mongo is appalled

[smilebackwards]

A Parade of Horribles by Matt Dinniman. 1,100 pages?? Sure, I will read that in 3 days. I've been in place #1 on the holds for this book at the library since it was announced but they usually, understandably, take like a week or two to get and library bind new books and put them in circulation so I was checking digital availability on release day and was able to get a copy from Libby. So I downloaded that new app and my ongoing quest to understand the difference between Libby, Kindle, and Hoopla continues. Is Overdrive still a thing? Why so many eBook platforms? Anyway, book received and I enjoyed my time with Carl and Princess Donut and Prepotente and the rest of the squad!

Comments

[colls]

I'm having similar 'hold' issues with Martha Wells 'Platform Decay' - I hold on everything I can and read whatever comes up first (which is probably what other people do and why the wait lists are so long - haha). I should just buy it.

[smilebackwards]

Haha, I literally just got Platform Decay released to me from my library. I did the digital read of Parade of Horribles in the meantime while I was waiting like 'please please please is today the day?'. I'm excited for a bunch of summer releases in hardback so I can read outside :)

[evilinsanemonkey]

I can do an in depth explanation of Libby (which is owned by overdrive) vs Hoopla if you want

[smilebackwards]

Please do! Like I have figured out how to check things out but the proliferation of apps and versions of eBooks is confusing to me.

[evilinsanemonkey]

Sure thing!

So Libby is owned by Overdrive - they phased out the Overdrive app awhile back and switched all the app support to Libby. It works more similarly to a physical lending library - libraries pay a license for titles and curate the collection like they would their physical collection. That's why Libby has holds while hoopla doesn't - licenses are very expensive (Because publishers are weird about libraries). Through libby, if you do most of your ebook reading on a kindle, you can send your books directly to the kindle to read there. (You can also log into your overdrive account on a kobo ereader, if that's your method of choice). You can also read directly in the libby app, or download a protected epub to transfer to an ereader that doesn't support the send directly function (to do this you do need Adobe Digital Editions).

Another downside to Libby is that indie authors who publish through kindle and put their books on kindle unlimited cannot be purchased through Libby because kindle has a non-exclusivity weirdness for indie authors on KU. Similarly, if someone's audiobook is an "audible exclusive", the library can't buy it for Libby.

Hoopla is more like a marketplace. Libraries don't choose what's available through Hoopla, they choose which...Hoopla plan, I guess is the best way to phrase it, to offer. Hoopla charges libraries per checkout, which is why everything on Hoopla is just always available (Some libraries have to set up spending limits because of this).

As both a library user and a librarian, I vastly prefer Libby, but there are times when things are only available through Hoopla.

I hope that helped! :)

[smilebackwards]

Thank you! RIP Overdrive, I haven't used it in awhile but didn't realize it was fully phased out. Libby definitely looks a lot like Kindle so I guess I will plan to do most of my eBook reads there.

Also never realized Hoopla doesn't have a hold queue! It's nice as a platform for music.

[evilinsanemonkey]

Yeah, technically you can still use Overdrive on the website, but the app itself is phased out and no longer supported. I really like the ability to log into my overdrive account on my kobo, so that's been nice. The problem there is you can only do it with one library, so if you have multiple cards you can't have all of them on your kobo, alas.

Yeah, Hoopla is...weird. I do like it pretty well for music, and apparently it's good for movies and TV, but it is not my favorite digital library service, lol.

[goddess47]

Now that you mention Carl and Princess Donut, it was probably on your rec that I got Dungeon Crawler Carl... it was a fun read and I'm going to poke at the next story... more to see where it's going but the general absurdness made it fascinating.

Thanks for the rec!

[smilebackwards]

Pleased to be a DCC gateway! It is truly absurd and sometimes I let the background lore and what's going on kind of flow over me when necessary but it's a fun time :)