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Ema Kaminsky
I use Medium to reflect on design of everyday digital products.

Meet Libby — a rival to Audible (one day!)

I’ve been using Audible for over a year and have read close to 15 books. As my annual membership was about to expire, I noticed a post in the Women in Product group on Facebook that local libraries offer access to electronic and audio books for free via an app called Libby. Since getting a library card is very easy, I decided to give Libby a try and see if I can access design, product, and management books using this free app. Of course, I was also interested in how the app is designed and whether it’s as easy to use as Audible while providing a comparably rich collection of book titles.

I haven’t used the predecessor of Libby, Overdrive, but I see that both apps have high reviews in the App Store. Libby is a much more memorable and evocative name for the library app though! According to Libby’s description in the App Store, it aims “to simplify and bring joy to every aspect of digital borrowing and reading.”

Both Libby and Overdrive were developed by the same company, Overdrive. The company has been around since the late 80s when it converted cassette tapes to CDs, among other things. Now, the company has upgraded its library app that serves every public library in the U.S. As a quick Google search has revealed, there are 16k public libraries and only 14k MacDonald’s restaurants in the U.S.

How to get started with Libby

  1. If you don’t have a library card, visit your closest library and get one. You may need to have an ID and a letter proving your address. The whole process of getting a library card took me 5 minutes. I visited the Shaw Neighborhood Library in Washington, DC.
  2. Download Libby from the App Store or Google Play.
  3. Log in using your library card ID number.
  4. Go through the prompts and start browsing the books available at your local library.

Libby vs. Audible

Content

I was looking for several titles for the upcoming Women in Product book club: Radical Focus, Measure What Matters, Inspired, and Sprint. Unfortunately, I found none of the titles available through the DC Public Library on Libby.

That’s definitely not the app’s fault that the library doesn’t have these books, but since I mostly read and listen to tech-related books, the content available through Libby doesn’t meet my needs. In fact, technology isn’t even a category on Libby. Some of my favorite non-tech books, such as Grit, The Power of Habit, Thinking Fast and Slow, Mindset — which are classified as business — are available. If you haven’t read those, Libby and DC Public Library definitely have them available. I wonder if the Bay Area Libraries have a different selection of books with a bigger emphasis on technology.

In comparison, all these product management books are available on Audible and Kindle through Amazon.

Waitlist

Unthinkable in the age of Amazon and Walmart, waitlist is a phenomenon that exists when it comes to getting things for free. For example, it would take me 9 to 17 weeks to get through the waitlist for Thinking Fast and Slow. It’s hard to justify waiting so long for a book. Don’t get discouraged though. If you are looking for a particular book, I would still recommend checking it on Libby first, before buying it on Amazon. Some of the books are always available and have plenty of copies in circulation.

Design and User Experience

In terms of design and user experience, both Audible and Libby are quite comparable.

Libby looks more colorful and playful. It has a cute heroine/mascot as part of the UI, which helps create the product’s identity and become memorable. Audible looks pretty plain, but at the same time has a cleaner and more intuitive interface design.

One design aspect of Audible that’s worth mentioning is that you can’t buy a book from inside the app. You have to go to the Audible or Amazon website and purchase a book there. This Quora discussion explains why that may be the case (hint: to avoid profit sharing from in-app purchases). In case of Libby, you browse the books from the app and borrow them from inside the app as well.

Verdict

  • I’ve read multiple App Store reviews for Libby. A lot of reviewers say Libby is a great alternative to Audible. I would say it’s a great alternative to Audible if your tastes in books match the books available at your local public library. For me, I couldn’t find most of the titles I was looking for. On the other hand, Libby features a variety of bestsellers like Grit, Lean In, and Option B. If you are looking for a popular book, it will most likely be available through Libby.
  • If you like to consume your books through various media, Libby has a number of options for you. Libby allows you to listen to audiobooks, read in the app, or send a book to your Kindle.
  • I can only speak for books available through DC Public Library on Libby, but a lot of books I’m interested in have long waiting periods. With such an abundance of things to read and watch nowadays, the concept of waiting for a book for 10 weeks seems like a huge pain point to me.
  • I might be renewing my Audible membership after all, since it has all the books I need for purchase for about $150 a year for 12 titles. However, I will keep Libby as my back-up option.