Helpful Info

Learn more about xigxag

tablet display of xigxag's catalogue of audiobooks and x-booksSally Rooney Beautiful World Where Are You audiobook and ebook in one on xigxag

Frequently Asked Questions

About Us

xigxag is an award-winning new digital reading app that aims to revolutionise the audiobook experience – a refreshing, independent alternative to big tech.  We are the only B Corp certified audiobook app in the UK, and we’re also an Ethical Consumer Best Buy for audiobooks. We have thousands of brilliant audiobook titles available from leading authors and publishers on our mobile app.

 

With no monthly subscription required, we offer you the ability to listen to audiobooks on your terms, and at your own pace.  And the more you listen, the less you pay on full-price titles.  And it’s simple and easy to make purchases directly in the app.

 

We offer first-ever innovations that other audiobook platforms don’t, such as quote and share and the listen-and-read x-book®, exclusive to xigxag.  The x-book® is like the audiobook and ebook in a single format, without paying twice, and enabling first-ever features for audiobooks like integrated illustrations, search, refer to the text and look up words.

 

Our aim is to build the most advanced digital books platform ever, to make reading more engaging, more accessible, easier and more sustainable.

Founders Kelli and Mark started xigxag because they felt that the audiobook listening experience hasn’t moved on since books on tape. Despite this, audiobooks seem to be priced at a premium to other formats. Subscription models are inflexible: users have to wait if they finish a book early, and pay even when they don’t have time to read. xigxag exists to offer listeners a modern platform designed specifically for audiobooks, with pricing that’s accessible to all.

 

At xigxag, our innovative technology unlocks a load of features to improve the audiobook experience. Users navigate through the book by sentence, paragraph and chapter – more like reading. You’ll never get dropped in the middle of a thought, so you can always find your way. We offer an amazing quote share feature – a first for audiobooks – that allows you to share your favourite segments with your friends, or the world. That’s great for authors and publishers too as it spreads the word about the audiobooks people love.
We are also the home of the x-book, our exclusive listen-and-read format that’s like an audiobook and ebook in one. You can search, refer to text or even switch to reading, without paying more. 

Pricing and Purchasing

It’s easy! Go to Settings on the navigation bar, then click on Account. Under Vouchers you can click on the ‘Enter Code’ button and add your voucher to your account.

You can now earn free audiobooks on xigxag with our Referral system. Go to Settings from the navigation bar, then click on Account, and you’ll see an ‘Earn Free Books’ button which will take you to your Referrals section. There you’ll find your unique link ready to share with your network. When three people make their first purchase using your link, you get a free audiobook. Plus, your friends get their first book for just £3.99. There’s no limit to the number of books you can earn, so start sharing today.

Our pricing is simple. It works on an annual basis from a user’s first purchase.

 

£7.99 per title for the first five books

£6.99 per title for books 6-10

£5.99 per title for books 11-15

£4.99 per title for books 16-20

£3.99 per title when you buy more than 20 books in the year (full priced titles only).

 

We also have a selection of books that are priced at £3.99, so you will always find something to listen to within your budget.

You can always find a brilliant selection of £3.99 audiobooks and x-books in the ‘£3.99 Top Picks’ section on the home screen. Click the right arrow to see the full list of discounted titles.

There is no subscription fee! At xigxag you only pay for the titles when you’re read to listen, so there’s no pressure to pay when you don’t.

You can! A lot of our users like to listen to the audiobook on their phone when they are out and about, but prefer to switch to reading on their tablet. With xigxag, you can use your account across six devices and download the same book across two.

First, please make sure you have updated your payment details in the App Store or Google Play Store – we use this payment method for all purchases in the app. Click on the cover of the book you’d like. You’ll see a screen with information about the book. At the bottom, there are three icons. Click on the shopping cart icon to purchase. The price is listed below the shopping cart icon where it says ‘Buy now’. Once purchased, you can choose to download, stream or listen later. You will find your purchases in ‘My Books’ from the navigation bar.

Audiobook and ebook publishers divide rights to sell their titles geographically.  We have focused on making titles available in the UK first, as it is our home market. We hope to be able to expand soon enough, but we’d like a bit of time to get the product right for the UK. 

Sure! It’s easy to share your favourite books. Select the book you would like to gift and choose “Gift”, or you can press the gift button from the More menu on the play screen. You will need the email address that your friend signed up to xigxag with and they’ll receive a notification of your gift. Not a user yet? That’s no problem. Just enter their email and we will contact them with the good news. You can either send a gift instantly, or you can select the date you would like the gift delivered. If you schedule a gift for a later date you’ll receive confirmation of your gift order, and an email when your gift is delivered.

