A few days ago OverDrive announced a new partnership with Pocketbook to bring the Libby app to PocketBook ereaders.
This gives people the option to borrow ebooks and audiobooks from public libraries directly on Pocketbook devices using the PocketBook x Libby app. The app supports downloading ebooks for offline reading, but the press release says you have to use the web browser to listen to borrowed audiobooks.
They say that users can also manage holds using the app, and it supports using multiple library cards at once. They also say that titles can be sampled before borrowing.
At this point it’s still unclear which Pocketbook models support the new PocketBook x Libby app. So far the PocketBook Era Color is the only model specifically mentioned, but the press release says the following: “Availability will expand soon to the entire line of PocketBook e-readers and e-notes.”
I haven’t been able to find any information about any of this from Pocketbook themselves. It would be interesting to know when they intend to start rolling out software updates to add support for the new Libby app. Is the Era Color the only model that supports the app right now? Are they going to update older models, or is this just going to be available for current devices? There are a lot of unanswered questions, and their website doesn’t say anything about any of it yet.
This new Pocketbook OverDrive partnership has some notable advantages over Kobo ereaders with OverDrive support built-in. With Kobos they don’t support getting audiobooks through libraries, and their OverDrive integration only supports using one library card at a time. Plus with Kobos you have to use their store to find and access OverDrive titles, and not all library titles are available through Kobo (some require sideloading with ADE). But maybe Kobo will eventually add this Libby app now that Pocketbook is doing it; there’s no reason why Kobo ereaders couldn’t support it too.
For ereaders with web browsers, Libbyapp.com may already be available, but yes, native app integration should work better?
The problem with most devices is you won’t be able to download the file using the browser because the ebooks have Adobe DRM. I think Pocketbooks are the only brand that supports downloading ACSM files directly. Kobo gets around this by downloading the ebooks from their store instead.
Well, I hope the Pocketbook BW Era gets it.
They could stand to update their firmware, as it seems like in 2024 when I got my Era, they were talking about an update that would allow the user to choose text alignment, but it’s never appeared, and hear it is, almost 2026.
I do like my Pocketbook Era, quite a LOT, actually, but yeah, they need to update to stay competitive. It’s also high time they added the ability to add weight to fonts. Just choosing their “Bold” option is no good, it’s very heavy. Something finer grained, please!
As someone who’s always wanted a pocketbook but didn’t buy one bc my old kobo works fine and has Libby access, this is the thing that’ll probably push me to finally upgrade from the Aura h2o.