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Worlds Without End Blog

Science Fiction at Scribd Posted at 8:00 AM by James Wallace Harris

jwharris28

Scribd.com is to ebooks and audiobooks what Netflix is to movies and television shows, and Spotify is to songs and albums, and Texture is to magazines. Don’t compare Scribd to Kindle Unlimited because Amazon’s electronic library subscription service is very limited compared to Scribd. Amazon and its subsidiary Audible doesn’t want to offer rentals that compete with its sales.

Over the past decade, there have been a number of online subscription libraries. Many have gone under. Scribd has tweaked it’s service a number of times to stay in business. Scribd really competes with your library’s electronic offerings, but instead of waiting in line for that free audiobook or ebook, you can have what you want immediately.

Scribd is $8.99 a month for an all the books you can read with your eyes or ears. Its library is very large, but nothing like the giant sizes of Audible or Amazon. However, its library is impressively large and I consider the $8.99 I spend every month a tremendous bargain. I still buy 24 books a year at Audible, because I do want to own audiobooks. I also buy tons of books at Amazon and ABEbooks. I also use my library regularly. But Scribd is letting me buy less and borrow less. I’m in three nonfiction book clubs and one science fiction book club, and I’m surprised by how often the books voted in are available at Scribd. I’ve saved tons of money.

But here’s a couple tests to see how Scribd does with new science fiction. I’m going to reprint the Best of 2018 lists for science fiction from two sites and color the titles that are available at Scribd. Scrid has a mix of ebook and audiobooks. Red for ebooks, blue for audio, or both colors for both formats.

The 10 Best Science Fiction Books of 2018Chicago Review of Books

  1. Mem by Bethany C. Morrow
  2. The Book of M by Peng Shepherd
  3. Semiosis by Sue Burke
  4. Severance by Ling Ma
  5. Rosewater by Tade Thompson
  6. The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
  7. Black Star Renegades by Michael Moreci
  8. Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller
  9. State Tectonics by Malka Older
  10. The Strange Bird by Jeff Vandermeer

Not bad, huh? Let’s try to make it a little harder.

Goodreads Choice Awards 2018 – Science Fiction

  1. Vengeful by V. E. Schwab
  2. Iron Gold by Pierce Brown
  3. Vox by Christina Dalcher
  4. Only Human by Sylvain Neuvel
  5. Red Clocks by Leni Zumas
  6. Binti: The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor
  7. Persepolis Rising James S. A. Corey
  8. Artificial Conditions by Martha Wells
  9. The Oracle Year by Charles Soule
  10. Head On by John Scalzi
  11. Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers
  12. Star Wars: Thrawn Alliances by Timothy Zahn
  13. Severance by Ling Ma
  14. The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
  15. Rosewater by Tade Thompson
  16. Ball Lightning by Cixin Liu
  17. Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
  18. The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch
  19. Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee
  20. The Consuming Fire by John Scalzi

I think I have more than made my point. I’ve also revealed a secondary bit of knowledge. Most of the books are on audible, and not as ebooks. I wonder why? Maybe publishers think readers want to own books, but audiobooks are a rental kind of thing. Who knows. But I believe I’ve made a good case for subscribing to Scribd if you love audiobooks. However, there are plenty of science fiction ebooks to read. Maybe they focus on the older titles for that format.

The results also make me wonder something else. Are the people who pick the best books of the year partial to audiobooks?

To me, it’s worth $8.99 a month to just try out all these new science fiction books.

JWH

3 Comments

Szymon   |   29 Dec 2018 @ 14:26

Thanks for the heads-up! I checked them earlier this year and at the time either their selection was smaller or I was only looking at the availability of audiobooks from your Classics of SF list.

Joseph Hurtgen   |   05 Jan 2019 @ 11:12

So many new books to read! I find myself reading legacy science fiction stuff, lots of 50s, 60s, 80s and 90s stuff especially (my apologies to the 70s). How do you balance wanting to catch up with classics with reading current sf?

Hneite   |   14 Feb 2019 @ 07:20

Just too bad on the hidden limitation on audiobooks. After listen to 3 audiobook in a month, many of my bookmarked audiobooks become available soon. And it sucks to have to wait for next month to listen to the next book in a series.

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