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All You Can Books Review – A Book/Audiobook Membership Website

Review/Post Reading Time: 10 minutes

In this post, you’ll find my honest “All You Can Books” review, a book and audiobook membership website. This is a rather expensive book content solution so I think it is important to get a review published so you can make an informed decision.

It’s Saturday morning and I’ve been up for hours trying to read. You ever have those times that your mind is on overdrive so you just cannot focus on what you’re reading. Me too. That’s me this morning.

One of my biggest projects today is this blog. I wanted to find unlimited audiobook options and begin to review those websites for you.

Luckily I found two large websites right away with a free trial membership. Scribd, which I was a member for a short while right after they launched, and All You Can Books, of which I’ve never heard.

This is an All You Can Books review and my Scribd review can be found here on Book4Ears as soon as I get that done.

My Overall Review Of All You Can Books  👎👎👎

Stop. I feel like that is enough of your time wasted already. Let me save you some time in case you don’t feel like reading more. I do not recommend you spend a single penny on All You Can Books.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. If it were, say, $4.99/year and you had extra time to waste, it might be worth looking at. Unfortunately, five bucks a year is nowhere close to the actual cost of this membership website.

Last caution: If you bother to continue, it is going to seem as if I have it out for AllYouCanBooks.com. Not true. I had no idea what to expect and was hoping for a workable option for myself as well as our readers.

I believe in a fair and unbiased review and that is exactly what I’ve given here. Truthfully, it is so negative, I considered not even publishing it – for about two seconds. If I can save anyone the time I just wasted on this website then it should be posted.

After all,

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The role of a reviewer is not to improve their own image but to shine the light of truth onto the subject at hand, even to the detriment to themselves or that of the reviewee.

Soon to be Famous Quote by Brian D. Hawkins

NOTE: I am reviewing this website for both audiobooks AND digital books.

My Full Review Of All You Can Books

The cost: Right away I noticed that All You Can Books is twice the cost of Scribd. This had better be an amazing resource, I thought to myself, to ask for $20/month ($19.99 as of the time of this review).

Think about it, you can buy the Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+ bundle and still have enough each month for CBS All-Access with limited commercials cheaper than you can get this All You Can Books membership.

You can get both Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited PLUS Scribd cheaper.

My gym membership PLUS my daily carwash membership is less.

See where I’m going with this? It’s too damn much money!

I’m sure the website is legit and had no problem signing up and offering my payment digits for the trial but I will be cancelling.

The looks: Once I logged in, I noticed a nice layout. It’s way better than that horrible home page for new visitors that looks like an amateur marketer’s first attempt at a landing page. ~ Just my opinion folks.

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Nice looking layout once you log in.

The dealbreaker – No search: The next thing I noticed is there’s no easy way to search for a book. What? This can’t be true. All You Can Books couldn’t possibly underestimate the value in a book search, could they?

As it turns out, there IS a book search feature on All You Can Books, it’s just buried at the bottom of the “Category” sidebar found under any of the main tabs BUT NOT the home page. Crazy.

It’s a very basic search but at least there is one, even though it seems to be hidden as an afterthought.

Let’s move on with the review.

So I start browsing. {sigh} For the sake of time I decide to add War And Peace. BTW, I noticed a ton of very old books, probably due to the copyrights being expired.

Consuming The Book

Now the fun part. I selected a book, how do I consume it?

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All You Can Books methods of book download/consumption.

I can listen as an audiobook. All I have to do is download the six separate MP3 files to my computer or device and listen. I downloaded the first part, just for the review. Part one is 272 MB and opened up in my default audio player.

All You Can Books Audiobook in the Groove Music Player

I was happy that the book is narrated by a real person, not a robot. I hate to admit it, but my experience thus far had me expecting the robotic voice of automation.

Call me spoiled from Audible and any podcast catcher worth a cent, but I can’t deal with the download and listen to an MP3 thing. There’s no syncing, highlighting, bookmarking or any of the features audiobook lovers have become accustomed.

I can read a PDF. Again, I downloaded this just for you. It’s a little over two and a half megabytes and 1373 pages long. My default PDF viewer does allow highlighting and notes but no bookmarking that I can see.

While I can certainly see the value, in certain cases, of owning a PDF version of a book or document, it is never going to be my preferred method of reading.

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NOTE: This view is based on a specific PDF viewer. Your’s may differ.

I can read the ebook online: I can but won’t. Ever! This is laughable. Worse than trying to get through a PDF document. I almost can’t even go on with the All You Can Books review at this point. Such a waste of time.

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All You Can Books read online option.

I can download the ebook: I tried this option as well. The download was in ePub format. I guess I could have downloaded an ePub app or reader but I didn’t feel like spinning my wheels all day. I mean, what’s the point. I already know I’m not keeping this membership.

Since I love my Kindle, I thought to myself, “Self, I bet there’s a way to get this classic onto my Kindle“.

I found this PCMag article, How to Put Free Ebooks on Your Amazon Kindle, and along with PC software, Calibre, I was going down the rabbit hole.

