I’m sure you have heard of Scribd. But what is Everand?
Whether you have seen this new name come by or have wondered about the yellow app icon showing up on your phone, in this blog post, you can find all the answers to the question: “What is Everand?”
I listen to around 200 – 250 audiobooks a year and Scribd / Everand is one of my favorite audiobook apps. I’ve been using it for years, so I have also prepared an Everand review for you, including its features and how it compares to other ebook and audiobook services.
**The marked links and book covers on this page are affiliate links. If you use them to purchase something, I earn a fee at no additional cost for you. Disclosure**
What is Everand?
Everand is the new “story branch” of Scribd. The original Scribd platform has been divided. Under the name Scribd, you can now only find the original document service where researchers and other users can upload and download PDFs.
Everand is the new name for the digital library service that offers ebooks, audiobooks, sheet music, podcasts, and magazines for a flat monthly fee.
But of course, we’ve wondered, why is Scribd now Everand? The company says it’s just cleaner to split these two services.
And personally, I think this is an excellent change because people kept trying to abuse the document upload function for pirated ebooks.
I also felt that the search results often didn’t present the way I would have expected, as they were cluttered with PDFs when I was looking for an audiobook.
Now, I’m not a fan of change so I would have preferred to keep the old name for the book subscription. But given that the document exchange for researchers was the original purpose of the platform, I absolutely understand this decision.
And we bookworms at least get to keep the app!
That’s why you might have stumbled over a seemingly new app on your phone. Your former app Scribd is now called Everand and shows the new name and new icon.
People who want to upload and download PDFs have to install a new app named Scribd.
Features
Despite the name change, we can still find a vast digital library that covers an extensive range of content, from bestselling novels and nonfiction to popular magazines, and from audiobooks to podcasts and sheet music.
While some books and audiobooks are premium content and you can’t download an unlimited number of those, you can get almost unlimited audiobook listening out of an Everand subscription as you are neither limited by the number of books like on Hoopla nor by number of hours as on BookBeat.
Once you start a book, you can be sure that you get to finish it. You can add as many books to your library as you want. And if you read and listen wide to a range of genres, indie-published and backlist books, you will likely not be impacted much by throttling.
The service also still offers all the perks we have come to appreciate, like a user-friendly app with all the important features (bookmarks, narration speed, sleep timer), as well as offline listening, streaming (which means I don’t have to wait for a download to finish before I can start my audiobook – I’m not the patient type), and decent personalized recommendations.
Comparison with other Audiobook Services
Of course, this is not the only digital library service out there. Let’s have a quick look how it compares to the most popular audiobook and ebook services.
Everand vs Audible
Audible is the biggest player in the audiobook market and offers subscribers a vast collection of audiobooks and original audio content and many membership perks.
While Everand also offers a substantial selection of audiobooks, Audible has a much bigger catalog, not only due to its exclusive productions but also because traditional book publishing companies don’t always offer their audiobooks in library services.
However, Everand’s subscription plan is a cost-effective choice that can offer you more listening to the books you want for a lower fee.
Everand vs. Kindle Unlimited
Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited allows subscribers to access a huge library of ebooks and audiobooks and borrow as many as they want for a flat monthly fee.
Everand is very similar to this, but the two main differences are that they limit your access to premium books (e.g., the latest bestsellers) and that they do indeed have the latest bestsellers in their catalog, while Kindle Unlimited consists mainly of self-published ebooks and audiobooks published by one of Amazon’s own imprints.
Everand vs BookBeat
For European audiobook fans, BookBeat is a strong alternative. As BookBeat is from the UK, you can find books in their catalog that, due to international publishing rights, aren’t available on Everand.
BookBeat also offers content in more languages.
However, if you are an experienced Scribd subscriber, you can likely get more listening out of that subscription than out of a BookBeat one, as BookBeat limits your listening by hours.
Everand vs Hoopla
Hoopla is a digital platform for public libraries that offers audiobook downloads, as well as ebooks and movies. Most libraries will allow you 5 to 10 borrows per month, and using Hoopla is offered for free by participating libraries.
Everand and Hoopla have a very similar catalog. So, I like to recommend to avid audiobook listeners to use both services. Borrow the newest releases and bestsellers from Hoopla, where you are only limited by the amount of books.
Then you can get a lot of additional listening out of your Everand subscription.
But as the catalogs are so similar, it is also an excellent alternative for anyone who cannot get access to Hoopla.
