If you like nonfiction books, you may have experienced that reading the right one at the right time can make a huge difference in your life. You also may have struggled to implement what you learn and thus missed out on countless positive changes you could have already made. Shortform exists to fix that problem.
Shortform isn’t just another book summary app. Their “book guides,” as they call them, are super in-depth. Instead of just sampling a few lessons, they extract every takeaway. What’s more, they present everything in a coherent format, contrast learnings with ideas from other books, and, most importantly, help you implement what you learn with action items, exercises, and prompts to reflect.
On top of over 1,000 such guides to only the best nonfiction books, Shortform also has 500+ explainers on relevant articles from the media and podcast episodes. Finally, they have a really cool Chrome browser extension, called Shortform AI, which lets you summarize anything on the internet with one click, from long work emails to news articles to Youtube videos.
When you get an annual subscription to Shortform, you save around 30%. If you use our exclusive coupon for Shortform (affiliate link), you’ll get an additional 20% off and a risk-free, 5-day trial. That puts their pricing at around $13/month or just over $3/week—not too bad for a tool that’ll help you take massive action on great nonfiction books and summarize anything!
This is an exclusive Shortform discount, valid in October 2024, only available at Four Minute Books.
How To Redeem Our Shortform Discount Code
After you open the above link, you’ll simply land on the Shortform homepage. You might see a banner from us at the top. This is what it looks like:
Simply click the “Join Now” button on the banner or the big, orange “Sign up for free” button. Then, enter your email, create your account, and proceed as usual. Both your 20% coupon and your free 5-day trial will be applied automatically. That means you can just start using the app, and if you choose to stay after your trial is over, you’ll be charged at the reduced price.
Click on “Start 7-day free trial,” and as you create your account, a 35% Blinkist coupon will automatically be applied for you. This way, after your trial is up, if you choose to stay, you’ll magically get charged at the reduced price, no further work required.
Please note that, at least based on their official terms of service, Shortform does not offer a money-back guarantee right now. If you do the trial, buy, and then ask for a refund a few days later, they can technically refuse. But in my experience, as long as you explain why you changed your mind and ask for your money back within a reasonable time frame, say within 14 days of buying, they will usually issue one out of courtesy.
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How Does Shortform Compare to Blinkist?
You’ve probably heard of Blinkist because they are the biggest player in the book summary space. Many people who think about signing up for Shortform know or have used Blinkist, and so it feels natural to weigh the two against each other. But actually, they’re two very different services with different intentions and use cases.
If you want to get a 360-degree view of either service and dive a lot deeper, you can read our detailed review of Blinkist here and our Shortform review here. Just looking for a tl;dr? Let me try to highlight their most important similarities and differences for you in a few bullets:
- Blinkist is about breadth, whereas Shortform is about depth. Blinkist tries to summarize each book down to a 15-minute read. That means they rarely capture every big idea from the book, but it’s easy to read at least one summary a day or more. Shortform goes deep on each book and extracts every lesson. Plus, they add a lot of context and exercises in their guides. You might spend an hour reading one guide, but you’ll also get all the big ideas.
- Blinkist puts much more emphasis on audio. They have great, podcast-style, human-narrated audio, including sound effects. It’s the works in terms of audio. Last I checked, most, if not all of Shortform’s audio was AI-generated, and not always using the latest models where you can barely tell the difference to a human.
- Shortform is better for taking notes and implementing what you learn. Not only do they contrast the ideas in the books with countering viewpoints from other books, they also allow you to annotate their guides on top of highlighting. Blinkist only has a basic highlighting feature.
- Blinkist only summarizes books, Shortform also summarizes interesting articles from around the web. However, Blinkist also has “Guides,” which are structured combinations of content in various forms to help you accomplish a certain goal, and “Collections,” which are curated lists of the best books on a certain topic.
- Both Blinkist and Shortform summarize podcasts. Shortform does so in text-form, and with its AI browswer extension, you can actually do the same yourself as long as the podcast is on Youtube (they want to add usability in podcasting apps later). Blinkist has its own format called “Shortcasts,” which are audio summaries condensing long podcasts into <15-minute listens.
- Blinkist is mobile-first, Shortform works better on desktop. The Blinkist app is stellar in terms of UX and has more options than the web app. I assume most people use it only on the phone. Shortform’s app isn’t as good, but in the browser it works great. And if you ask me, deeper, longer learning sessions work better on a laptop anyway.
- Blinkist has over 7,500 titles in its library. Shortform has 1,000+. Again, it’s breadth vs. depth. Blinkist has more books to choose from, but Shortform provides a lot more insight into each book.
- Blinkist costs $100/year if you pay annually (although I’ve seen them charge as much as $110 lately, before discounts). Shortform prices their service at $197/year, also paid annually.
- Both apps offer discounts. Blinkist runs various discounts all year round. If you use our exclusive coupon (affiliate link), you can get an extra 35% off which brings the price down to ~$6/month. When you sign up to Shortform through our link (affiliate), you’ll get an extra 20% off, which puts the price at around $13/month.
- Both services offer free trials. Blinkist allows you to test the app for 7 days, Shortform for 5.
If you aren’t sure which one will work best for you, you can start free trials on both apps. Read a few summaries on each, and then decide.
All Things Considered, Is Shortform Worth It?
How much do you struggle with…
- Reading all the nonfiction books you want to read?
- Implementing the stuff you learn from those books?
If the answer is “a lot” to both of them, Shortform could be just the right tool for you. Their guides will help you take action and really improve your life. Plus, their article and podcast summaries as well as the AI extension make for plenty of interesting tidbits “around the edges” of your core, guide-reading experience.
Of course, if you’re an avid reader already, you can also read only your “Tier 2” books on Shortform. The ones you won’t have time for or find interesting but not as important as some other reads. A summary is never a perfect replacement for an actual book, but these ones are as good as they come.
Think about it. I hope you’ll give Shortform a try.
Redeem your Shortform discount code by clicking the button below:
Say what you will, it’s amazing that we can use technology to learn so much more at such little cost. Let’s make the most of it!
Thank you for reading and supporting Four Minute Books, and enjoy learning with the awesome book summaries at Shortform!
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Last Updated on October 1, 2024