I’m pretty interested in the Calibre software, even though I was unable to email a MOBI version of the book to my Kindle. I’m sure I could have made it work but I’ll cut my losses for now.

Book Selection On All You Can Books

I see a ton of old books, or classics if you wish, but nothing new and popular stands out. The website advertises over 40,000 books and I have no reason to doubt that.

I searched Stephen King, Dean Koontz, J. K. Rowling and John Grisham with zero book results.

There are some book descriptions that seem to be an attempt at gaming a book search, eg. “Recommended for fans of John Grisham, James Patterson, Janet Evanovich, Scott Turow and David Baldacci. …). That way the search results are filled with non-related books by including popular authors. Shameful really, if that is indeed their intention.

When I search Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Mark Twain and William Shakespeare, I do find many classic book titles to choose from. Not as much as you might think but there are some.

Just for the fun of it, two out of my three favorite classics are available on All You Can Books. No affiliate links here, just a tiny sample of what I like. I couldn’t find The Great Gatsby but the other two were there.

  1. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 1812–1870
  2. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 1896–1940
  3. Walden; Or, Life in the Woods by Thoreau Henry David 1817–1862

While I really really really love some of the classics, that’s not what I am looking for in a $20/month membership. I’m also not looking for a bunch of “B” books. Not at that price.

I couldn’t find a link to their audiobooks section so I searched “audiobook” and got a mixture of audiobooks (many are freely available online) and podcasts.

All You Can Books Review Recap

  • 👍 Very nice looking layout.
  • 👎 Older or less-popular content.
  • 👎 Twice the cost of other unlimited options, including Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited if you’re just interested in Kindle books.
  • 👎 No easy or civilized way to consume the content you download.

Bottom Line 👎👎👎 (In a 40-word run-on sentence)

You just scrolled down here, didn’t you? LOL

If you have a system set-up to convert & send these ebooks over to your preferred reader, money is not a concern and you love classic reads, it might be worth a look.

Otherwise, keep looking and I’ll do the same. I’ll post my findings on Books4Ears, as always, to help you.

Update – February 15, 2020

My AllYouCanBooks.com Cancellation Experience

After a solid week into my AllYouCanBooks.com 30-day free trial, I figure I better get this membership cancelled before I forget and end-up losing $19.99.

After all, it states right in their terms of service,

You will not receive a notice from us that your free trial period has ended or that the paying portion of your membership has begun.

Does this sound like the policy of a reputable company? I’m not saying they’re not reputable, I have no idea, but image means something and this statement buried in their Terms of Service page in tiny font stinks to high heaven.

Speaking of “Buries in their TOS”…

I couldn’t find a link or method to cancel my free trial. After logging in and seeing nothing in “My Account“, I went back to the “Welcome to AllYouCanBooks.com” email. Nothing at all on how to cancel.

Next, I searched their contact page. Nothing. Finally, I looked at their Terms Of Service page, the last link on the page in the footer.

In the last paragraph of section six of their TOS,

I finally discovered how to cancel this free trial. It states,

You can cancel your participation in this program at anytime by visiting www.allyoucanbooks.com/cancel.

With NO LINK. Can you believe that? Not only is this information buried deep inside the legal statements of the website you also have to copy the page address to your browser to access it.

Having run several membership sites myself, as well as email subscriptions, I know that a company trying to hide an unsubscribe or cancel link is either up to no good or are letting the fear of a lost member get in the way of making a happy member.

To cancel allyoucanbooks.com go to https://www.allyoucanbooks.com/cancel

I do want to mention that once I finally found the cancellation link it was smooth sailing after that. I had no trouble cancelling the membership and even received a friendly cancellation confirmation email.

I think there’s hope for All You Can Books. They just need to figure out which role they are going to serve within this book content niche and work on fixing their content, membership experience and their overall image.

And please, please please, get a freakin’ app! If you’re reading this. Something to read and listen to the books after you’ve legally secured to rights to distribute better books.

And for goodness sake, they need to include the cancellation link clearly and boldly within the welcome email and on the account page. By making it difficult to cancel, and the following little statement below, they’re making it appear that keeping someone’s twenty-dollar mistake is a primary business plan. And I am not certain it isn’t, to be honest.

Also troubling, to me, is the following statement:

You may cancel your membership at anytime; however, there are no refunds or credits for partially used periods. You will not receive a notice from us that your free trial period has ended or that the paying portion of your membership has begun.

About my reviews

My reviews are simply my personal opinions, nothing more. I publish my reviews to help you make a decision, not to hurt or promote a book, product or company.

I do my best to research and understand the book or product I am reviewing but there’s nothing scientific here. If you find a mistake I have made, I would appreciate you posting that in a comment or using my contact form. Either way, I’d be grateful. I will investigate, correct and, if necessary, apologize.

Thanks, Brian

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

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Brian Hawkins

I'm a blogger, avid reader and daily audiobook listener. This is my second book review website and I'm excited to see how well it works out for the Audiobooks I consume.

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