If you don’t have the xigxag app, or you don’t know which book to buy, no worries! With our trusted payment provider Stripe, we’ve now made it possible to gift any number of audiobooks – without having to select the titles or set up a profile in the xigxag app. Visit xigxag.co.uk/giftcards to order. You’ll receive an email with your digital gift card ready for you to forward, or print and gift.

 

Using the xigxag app

The xigxag app is available on Google Play for Android users and the App Store for iOS users.

 

Download from the App Store

When you open the app, you will see our ‘Top Picks’ of the week. If you scroll down, you will see a selection of genres. To see more of our Top Picks or more titles in a genre, simply click the ‘Genre’ title or the big arrow to the right. Over time, we will be making more genres available on the front page. You can also search by genre. Just click on the search icon at the top of the home screen and enter the genre or a description of the type of book you are looking for.

We want you to find everything you are looking for and with thousands of great audiobooks and x-books available, you may need to search. Click on the search icon at the top of the home screen and enter what you’re looking for. You can search by author, title, genre or keyword.

You can always find a brilliant selection of £3.99 audiobooks and x-books in the ‘£3.99 Top Picks’ section on the home screen. Click the right arrow to see the full list of discounted titles.

Click on the cover of the audiobook or x-book you’d like. You’ll see a screen with information about the book. On the bottom of the screen, you’ll see three dots labelled ‘More’. ‘Add to Bookshelf’ will save your book for later. ‘Play Sample’ will allow you to listen to an audio sample. You’ll also see options to display the Chapter list and Share the book details. Find your ‘Bookshelf’ on ‘My xigxag’ from the navigation bar. Click the ‘Bookshelf’ text to see your saved books. You can also customise how you sort and view this list.

You can save any audiobook or x-book to enjoy later by adding it to your Bookshelf.  Find your Bookshelf on ‘My xigxag’, easily accessible from the navigation bar. Scroll the list or click on ‘My Bookshelf’ to sort and customise your view.

You can find the three books you have most recently listened to under ‘My Books’ from the navigation bar. You can sort by Author, Title, or Downloaded, and View as Icons or Lists. You can also tidy up your ‘My Books’ list and remove any titles you’ve finished by clicking on the book cover and selecting ‘Move to My Archive’.

You’ll always find the full list of titles you’ve purchased in the ‘My Books’ section of ‘My xigxag’. And, if you want to add something back to your ‘My Books’ list again, just click ‘Move to My Books’.

Once you have purchased a book, you are given the option to ‘Listen Later’, ‘Stream now’ (listen without download), or ‘Download to Device’. If you select ‘Listen Later’ you will be sent back to the home screen, where you can play directly from the xigxag logo in the middle of the navigation bar – you’ll see this transform into a play/pause button!. If you select ‘Stream now’, the audio should start to play almost immediately. If you ‘Download to Device’ you will need to wait for the download to complete before listening.

Yes! When you are playing an audiobook or x-book your current listening speed is displayed above the play button. To change it, just press the speed e.g.1.00x and you’ll be able to select your ideal speed.

We have a customisable sleep timer that you can set for a duration or the end of a chapter. You’ll find the “Sleep” button on the bottom right of the play screen. 

You can! Click Settings from the navigation bar to open the Setting menu and choose Preferences. From there you can select your theme. We offer light theme or dark theme, or if you choose “Theme follows system” it will automatically adjust to your phone settings.

You can use your car’s bluetooth connection to play your xigxag audiobooks through the audio system.

You can tidy up your ‘My Books’ list and remove any titles you’ve finished by clicking on the book cover and selecting ‘Move to My Archive’.

You’ll always find the full list of titles you’ve purchased in the ‘My Books’ section of ‘My xigxag’. And, if you want to add something back to your ‘My Books’ list again, just click ‘Move to My Books’.

Yes! You can remove any audiobook or x-book downloaded to your device by finding it in your ‘My Books’, clicking on the book cover, and selecting ‘Remove download from device’.

We’re sorry, but we don’t currently allow you to store xigxag books on the SD card of your Android device.

The x-book®

An x-book® is an audiobook and ebook in one amazing integrated format, exclusive to xigxag. Our technology indexes the audiobook to the ebook to enable a load of brilliant features for listeners: see illustrations, see the structure of dialogue, look up words, search for something you missed or want to hear again, switch to reading, or read along!

