What Is Blinkist?
Blinkist is a book summary service with one of the largest libraries of book reviews available on the web right now. The Blinkist review team has already added over 3000 books to the library, making it great value for money. The app has more summaries than most free sites, and they are as good as (if not better than) any other summary site’s content quality.
In this Blinkist review, we’ll go over what it is, how it works, and whether or not it’s worth your hard-earned cash. Without further ado, here’s everything you need to know about the pros and cons of Blinkist book summary app to decide whether or not it’s what you are looking for.
Blinkist Pros & Cons
Pros
★ Over 4,500 book summaries
★ Professionally Summarized & Narrated
★ Extremely low-cost subscription
★ Unlimited Access Audiobooks
★ Free Users Get 1 Summary Free per Day
★ Android, Apple & Amazon Alexa Compatible
Cons
✘ Email-only support
✘ No Book Ownership
What is a Book Summary Service?
Blinkist and getAbstract are both services that pay writers and narrators to summarize a non-fiction book. A typical book might take between 4 to 10 hours to read or listen to.
That is a long time to invest in learning a few key lessons. Book summary services distill the book’s key messages and takeaways and transform them into much shorter versions.
Of course, a summary audiobook service will only work with educational, self-improvement, or business books; you could not summarize a Sherlock Holmes Crime Thriller into 15 minutes; the book would be ruined.
Blinkist Review Summary
Blinkist summarizes non-fiction books so its members can get the key messages of a book in 15 minutes rather than the many hours it takes to read the book. Blinkist has a broad mix of professional writers and narrators who deliver both eBook and Audiobook summaries. At an excellent price point and a great selection of the best business, educational, and self-improvement books, Blinkist is my favorite service.
As a passionate Audiobook listener, I was very excited at the opportunity to listen to an entire book in 15 minutes. Interestingly, there were books that I thought had some great messages, and I learned from them.Two years ago, I signed up for a free trial of Blinkist to try out Audiobook summaries. I liked the service so much. I purchased a yearly subscription.
There were also books that I was very pleased I did not spend 10 hours reading to get that simple or even unremarkable message.
So for me, this service is great.
Blinkist is a very professional service, their narrators are first class, and the books are very logically laid out and easy to follow.
With every book summary, you get a high-quality 15-minute audiobook and a written summary of the book if you prefer to read it.
I particularly like the feature to listen to the summaries of the New York Times Bestsellers List (see image right).
The single downside is that you only have access to the books as long as you subscribe to the service. This is, however, understandable because the service is unlimited listening; you do not buy a book; you buy access to all the books.
Blinkist Pricing Plans & Cost
Blinkist Basic Plan – Free
Amazingly Blinkist allows you to register for their free plan, in which you can access a free Blink (their name for a book summary) of their choice every single day.
I assume the idea is that you will like the Blinks so much you will later upgrade to the Premium service to get access to the whole library and choose what you would like to listen to. Of course, they are correct; this is exactly what I did.
Blinkist Premium – Unlimited Summaries
Blinkist has a single premium plan that gives you access to as many books as you want. The key difference is in the pricing. If you opt for a monthly subscription, it costs $15.99 per month in the USA, meaning $191.88 per year.
However, I recommend paying for the year in advance, which is a single payment of $99.99, which gives you 12 months of access for a 45% discount, which is, in my opinion, a great deal.
getAbstract is also an excellent service that costs $299 per year, with access to 20,000 summaries, but in terms of value for money, Blinkist is a clear winner.
Blinkist Customer Service & Returns Policy
In terms of returning books, I have previously mentioned you do not actually own the books; you access the service. It is more like Netflix rather than buying a DVD. So, ultimately there is nothing to return.
You can cancel your subscription anytime online with a few clicks, and the customer services teams are available via email or webform.
Blinkist App & Device Compatibility
Playstore App Rating: 4.6 ☆ Excellent
The App itself is a breeze to use, simple and effective.
My library is well organized, and my saved books and favorite books are easy to access.
What I particularly like is the ability to highlight text in a book via the App or Browser.
You can simply select the text and click highlight, and it will be saved in your Highlight tab.
This is perfect for keeping track of those lightbulb moments or key inspiring messages in a book.
The App is highly rated in the App stores, and impressively Blinkist is also compatible with Amazon’s Alexa smart speaker so that Alexa can read them to you.