Audiobooks, ebooks, or both? You don’t have to choose anymore. Everand, the book subscription service owned by Scribd, wants to make that choice unnecessary. The company on Tuesday canceled a combined subscription that bundled Everand’s catalog of more than 1.5 million audiobooks and e-books into a single plan with social book club app Fable, which Everand acquired in 2025, directly challenging Amazon’s dominance in digital reading.
The new subscription is available to 5 million readers across the two apps and provides access to Fable’s nearly 200,000 online book clubs, in addition to a library of more than 1.5 million audiobooks and e-books. When you read or listen in one app, your activity syncs to the other app. The company says it has licensing agreements with all five major U.S. publishers and other major distributors.
In the US, the entry-level plan offers one book for $11.99 per month, the $16.99 per month plan offers three books, and the $28.99 per month plan offers five books. This subscription includes both e-books and audiobooks, so it’s a pretty competitive deal compared to Audible Premium Plus ($14.95 per month), which offers a streaming catalog of originals and podcasts plus 1 credit for audiobooks.
Everand’s hope is that this bundled approach will help small companies like theirs take a crack at Amazon’s reading empire, which currently spans Audible audiobooks, Kindle e-books, and the still-popular reading recommendation and recording app Goodreads.
This is a classic example of using acquisitions to generate switching costs and deepen user engagement, which is exactly the strategy Amazon has been implementing for years. Together, these properties bring Fable’s 100 million+ ratings and reviews to Everand, allowing Everand readers to jump into communities related to the book they’re currently reading.
The company notes that 820,000 Fable readers joined new clubs within the app last year. New subscription plans include Fable Plus, which provides advanced reading statistics, custom reading goals, bonus badges, and an ad-free experience. (Fable Plus typically costs $5.99 per month or $49.99 per year.)
Everland isn’t the only land orbiting Amazon territory. Spotify has also entered this market with its own audiobook products and, oddly enough, physical books. To help users move between formats, Spotify offers a “Page Match” feature that syncs positions between the physical book and the audio version.
Citing its own research conducted in 2025 among more than 1,600 U.S.-based adult readers, Everand believes the new combined experience has the potential to attract readers who want a subscription that covers both audiobooks and e-books in one place. The study found that more than half of readers regularly use both formats.
Again, timing is important. Thanks to the influence of BookTok and the general resurgence of offline (or “analogue”) activities, especially among Gen Z, today’s readers are interested in not only consuming content, but also forming communities around it. There you can discuss your latest reads, rate and review titles, and share your favorite quotes and passages.
Fable’s community app addresses this trend, offering book tracking, reading goals, daily streak tracking, lists, book clubs, and discussion rooms.
This app is not without competition. There are currently many reading companion apps to choose from, including Hardcover, StoryGraph, Margins, PageBound, Bookshelf, Bookly, TBR, Reading Journey, and Bookwise. One person has already been killed or injured due to the crowding. Tome announced its closure earlier this month, citing overwhelming competition.
In addition to the combined subscription for U.S. readers, Everand is expanding Standard, Plus, and Deluxe subscription tiers to global markets. The “unlock” mechanism has also changed, allowing unused credits to roll over for up to six months instead of expiring at the end of a subscriber’s billing period.
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