Originally posted on 01/24/2018:
A "Helper App" called Lightning Network is due for release in coming months. And wallets will be upgrading to native Segwit compatibility this year too.
Both of these are supposed to return bitcoin transfers to eventually being near instant and near free.
Until then, if your book takes BitcoinCash, LiteCoin or Ether, it's a good choice to use those instead until these upgrades happen.