We always have a selection of x-books (audiobook and ebook in one) displayed on the home screen. Look for the purple x-book banners in the bottom left of the cover.  You can also select the x-book button on your search, and it will automatically bring up the x-book selection.

Absolutely! There are two ways to do this. When you are in the x-book reading screen, click on the ‘More’ button at the bottom of the screen, choose ‘Font Settings’ and you will be able to adjust the size and spacing of the font. You can also adjust this in the Settings menu, from the navigation bar.

With x-books, you get to listen to your favourite audiobooks and also see the text of the ebook.  When you want to read, you can scroll at your own pace or choose to autosync with the audiobook.  This means the text will move automatically to keep in sync with the audiobook. If you decide to just read (no audio), then just hit pause and scroll away.  Be sure to double tap the text and click ‘Play from Here’ to re-sync the audio, when you’re ready to start listening again. 

It’s your choice. We have an autosync option that enables the text to stay in perfect sync with the audiobook by scrolling automatically. You can also switch this off if you prefer to take control, either in the Settings menu, or on the reading screen within the x-book.

This is a tricky one! To make all these great titles available to you, we must agree contracts with publishers. Some of the early contracts we signed hold us back from doing everything we want to do. These publishers are wary of a new business model and the impact it can have on authors and narrators, which we understand. As a new partner for them, it will take time to earn their trust. But we are working hard on this, and as you listen to more great audiobooks and we build a great store, we’re confident the publishers will come to see the same benefits as you.

With the x-book®, you’re never left wishing you understood the word the narrator just said. Now you can see the word for yourself and lookup the definition. As you’re listening, click ‘Refer to Text’ to see the text.  Find the word, double click on it and tap ‘lookup’. There’s a built in dictionary in the app, but if that doesn’t find it, and links to Wikipedia if you find you need it.

Quotes and Sharing

Quote feature

It’s easy. Just click on the quote button in the play screen. Your quote will prepare to save. Don’t forget to give it a name so that you can remember it. You can also edit the quote by trimming it. You can find all of your quotes in the Quotebook section, found in ‘My xigxag’.

We have two types of quotes available on the app. All audiobooks offer the audio quote option. This saves the quote with the snippet of audio. We also have an additional text quote option available on x-books. Unfortunately not all publishers allow the full text functionality at this stage. We are working on that!

Share Quote

Share them with the world! Choose “Share” from the Quotebook and you will have the option to share them to your favourite social media platforms. Each platform is different in how much it allows us to integrate, but we recommend Twitter and Facebook for the full sharing functionality. Don’t forget to tag us in, we love to see your quotes.

To edit and share a quote, first find it in your quotebook and click on it. Select ‘listen’ to make sure it matches the clip you’re looking for. Select ‘edit’ to trim it down to the precise segment you want to share. Then select ‘share’ to share it on your preferred platforms. If you share on social media, please consider giving the author, narrator, and xigxag a shout out!

You can find all your quotes in your Quotebook in your ‘My xigxag’. You’ll see your most recent quotes displayed, to access all of your quotes click the ‘more’ arrow.

Get in touch

Of course! Please email us at support@xigxag.co.uk from the account you registered with in the app and we would be happy to help. Please don’t share any sensitive information in any emails with us. For issues with purchases, you may need to contact the support teams for the App Store or Google Play.

We take copyright matters very seriously. Our contracts ensure our partner publishers have the right to allow us to resell their content in the territories we operate in. But that doesn’t mean errors can’t happen. Please contact your publisher or email us at support@xigxag.co.uk and we’ll promptly address any comments.

We’re sorry to hear that! First, we recommend you close the app completely and restart. If that doesn’t solve it, please report your problem in the app in the Settings menu. Click ‘Report an Issue’ and complete the form. That will go directly to our technical team to solve. If you don’t feel like your issue is being resolved, feel free to get in touch by emailing us at support@xigxag.co.uk.

Super! We are always looking for more great books to offer our users, and we’d love to tell you about some of the benefits we can offer authors and publishers. If you’re used to dealing with our competitors, we think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Please get in touch with us at content@xigxag.co.uk.

Our influencer program is under review, and we are not accepting new applicants at this time. Watch this space!

For any and every issue, we are more than happy to help! Please contact us at support@xigxag.co.uk. We’d love to hear from you.

Address

Bodmin, Cornwall, PL31, UK

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