Best eBook System for Multi-Device syncing?

[Jbbrack03]

I'm starting to get back into reading and I'm enjoying it. I'm trying to decide which eBook ecosystem to dig into. Several of the book series that I'd like to read have 20-40 books in them. And I usually read about one book per week. My goal is to be able to read on an e-ink ereader, a Smartphone, and be able to listen to the audiobook version. And for them all to sync progress. I recently experienced this exact thing through Amazon with their whispersync. It's perfect and seamless. And super expensive for someone that reads one book per week. So I'd like to find an alternative. Kobo with Overdrive support seems close, but doesn't appear to offer the progress syncing that I'm looking for. Can you guys make any suggestions of alternatives, or is Amazon the only one that does this?

[barryem]

I read mostly on my phone these days but when I was reading mostly on my Kindle and sometimes on my phone, in the days before the Kindle app would scroll, I began using Moon+ reader on my phone and learned to sync using search. As I began using my phone more and more I stopped doing that.

I found that it was faster than the Kindle or the Kindle app can sync. I would remember a short phrase near the top of my current page. For example on my current book I might pick "Every year, I". I just taught myself to remember something like that every time. When I type it into text search it'll often find 2 or 3 occurrences but it gives enough context that I always know which is the right one and I'm synced.

That's generally 2 or 3 times faster than letting the Kindle or the Kindle app on my phone do it for me. It does require some effort and thought and it's a bit more distracting but with a little practice it became second nature.

Now I read on two phones most of the time using Moon+; my regular phone and a cheap one I bought just for reading around the house so I won't kill my regular phone's battery. Moon+ syncs faster than the Kindle and even faster than my manual method so now I have the best of both worlds.

I'm not sure this would help once you mix in an audiobook but who knows!

Barry

[sapphiresilver]

I think that Kindle is really the only one that does the seamless sync you're looking for, especially with audiobooks. Kobo offers audiobooks as well, but I don't think they offer any kind of whispersync-like functionality.
About whispersync: if you go onto the page to buy the kindle book and whispersync is available, you should be able to buy both formats at the same time and get a discount on the audiobook.

[rem736]

google books also syncs between devices.