Depending on where you live, it can be very difficult to get your hands on Korean books. Here in the UK I imagine there are only very specific areas in London that have a Korean populace selling their old books. This leaves us with the options of flying to Korea to pick up books and maxing out our luggage weight or doing the simpler and (sometimes) cheaper option of buying E-books.
There are many different places to purchase Korean E-books however my personal choice is Ridibooks as they seem to have more sales and different events to give you free points to spend. They accept foreign card payments and use their own app that will sync between your phone and PC. I have found Ridibooks to be the cheapest and I also have found a few tricks for maximising savings.
How to Purchase a book
Just in case you are new to using Ridibooks, I will guide you through the process of purchasing a book.
1. Make an account with a strong password.
2. Find the book that you wish to purchase and add to your basket
3. Click the box above 결제하기 to agree to the purchasing terms and conditions and then click 결제하기 to proceed.
4. If you do not have the funds you will be taken to the screen where you can pay via 해외 카드.
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| Basket and purchase page |
Adding 리디캐시 to get more bang for your buck
You may have noticed when looking at the purchase screen that there are a few different ways to pay. 리디포인트, 리디캐시, but what do these mean and how can we get them? 리디포인트(Ridipoints) are given out via events. 리디캐시(Ridicash) can be added via the 캐시충전 button at the top right of the website.
The first thing you may notice is that you receive bonus points for adding 리디캐시. This is great for people who know they will be spending over a certain amount or even using the bonus cash to reach the amount of money that you are trying to spend. This can be done as a 1 time transaction or as a monthly subscription style automatic renewal.
While you may think this is great, don't jump the gun. The trick here is to wait until the 1st of the month. From the 1st to the 3rd of every month, Ridibooks will give you 2x bonus cash, which if you are going to be adding a lot of funds can mean you may be able to afford a whole book for your patience.
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| Ridicash recharge page without the month start bonus |
Using the 십오야 event to get 리디포인트 and coupons
십오야 meaning 15 nights is an event that takes place from the 14th to the 21st of every month and will give you 20x 10% off coupons and the chance to gain 1000, 500 or 100 리디포인트. Bear in mind that the coupons and the points will only last as long as the even lasts, so be sure to use your 리디포인트 before they're gone forever.
The distribution of the points are completely random, surprisingly I have received the 500 points a few times over the 3 or so months I have known of it's existence and sometimes I have even received multiple 100 point prizes. If you regularly buy books throughout the month this is a great way to make some savings.
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| Look for this on the event wheel on the 14th-21st of every month |
Get your weekly coupons
It took me a while to find this but on the main page underneath where it shows the events and information you will see some small squares. On the far right of these you will see one that says 위클리 쿠폰. This will give you 3x 10% off any purchase over 1000원. Sadly these coupons and all coupons will only work on books that are not already on sale.
You may not know but in Korea there is a limit on how much new books, including e-books can be discounted. Lucky for us if a book is discounted it is usually discounted by 15% which is greater than the 10% provided by the coupon. However these coupons allow us to save 10% on free purchases every week meaning we can make some real savings.
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| Be sure to check this Icon for weekly savings |
Bonus section: Ridiselect
If you are adventurous you may have noticed the Ridiselect page at the top left of the home page. Ridiselect is not dissimilar to Amazon's Kindle Unlimited. A set selection of books that can change at random for a monthly fee. Thankfully you can check which books are available before you commit. In most cases and depending on how quick you read books it can be more beneficial to use this option.
The current price is $9.99 for foreign cards which is up from the $6.99 it used to be. However now there is not just a bigger selection of books but articles available to read. For me the selection is a bit lacklustre, although I will share with you some of the picks I recommend reading via Ridiselect as it will work out cheaper than buying the books for those who put time into reading.
- 그림으로 보는 세계사 - world history book aimed at children.
- 그림으로 보는 그리스와 로마 신화 - Stories of Greek and Roman gods for children.
- 계림 세계명작 세트 - classic books adapted for children.
- 드래곤 라자 - Fantasy novel that comes in 8 parts.
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| A small snippet of the selection of children's books available |
Bonus section: Free content
It's entirely possible to read large amounts of content for free. Many of the categories are abundant with webnovels adapted into books. The catch is the first book is usually free as a preview of sorts. Due to there being a rather large amount of them and the content being quite substantial. This is a great way to not spend any money at all and still get your reading in all for free and legal.
In any section you can search by 무료책. This means you can focus on certain genres which will have a smaller variety of overall words used so will make it easier to memorise them by repetition. I highly recommend reading as a way to learn vocabulary fast. You can learn more on reading here.
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| Free books galore |
For related posts please check out these pages:
- How to Start Reading in a Foreign Language
- Ridibooks Adult Verficiation Guide
- Nintendo Switch Games to play in Korean
- The Monolingual Transition and How to Approach it
- Realistically How Long Does it Take to Learn a Language?
- How to Spend as Much of Your Day as Possible Learning Korean
- Olly Richards' Short Stories in Korean for Intermediate Learners Review
- Billy Go's Korean Reading Made Simple Review
- Lingo Mastery's Korean Short Stories for Beginners Review
- I read 61 Korean books in 2020
- 7 Reading Tips to Accelerate Your Korean Learning
- 7 Fantasy Webtoons You Should Read in 2021
- Tuttle's Korean Stories for Language Learners Review
Great information! Just to clarify, the optimal strategy is to purchase ridicash on the 1st of every month for the x2 multiplier and wait until the 14th-21st random drops event to earn ridipoints then finally purchase a book using the accumulated ridicash and ridipoints? Does the ridicash and ridipoints stack? Also can you use the 10% weekly coupon on top of ridicash and ridipoints? Thanks in advance.
ReplyDeleteIf you're going to do it every month then you can just use the auto top up to receive the same amount of bonus anyway.
DeleteYes you can use ridicash, ridipoints and the 10% off coupon in the same purchase.
Sometimes there are other events on such as currently 50% of some webnovel sets.
However you can't use any coupon on a product that already has a % money off.
When purchasing the ebooks/ridi cash, Do you need to wait for sometimes before it got purchased?? I've tried purchasing ridi cash but it still 0? Or di i Made a mistake?
ReplyDeleteFor me the funds are instantly available. It could be that your card has been declined.
Delete