Whether you are a German speaking expat living in the US or somebody who wants to keep up with their German language skills, there are many options to consume German content. You can easily listen to German radio with apps, stream German TV series with Netflix or the German TV channels Mediatheken, read German news online, … but what about books?
I’m going to show you different ways you can read German books when you live in the US.
Print Books
Print books, ebooks, audiobooks … there are many options. Depending on how you like to read and what genres you read different options will appeal to you. Let’s start with the books that we all started to read as kids: print books.
When you moved to the US (or any other country for that matter), you probably took some of your books with you. Your favorite ones, the classics that every personal library needs, the ones that you will definitely want to read at some point.
But eventually, you might want to read the newest release by your favorite author. Chances are those books have not been translated (yet), and maybe you don’t want to read German language literature translated into English.
So, what can you do?
Stock up on when you visit Germany
Every time I visited Germany, about once a year, I would buy a couple of books to take back with me. The downside is that books are heavy and you have a 50 lbs weight limit on your luggage. And you also need room for candy and chocolate which adds up quickly to more than 50lbs.
If you only go back to Germany or other German speaking countries every couple of years, this option has its obvious limits. Two or three books might also not be enough for avid readers who breezes through multiple books a month.
If you have friends who travel to Germany often, you can have them pick up a book or two for you. Or if you have people visiting from Germany, have them bring you a book.
Lastly, you can have your family or friends send you book care packages. Shipping costs have risen over the last years and books are not exactly light, so you might want to look into that before ‘ordering’ books.
Swap books with other German speakers
If you live in a community with many German speakers (and readers), you can exchange books with them. This is only works if there are people in the area and if you read similar topics. Your city might have German clubs and the YWCA often has International Women’s groups where you might find like-minded people.
It’s also possible to find German language books at used book stores like Half Price Books. But there you are highly dependent on what somebody in the area sold to them and if they think they can sell in their store. Shopping online at Half Price Books for books in German is a little tedious because when you get many results about learning German. Narrowing the search to just books in German only works if searching for a specific title or author. I tried a couple newer books but couldn’t find any.
Buy books online
You have multiple options for buying German print books online, new and used. Ebay is a possibility if you don’t mind used books. The selection on ebay is pretty limited and you won’t find any new releases. It might advantageous to order multiple books from the same seller to save on shipping.
Using the website AbeBooks is similar to ebay but with a larger selection and many professional booksellers. Depending on where they are located, the US or Europe, your shipping charges will vary. Books can be used or new, and the prices seem reasonable most of the time.
If you like to read contemporary and newly released books you’ll soon find yourself on amazon. Many (online) bookstores like bücher.de or thalia.de only ship within Germany and Austria. So even if you don’t want to give money to amazon you’ll be hard pressed to find a German bookstore which will ship books abroad.
Amazon.de has a large selection of new and old books. I suggest ordering multiple books at once to save on shipping. While I have not ordered from amazon in quite some time, I pretended to in order to find out what shipping cost would be. For the first book it was 14€, for every additional book around 5€.
Ebooks
Buying ebooks
Since ebooks can just be downloaded on basically any device it’s cheaper and easier to purchase them than buying print books. You can use Apple Books to download a book, and read on your ipad or iphone. If you have an Amazon Germany account already, you can purchase books to download on their website and read with the Kindle app which is free to download. There are plenty of other e-reader apps and other websites like Barnes & Noble where you can buy German language ebooks.
This is a really good option if you know what you want to read and don’t mind paying ‘normal’ book prices. It’s even better if you want to read older books and classics because many of them a really cheap to download. I’m talking about a couple of euros.
Free ebooks
Some older titles are already in the public domain so you can download them for free through google books and/or the Gutenberg Projekt.
The platform Wattpad has many different kinds of fan fiction in different languages but also of varying quality. If this is your thing you can sign up for free and try it out. I personally don’t read fan fiction, though to be fair I’ve never tried it, but my son extensively reads Harry Potter / Percy Jackson cross-overs.
The maybe best way to read newer books for free is the library. If you are still a resident of Germany you can get a library card with your local library (though there might be a charge) and use their online library. I believe my parents pay 20€ per year which is the cost of an average (new) ebook to buy.
The app is called Onleihe. You download it for free on your device, log in with your library card number and password and voilá you can start borrowing ebooks, audio books, magazines, newspapers, and, in some cases, movies. Like with any brick-and-mortar library not all books are available all the times because other patrons might have borrowed them. You can reserve books and, when they become available, borrow them between 7 and 21 days.
