Read a Book in 15 Minutes? Try Blinkist, the Effective Reading App

Reading is something you probably like, but do you sometimes feel that you don't have time to do it? Would you prefer to read nonfiction? In this article, we share a reading app called Blinkist, which allows you to read and absorb the knowledge of a whole book in just fifteen minutes.

Blinkist Introduction

The following is the official webpage of Blinkist and the title in the AppStore:

• Blinkist: Big ideas in small packages
• Blinkist: 15 min Book insights

Concise and easy to understand, Blinist is a service that condenses the content of the entire book into 15 minutes of focus.

Blinkist focuses on Nonfiction books. These books usually introduce methods, convey ideas and record facts. If you usually read these books, you should be able to appreciate them. Usually, the message conveyed by the entire book is through the title and table of contents of the book. The syllabus roughly covers 70%, and the rest is a supplement of some examples and details. Blinkist can help you digest and sort out these important information, examples, methods and other necessary details, condense them into 15min-length content, and list executable action items (actionable items). In addition to books, Blinkist also has many high-quality shortcast (podcast) content.

This type of service is very suitable for:

1. Love to read and learn new knowledge
2. Busy and no time to read
3. People who like to use the fragmentary time to read.

About Blinkist company

Blinkist was founded in January 2012 and is headquartered in Berlin, Germany. It has conducted A, B, and C rounds of financing in 2016, 2017, and 2018, and usually enters the C round, which means that the company has performed very well and is ready to expand into new markets. According to official data, in January 2020, the number of users has reached 20 million.

Such rapid growth also reflects people's demand for this new type of reading.

Blinkist's library

Blinkist currently contains more than 5,000 Nonfiction books, covering 27 categories. You can easily find the topics you are interested in or go to Blinkist to see which books they have included.

• Career & Success
• Mindfulness & Happiness
• Parenting
• Society & Culture
• Sex & Relationships
• Science
• Religion & Spirituality
• Psychology
• Productivity
• Politics
• Management & Leadership
• Personal Development
• Nature & Environment
• Motivation & Inspiration
• Money & Investments
• Marketing & Sales
• Philosophy
• History
• Health & Nutrition
• Entrepreneurship
• Education
• Economics
• Creativity
• Corporate Culture
• Communication skills
• Technology & the Future
• Biography & Memoir

Pricing

You can first free trial for 7 days. After the trial period, you can choose to subscribe for one month at a time ($14.99USD/month; $179.88USD/year), or subscribe for one year at a time ($7.49) USD/month; $89.88USD/year).

One month subscription at a price of $14.99 per month is equivalent to buying 1-2 e-books in kindle mall, in fact, It is acceptable. If you are in line with your reading habits, you can subscribe for one year at a time and enjoy a more cost-effective price.

In addition, on some special days, such as Black Friday, there will be up to 50% discount!

User experience

The design of Blinkist is very simple. It takes no time to learn to use it. The main functions are as follows:

• For You: customized recommendation
• Explore: You can search and browse 27 categories, or view the latest and trending books, and book listings provided by authors
• Library: You can store books, view books that have been read, history records, and downloaded books

Besides, Blinkist's social media is also a nice place to discover books and get inspired.

• Instagram

Pros & Cons

I have subscribed to the yearly plan and used it for about half a year and had at least 15 minutes daily reading. The advantages and disadvantages of using Blinkist are listed below:

Pros

• Each book is condensed into 15 minutes of content, which is very friendly and efficient for readers who are not used to reading Nonfiction content.

• Concise and powerful integration of key takeaways and actionable advice, allowing people to quickly try the newly learned knowledge.

• Each book is an audiobook, and there are also high-quality podcast programs. It is also very convenient to listen to sports and commuting time.

• A good user experience, focusing on letting people acquire new knowledge in the most efficient way so that they can easily grasp the progress of reading.

• If you are used to reading e-books, you can also send the article to kindle, there is no running problem.

Cons

• Blinkist only picks up the key points, so most of the emotions and sense of humour expressed by the authors cannot be seen in the content of 15 minutes. They are relatively rational and lose their sensibility.

• Some books can't be condensed into 15min content, but if you just look at Blinkist, you will not be able to judge whether some of the messages that the original work wants to convey are missing.

Can Blinkist replace the existing reading method?

Use Blinkist as an extension of your usual reading and a complement to it, not a replacement.

Blinkist provides a new style of reading, allowing you to use a small amount of time to get 80% of the knowledge provided by the book, but it cannot replace the existing reading.

Blinkist only focuses on Nonfiction because people want to obtain a large amount of knowledge and technology in an efficient way, but for books such as illusion and science fiction, this method of condensing is not suitable. Just like your favourite movies, you don’t want people Before you watch the movie, tell you the outline of the plot in a sequential way, right?

For those who like to read, take a book and feel the author's thinking and the world portrayed carefully. This kind of enjoyment of immersing in reading time cannot be replaced by "fast reading".