and then be shut out from choosing 150+ other books in my cue. Again I agree limits to help keep costs low is fine, but there should be a tier system or something like that so you can choose what you want to have access to rather than this disorganized approach. I originally would have given it three stars because it is more cost effective than audible and other apps but the app interface and usability has recently really gone down hill to the point that I am seriously considering canceling, especially since audible recently introduced unlimited listening for a significant amount of titles.

6 years ago, zaya_iz_awsome

I used to love it...

I loved this app and raved about it to anyone who would listen and was using audible about how great the unlimited books were. Unfortunately, in the past 2 months, a “bug”, or more likely rate limiting, ruined it. After listening to 3 books in a 1 month period, everything in my saved was labeled unavailable until the next pay cycle. Thats disappointing. Things in the public domain are still available, of course, but i could (and do) use librevox for those. I have a scribd subscription for contemporary things. Its really disappointing that one of my favorite apps is suddenly disappointing. I get that its expensive to have all of these titles available, and I’d happily pay double what I do now if it meant you would get *actually* unlimited audiobooks, but as it is now, I dont know. Its still a better deal than their competitors, I just wish they wouldn’t call their service unlimited because it’s not. Maybe this is actually a bug, like their FAQ says, but its been doing this for the past 3 months so I don't think it is. Maybe its time to look for a new audiobook provider.

8 months ago, SUPER KAEG

Satisfied

I like the fact that you can read books without having to buy them individually. Sometimes I look for books that I want to read or particular authors to see if their books are available and I choose what I want. The change in the number of books allowed doesn't bother me. I have several books waiting for me to read anyway. My only problem why I haven't given five stars is that sometimes when I go to a book in my library that I haven't opened recently, it starts from the beginning. That shouldn't happen. It should keep your place no matter how long it takes for you to get back to reading the book. Another thing - I noticed that one of my books has the word expiring on it. Don't what that means. Updated Review I used to like Scribd but I don’t like this new version, Everand. Every minute You take away books I am currently reading. What is this new system where you are limiting the number of books each month and removing what you like? What is the sense of that? I am turned off and I don’t think I will renew my subscription when the time is up. I am fed up!

6 years ago, Sherply derply

Great selection - at first

So first of all, I’m very grateful for this app. I use it during work - basically just mowing all day - to listen to audiobooks, and they help make the time fly. I haven’t had any playback errors where I lose my place, but if I do go to something else and come back after a while, the app is likely to have restarted itself. This means I’ll have to go, open up the audiobook again, then it won’t load, so I’ll have to go to the table of contents, restart the chapter, and fast forward to where I was. It’s a tedious process. A wall that I’ve run in to lately is that most of the books that I want to listen to, best sellers (Red Rising, Sea of Rust, etc.), aren’t available until next month? Some of them I’m fairly sure I’ve looked at before and they’ve been available a day earlier. Now, maybe it’s a subscription thing, where you only get x amount of “premium audiobooks” to listen to each cycle. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve listened to a fair number of works already, and I’ver been very happy with them as I would have had to pay much more normally. However, I find it unfair for the app to boast about its “reading without limits” without making it clear, somewhere, that there are in fact limits.

8 months ago, PhantomRats

Needs significant improvement

The limitations they put on availability aside, the app just isn’t as user friendly as it should be. Browsing is next to impossible as they don’t offer categories and sub categories that you can dig into to find hidden gems, new releases, or popular titles you’ve heard about but can’t recall the names of. Instead they offer recommendations that don’t appear to change or update ever (I’ve been using the service for a year and a half and have the same 20 books in my recommendations list today that I had the month after I joined). The recommendations seem intended to drive attention to specific titles and authors that are neither popular nor highly rated by any definition of the terms but are rather Scribd/Everand exclusives. You can search for specific titles or authors but if you’ve reached your undefined limit of titles for the month, search results will turn up empty even when they have the title but just won’t make it available to you until the following month. I’ve never had a more frustrating browsing experience.

5 years ago, Mynameish

Not Unlimited

Like other reviews, I’m an unhappy customer due to the lie of the service being unlimited. I had a free three month trial and was able to listen truly unlimited every month so I signed up. My first 6ish months it would cut me off after two books or audiobooks. It was frustrating but it’s still worth the price for two books a month. Now I get one book per month and I’m unable to listen to anything but lesser known titles. As others have said, I would gladly pay more for truly unlimited or pay more to know I’m guaranteed X amount of books per month. The developer response to the reviews saying that they can’t guarantee immediate availability is ridiculous. No one is asking for that, we’re asking you to either deliver on your advertising or to at least give your customers SOMETHING of value. The app itself is clunky. Every time a new chapter starts the countdown to the next chapter freezes so in order to see your progress you have to re-start the app. It’s also very unreliable in telling you how much of the book is left. For example it has 6 hours left but that could mean 6 hours and 1 minute or 6 hours and 59 minutes. Not user friendly at all.

