Ever feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day to read as much as you’d like?

Chances are, it’s one of the reasons you listen to a podcast like this one.

It’s not just about reading more in less time, mind you. It’s also about smartly leveraging what might otherwise be wasted down time.

Today’s episode focuses on some of my favorite apps for doing both.

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Below, and in no particular order, are my five favorite reading apps:

Audible

Audible is arguably my all-time favorite reading app. In fact, it was while listening to business books on the app that I had the epiphany that would become the Read to Lead Podcast. As you might imagine, I’m very fond of Audible.

For a low monthly fee, Audible provides you with new audiobooks each month. For as little as $14.95/mo you can enjoy one new book each month or 12 new books every year. While you won’t necessarily save time listening to books versus reading them, you will be able to enjoy books at times when you currently cannot like, when driving, for example.

Audiobooks.com

Audiobooks.com works much the same way as Audible, though it’s arguably not as widely known. For a low monthly fee, you can enjoy a new book.

When I first tried it out, I found the Audiobooks app to be better than Audible’s at providing me a quick and easy way to search for a specific book or a specific genre right from within the app. Audible’s search, on the other hand, always lead me to their website to select books, and not a super mobile-friendly version of it either.

To be fair, Audible has since vastly improved this in-app experience.

Blinkist

You probably know Blinkist as a months-long sponsor of the Read to Lead Podcast. They serve up short, written business book summaries inside their app. The app is free with an annual subscription coming in at around $50 US.

I’ve been working with them on the idea of adding audio summaries to their app and am happy to announce that beginning December 11, 2014, that dream will become a reality.

You can try Blinkist free for 3 days. If you like what you see, visit their site and use the discount code ‘readtolead’ to save 30% on an annual subscription.

Umano

Umano is easily one of my favorite new apps. I love keeping up with web articles, as well as my favorite magazine subscriptions (Fast Company, Wired, Inc. and Success are a few of my favs). But, again, it’s hard to find the time to read all I’d like.

That’s where Umano comes in. Instead of having to find the time and place to read all that you want to read, Umano finds interesting stories and reads them to you when you’re ready. You simply tell it what topics you’re interested in and Umano sends out an occasional push notification alerting you to any new stories you might like.

Immediately, when a new notification comes in, you’re given the option to dismiss the notification, listen to the article right then and there or, my favorite part, save the article to your playlist so that you can come back and listen to it at a more convenient time.

The free version of the app allows you to add up to 20 articles to your playlist before cutting you off. For just $3.99/mo, you can unlock unlimited article reading, er, I mean, listening.

Check out this article for more on Umano’s Premium option.

Stitcher

Okay, so Stitcher isn’t exactly a reading app. I’ll give you that. However, if  you desire to make more time for podcast listening while on the go, I can’t think of a better way to do that than with the Stitcher app. It is, hands down, my favorite app for listening to podcasts.

One of my favorite features is the ability to create playlists inside the app. You can even customize your settings to prompt Stitcher to play all the episodes in a playlist in succession, freeing you to concentrate on the more important things like, say, driving.

And, of course, the Read to Lead Podcast has its own Stitcher listing.

What about you? What are your favorite reading apps and tools? Let me know in the comments.

Until next time…

Listen Now

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