Summer offer for Weekly readers: free books for the holidays from Storytel

Get your holiday reading from Storytel! Helsinki Design Weekly readers get digital book service for free for the month of July. Weekly challenged Design Museum's Päivi Balomenos to try the service and share her reading tips.

Weekly promotion: Get your holiday reading from Storytel! Helsinki Design Weekly readers get digital book service for free for the month of July. Weekly challenged Design Museum’s Päivi Balomenos to try the service and share her reading tips.

Design Museum’s communications officer Päivi Balomenos has read many books during her lifetime, including many classics. She still reads a lot, but instead of books, she follows news and articles on her phone. Thanks to her six-year-old son she has moved from Tolstoy to bedtime stories.

“During the testing, I was naturally inclined to browse e-books. After a couple of weeks, I finally understood to use earphones and listen to audio books, which is easier in a family with kids,” Balomenos laughs.

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The application itself reminds Balomenos of Netflix and other user-friendly streaming services. In addition, Balomenos praises Storytel’s wide international contents that include tens of thousands of books in Finnish, Swedish and English.

Storytel started operations in Finland in the spring of 2016. Storytel country director Mari Wärri says that the selection keeps growing with the products of both Finnish and international publishers. New titles are being added to the application daily.

“As a special service, we offer Storytel Original audio books comparable to Netflix Original series. They are series specifically produced for us consisting of one hour episodes,” Wärri explains.

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Design is part of the service. Service design primarily translates into pleasant and memorable user experience. This is why Storytel wants to provide a special summer offer to the Helsinki Design Weekly readers: one month of unlimited service.

“Together with Helsinki Design Weekly we want to encourage Finns to find and consume stories in a new way and to test our continuously developing book service.”

Your summer holiday and travel reading is just a few clicks away at www.storytel.fi/helsinkidesignweek.

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A bookshelf that fits in the pocket

During her day at work, Balomenos spends plenty of time on the phone and at the computer. She thinks she may use the application more during holidays. She believes that in the future, she will find something smarter to listen to and read compared what social media has to offer.

“More serious, thought-provoking items are my favourites. I’ve noted that at adult age I tend to choose easy reading,” Balomenos says.

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In Storytel, you can collect items to your own bookshelf and return to them by using an automatic bookmark. If you are traveling abroad or to a remote location without a fast internet connection, you can download an unlimited number of books to read offline later. You can adjust the speed of audio book listening to your liking or choose the ‘sleep mode’ that automatically pauses the book after certain minutes.

Balomenos tested Storytel for a month and feels positive about the service.

“This experience brought me back to literature, and I’ve always loved literature.”

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Summer offer for Helsinki Design Weekly readers:

Find your holiday reading among the tens of thousands of works and try Storytel for free for one month at storytel.fi/helsinkidesignweek.