If you don’t have an address in Germany anymore but family members do, you can use their library credentials. Since there normally is a small charge to obtain a library card I don’t feel bad using my parents’ account.
The other option to gain access to the Onleihe is through the Goethe Institut. It is a special offer for Germans living abroad. It works just like the Onleihe with your library card but you register for the program through the Goethe Institut. I think this is something every expat, no matter where you live, should be doing. Even if you don’t read that much, you might enjoy reading a German newspaper or magazine every once in a while.
Renting ebooks
In the US, I use the app Scribd to read and listen to books. It costs my $10 per month and I probably read 2-4 books a month with it. Not every book is always available, and some only come as an ebook or only as an audio. You download the books and keep them until you are done with them but you don’t own them. There is a limit on how many books per month you can access but I don’t know exactly what that limit is because I have never hit it.
What I like about flatrate services like these is the fact that I don’t need to buy the books but can try something new without any financial set back. If I don’t like a book, I just return it and try something else. I was wondering if there is a similar service in Germany and did some research. This is what I found.
Skoobe
The most prominent one is probably Skoobe, “ebooks” spelled backwards. It looks very similar to Scribd, offers ebooks and audio books for a monthly rate of 11.99€. I was very excited when I found this and wanted to download the app through the my apple store. And that’s when I got disappointed: the app is not available outside of Germany and Austria.
Legimi
So, back to the internet. I came across Legimi which works similar to Skoobe and is available in the US. I signed up for a free 30 day trial, after which I will be charged 8.99€ per month. Again, I was very excited because when I first looked through the catalogue I saw many titles that are on the SPIEGEL Bestseller list. However, my excitement was short-lived when I realized that the catalogue shows all books, the ones that are included in your subscription and the ones that are available to purchase. It turns out out that many of the titles I was looking for weren’t part of my subscription plan.
However, every month of being a member you earn a voucher that you can then use to buy an ebook. I did find a book that has been on my goodreads TBR list and that wasn’t available in the Onleihe, so it’s not all bad.
If you want to sign up for it, you can use this link, and I will get points.
Kindle Umlimited
At last, I turned to Kindle Unlimited. I’d rather not support the Amazon machine but if they let me borrow new titles at a reasonable price (9.99€ per month) I will consider it. Alas, similar to Legimi many books aren’t included in the monthly subscription. I basically searched for all titles on the SPIEGEL bestseller list but could only find them to buy.
However, you can also rent audiobooks, magazines, and they do have children’s books available. I suggest you look through the catalogue and search for books you’d like to read. I’m sure I will find something to read.
Audio books
Audio books are not for everyone. I myself only started listening to books about 3 years ago. I normally listen in the car, on walks, or when doing mundane things where I don’t have to think.
Many of the services that offer ebooks also offer audio books. That goes for Onleihe, Skoobe, Legimi, and Kindle Unlimited. The platform I use for audio books are the Onleihe and Audible. We actually have two audible accounts, one through Germany’s amazon, and one through amazon US. If you do that, I suggest you use two different emails for your accounts, it’ll be easier.
Audible costs me 9.99€ per month and gives me one credit with which I can buy one book, or two if they are on sale. If I don’t buy a book in any given month the credit is added to your balance and you can use it at a later time.
It might sound expensive at first, one book for $11, but overall it really isn’t. Since you buy the books and they are yours to keep, even after you cancel, the selection is a lot better than with any rental subscription. If a book is released as an audio book, it is available to you. What that means for me is that I can keep up with new German books, fiction and non-fiction. Nearly all books from the German bestseller list can be downloaded and listened to. You also have free access to podcasts and Audible originals.
Children's books
While all the mentioned options to get your hands on German books also apply to children’s books I wanted to mention two ways you can get print children’s books in the US.
One service is called Kinderbooks located in New York City. For $12.50 per month you can rent a box of children’s books. When you’re done, you’ll return the books and receive a new box. You can pick an age group and other preferences like genres. The nice thing is that many newer books are included. You can still read them your own copy of “Der Struwwelpeter” but also “Der kleine Drache Kokosnuss” and Schule der magischen Tiere”.
If you’d rather buy children’s books (because some books you might just want to have), try kinder-books. You’ll find a mixture of classics, like “Die kleine Hexe”, but also newer titles like “Gregs Tagebuch” and “Liliane Susewind”.
Other options?
Are there other options that I didn’t mention? Please let me know in the comments or via email (morethanbeerandschnitzel@gmail.com).