If you often browse audiobook stores on a PC, I recommend you install Library Extension, a free little browser plug-in that I found incredibly useful as it helps me plan which audiobooks to borrow where.
How to Use Everand Books
Here’s a quick step-by-step guide on how to get started:
Signing Up:
Go to the official website at Everand.com**. Click on the “Read free for 30 days” button to create your account. After a one month free trial, you can continue your subscription for $11.99 or €10.99 per month, or switch to an annual one that is comparatively cheaper.
Exploring the Library:
After signing in, you’ll land on the home page. Here, you’ll find featured books and audiobooks. You can also see personalized recommendations once you have a reading history.
Use the search bar at the top to find specific titles or authors. The search functionality is robust, so you can discover content easily.
You can also explore the various categories of ebooks, audiobooks, magazines, podcasts, and sheet music through the menu at the top, or browse through book genres and Editor’s picks.
Reading and Listening:
Once you have found a book you’re interested in, click on it to access the reading or listening page. You can choose to read or listen online directly in your web browser. Or you click “Save for later” to add it to your library, which you can find under the “Saved” tab in the app.
If you’d like to read or listen offline, click the download button (the downward arrow in the app) to save the book to your device.
Is Everand worth it?
My answer is a resounding yes! I get so, so much listening out of this subscription every month. I could absolutely not afford to buy all these books individually.
I’ve used Scribd for audiobooks for years before it was renamed. And while there used to be times when the service was bumpy and the app wasn’t smooth, it has improved by leaps and bounds, and I would absolutely not want to miss it now.
If you are new to audiobooks, I can recommend an Everand free trial** wholeheartedly because it allows you to explore a variety of audiobooks. If you have only used Audible so far, you will love how you can listen to so many audiobooks here without having to spend money or an Audible credit.
Eline Blackman (pronouns: she/they) fell in love with books as a child – with being read to and reading herself. 10 years ago, she bought her first Audible book. It was love at first listen! An average of 250 audiobooks per year has become the new normal and you will rarely see Eline without a wireless earbud. Romance and Fantasy are the go-to genres for this audiobook fan.
Hi! I enjoyed reading your post! I just stumbled upon Everand. I was thinking about buying my sister a year subscription for Christmas. She’s an avid reader and I got her the Book of the Month subscription for last year. Do you think Everand is a good gift? Thanks for your input!
Hi there! Yes, I think that would be a very fun book-ish gift since there are so many books included and she can explore a lot of different things, plus save a ot of money because she won’t have to buy everything individually 🙂
Here’s my affiliate link to Everand gift subscriptions**
I have overall liked Scribd/everand, but subscribers should be aware that there is a limit to how much you can add to your saved list. If you add too many items, some of your previously saved items will be made unavailable without warning which I have found to be very frustrating.
Was it your experience that titles became unavailable directly after you saved more audiobooks?
I have not seen this myself, only, as I described in the article, that audiobooks become unavailable based on the audiobooks you have listened to. And yes, I agree, I wish that Everand was more transparent with listeners in regard to how many audiobooks you can listen to until you get throttled.
Yes! I found this rather frustrating! I only like to listen to complete series so I take time looking for complete available audio series only for me to be halfway through a series for some of the books to become “unavailable” until a following date which can be anything up to 3weeks away. I understand they have a quota on how many listens at a time per book however for me it becomes “unavailable” and for another user it’s still available even though they haven’t even started or saved the series. So the Everand / Scribd info that says “it’s due to licensing and number of listens ect” is rubbish because if that was true, why is it unavailable for me yet for someone else it’s available?
Makes for a very frustrating audio listener 😅
Is “downloading” an audiobook truly off line listening????
One thing I’ve found with Everand (same with Scribd) is when you “download” an audiobook for “offline listening” it’s not true! You have to have internet access of sort to be able to get into the app let alone to listen to the book. Even if you go to saved>downloaded>listen, you still need internet access to do so.
Is there a hidden folder on your phone (iPhone) that the audiobook is saved to so you can actually listen offline? I live in a bad signal area and I use audiobooks for driving around work but as soon as signal drops, I’m kicked out of the app or book and can’t gain listening again until I have signal which defeats the purpose of “downloading” a book.
If someone knows a workaround for TRUE offline listening without going into the app which requires signal or wifi connection, That would be greatly appreciated!
I always put my phone on airplane mode in the evening and listen to audiobooks during the night. It really does work offline! The main screen of the Everand app will say you’re offline but in the bottom menu you can go to the Saved tab and it will show all your audiobooks you have downloaded and you can play them from there.