About BookBeat

BookBeat is a Swedish audiobook and ebook subscription that charges by listening hours rather than by title, and a discount code is a low-risk way to find out whether that model suits how you actually read.

How the hour-based subscription works

Instead of one flat fee for unlimited access, or a credit that buys one book a month, you subscribe to a monthly allowance of listening hours across a catalogue of around a million titles. The tiers step up from a small allowance suitable for a book or two a month, through a middle tier that covers most regular listeners, to a large allowance aimed at people who listen while commuting, walking or working. Ebooks are included alongside audiobooks. If you run out of hours before the month ends, you can move up a tier rather than being cut off until the reset.

Which tier to pick

Work backwards from hours, not from price. A typical adult novel runs roughly ten to thirteen hours in audio, and non-fiction is often shorter. So a twenty-hour allowance is one long novel plus slack, forty hours is three to four books, and the top tier is for people who effectively have audio playing most days. If you are unsure, start lower — moving up mid-month is easy, and paying for hours you never use is the commonest way to overspend on any subscription. Note the date a free trial ends, because the first full charge follows automatically.

Apps, offline listening and sharing

Listening happens in the BookBeat app on phone and tablet, with downloads for offline use, which matters on the Underground and on flights. Playback speed, a sleep timer and bookmarking are standard, and progress syncs across devices. Check whether your account supports a family or profile arrangement if more than one person will listen, since sharing a login means sharing the hour allowance and the reading history. Availability of individual titles varies by country.

Cancelling, and using your code

Subscriptions renew monthly until cancelled, and cancellation is done in your account rather than by email; it takes effect at the end of the paid period, so you keep the hours you have paid for. Discount codes and trial offers are usually restricted to new customers and to one per household, and an old lapsed account can count as existing. Enter the code at the point of signing up rather than after, since a subscription already created generally cannot have an introductory offer applied retrospectively.