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Get lifetime access to a nonfiction microbook library for $20

Cheapskate exclusive! Hundreds of interesting, informative books, all professionally summarized for fast consumption.

Rick Broida Senior Editor
Rick Broida is the author of numerous books and thousands of reviews, features and blog posts. He writes CNET's popular Cheapskate blog and co-hosts Protocol 1: A Travelers Podcast (about the TV show Travelers). He lives in Michigan, where he previously owned two escape rooms (chronicled in the ebook "I Was a Middle-Aged Zombie").
Rick Broida
2 min read
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Consume tons of popular nonfiction books in just around 12 minutes apiece.

12min

Admit it: You've always wanted to read Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, but you don't have time to pore through its 300 pages just to extract the key lessons. And, let's face it, many such nonfiction books can be boiled down to a few important takeaways -- the big ideas, the main points.

Enter 12min, a library of nonfiction books that have been squeezed down to "microbook" form, professionally summarized to give you the wheat without all the chaff. If that idea sounds familiar, you might be thinking of Blinkist, a similar service. However, while the latter costs $99 per year, 12min is available for considerably less.

Indeed, for a limited time, Cheapskate readers can get a lifetime 12min Premium Subscription for just $20 with promo code READ9. Note that once you redeem your license, the sale is final; as with many such subscription deals, there are no refunds. 

12min offers hundreds of titles (to Blinkist's thousands, just FYI) across a wide range of categories: business, biography, investing, self-improvement, marketing, management and so on. In addition to Gladwell, you'll find authors including Walter Isaacson, Arianna Huffington and Stephen J. Dubner.

Each title is available as both text and audio, each consumable in approximately -- you guessed it -- 12 minutes.

Your subscription affords unlimited access to the 12min library, which has new books added every month. You can download titles for offline reading and listening or, if you prefer, send them to your Kindle library.

Just one oddity: 12min appears to be either a Spanish or Portuguese company, and I've seen a few non-English messages pop up on the web portal and in the app (which is available for Android and iOS). Not a huge deal, but it's surprising that the developers have missed a few areas that need translation.

That wrinkle aside, this is a tremendous deal. It gives you the opportunity to consume hundreds of books' worth of knowledge in a fraction of the time it would normally require, and for a price that's about what you'd pay for just two or three such books.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm about to quickly learn The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. (Some days, man, I need that lesson.)

Your thoughts?

Note: Originally published earlier this year. Updated to reflect new sale prices or availability. Removed expired bonus deal.


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