3 years ago, kdbeonda

Technical issues make it impossible to read— no customer support

Do not waste your money! They will close your account for no reason. First, if you have a question are issue their goal is 2 WEEKS to get back to you. Yes, 14 days. And they don’t always meet their goal. Second, if you have a gift card you will basically have to create a new account or go for a few weeks without access while you wait on the app to stop trying your original payment method. Third, I keep getting a log in error saying “account does not exist”!!! I have pre paid for another 3+ months and no way to access books… but don’t worry, the customer support team might email me back in about 14 days. Maybe. Update: Customer Service is horrible! They deleted my account because they claimed it was a fraud. I was using a prepaid gift card- how is that fraud? They are ignoring my questions about how I can redeem the remainder of the gift card. They will not give me information on why/how it was determined to delete my account. And said I cannot create a new account. Do not waste your money! Update: they will not response about the money they stole.

2 years ago, VhConservative

Beware!!

First off this app has way more book overviews than actual full length books. There is not unlimited reading and listening and the worse part is that even after canceling the subscription on my iPhone I have been billed for a solid six months. Good luck trying to contact customer service. They have an automated Bot that answers questions based on what you ask but always ends up never letting you call or email until you dig deep. FYI- if you get stuck and charged like I was their “policy” is only being refunded for your last charge. I sent proof of the exact date I canceled but that’s didn’t matter. Next step is to dispute it with my credit card company. Do I was contacted by customer support regarding the unauthorized charges that were billed to my credit card. They said they are looking into it further so I will come back once this is resolved to update my review. If it’s handled correctly I will be a happy customer. FYI - I sent screenshots of the exact date my subscription was canceled so there is no question as to my request. It’s very clear on you iPhone what subscriptions you have and when they were canceled.

10 months ago, WaggleSticks

Not Unlimited & Copyright Infringment

It is not unlimited you get to read/listen to a couple & then you are cutoff until the following month because 'there is a rotating list of licensed books that changes month to month to ensure authors are paid fairly". Conveniently the licensing issues get worked out the day you make your next payment. Best part is they have been sued numerous times for copyright infringement & consistently put up other people's work without paying them a dime. I also checked out there cookie settings the 'Do not Sell My Personal Information' toggle is listed at the bottom of all the other selection choices. You have to deselect all the other ones & toggle that on. Clearly done to trick people who are not paying attention. Speaking of not paying attention: I just cancelled my subscription. They make it seem like you get it done in one click really you need to scan the entire page to find a second cancel button then go through numerous pages with misleading wording to finally cancel the subscription. Bet I will be continually 'accidently' billed like a lot of other reviewers too.

Description

Meet Everand, your new digital library for ebooks, audiobooks, magazine articles, podcasts, newspapers, and sheet music. Everand’s digital library includes bestselling and trending audiobooks and ebooks in every genre, including: • True Crime • Fiction • Personal Growth • Science Fiction • Biography • Health and Wellness • Personal Growth • Children • Cookbooks • Entertainment • Travel • Celebrity Narrated Memoirs • Religion and Spirituality • YA • Self-Help • Romance • Business • Politics • Current Events An Everand subscription also includes access to: • Sheet music selections that cover every musical genre, instrument, and difficulty level. Play the classics or explore current hits from popular artists. • Articles from hundreds of magazines including People, Time, The Atlantic, Entrepreneur, and more. • Access to millions of documents and professional content on Scribd and SlideShare. All content read or listened to on Everand can be synced across multiple devices, and there are special features that are included in your subscription at no additional cost, including: FEATURES FOR THE AUDIOBOOK LISTENER • Customize your narration speed • Set a sleep timer • Download audiobooks to listen offline FEATURES FOR THE EBOOK READER • Download ebooks to read offline • Make notes and annotations, and add bookmarks • Customize your font size, type, and background color • Choose horizontal or vertical page scrolling Our monthly subscription starts at $11.99 and automatically renews unless the subscription is canceled at least 24 hours prior to the next billing date. • Payment will be charged to your iTunes account at confirmation of purchase. • Subscriptions may be managed by the user and auto-renewal may be turned off by going to the user's Account Settings after purchase. • A subscription includes access to Everand, Scribd, and SlideShare through one monthly payment of $11.99. Download the free Everand app and start listening and reading today! Our privacy policy can be found at https://www.scribd.com/privacy Our terms of use can be found at https://www.scribd.com/terms