Amazon Kindle Unlimited

[Ready]

Amazon today announced Kindle Unlimited, a service that offers unlimited reading (or listening) to books within a collection of about 600,000 titles. It's not the entire set of books available on Amazon by any means, but with 600,000 titles there are a lot to choose from in many different categories. The fee for this is $9.99/month, with no requirement to commit beyond month to month. If you read about one book per month, it's a break even. But it seems like a nice opportunity to browse some books that you might not want to read from beginning to end but might be curious to skim through some chapters.

Has anyone signed up yet?

 

[RunningBum]

If you're going to read one book per month, you ought to just sign up for Prime. It's a bit cheaper, you get video as well, and free 2 day shipping.

I guess you don't get the month to month pricing.

I found that Amazon Prime didn't have all that great of selection for books, and it wasn't easy to search the Prime library. Does Kindle Unlimited have a greater selection?

 

[AllDone]

My public library has an ever expanding collection of e-books and the cost is exactly $9.99 less per month.

 

[W2R]

My public library has an ever expanding collection of e-books and the cost is exactly $9.99 less per month.

That's sort of what I was thinking. Also those of us with Amazon Prime do have access to Prime's free Kindle lending library.

Still, it's good to know about Amazon's Kindle Unlimited. Thanks!

Edited to add: I just checked the five Kindle books at Amazon that are on my wishlist, and NONE of the five are available through Kindle unlimited. That wasn't too encouraging, to me. I'd suggest others might want to do the same, to see if the type of books that you really want are included.

I doubt my library has any of them either.

 

[bUU]

I'm a bit disappointed to see Amazon not make Kindle Unlimited a service of Prime, as they have with so other things (like Instant Video).

Several major publishers are not participating in Kindle Unlimited, so I surely won't be subscribing to it. Also, it's a bit expensive for a reading service, which has such limitations, where you don't get to keep anything when you unsubscribe.

 

[zinger1457]

If you're going to read one book per month, you ought to just sign up for Prime. It's a bit cheaper, you get video as well, and free 2 day shipping.

My understanding is that to get the selection of books from Prime you have to have a Kindle device, with the unlimited plan it will work with the kindle reader on any device. In any case I will stick with ebooks from my Library for now, the selection is good and always growing and they have been very good at adding my book request.

 

[MichaelB]

This is an interesting offer and I imagine many readers will benefit.

One great pleasure for me has been buying and reading a good book, then passing it along to family or friends who will enjoy it just as much. And getting similar good books from them in return. I do not miss the texture and musty smell of the printed book, but not being able to share so freely with others is something I will miss.

 

[footenote]

DH received a free, one-month Kindle Unlimited subscription for testing. I looked for five books on my wish list (mix of fiction and non fiction, all at least two years old). None were available. But I did search on an author I enjoy and found one of his backlist books I have not read yet. I've ordered it and will do more searching during our free month. (And I'll read the book double-time as it will likely disappear once we end the free trial without subscribing.)

 

[Moemg]

I looked at it as I am constantly reading . It does not have many books that appeal to me . I do much better with the library and supplement it with occasional purchases .

 

[tuixiu]

My public library has an ever expanding collection of e-books and the cost is exactly $9.99 less per month.

Yup, Greater Phoenix Digital Library's collection of books I'm interested grows much faster than I can read 'em.

This might be a good option if lived in (or moved to) a much smaller town that didn't have the same public library resources.

 

[Ready]

I signed up for the 30 day trial. I have downloaded a few books and already read one short one. I admit it's not the greatest selection. So far every book that I've specifically looked up to see if it's included has not been. However, with 600,000 books, there are likely enough that I would enjoy reading to justify the $9.99/month fee. In any case, I have thirty days to explore before spending any money, so what the heck.

 

[AllDone]

I did not find any of the books that are on my wish list. Mostly there seems to be a lot of the self-published books. I'll stick with the library, even if it means sitting on waiting lists.

I like to read electronically, but paying paperback price for something that I can't hand off to someone else bothers me. They should be considerably cheaper than physical books since they are essentially read-once.

 

[ziggy29]

I think this is like streaming Netflix -- poor selection relative to other alternatives. There are a huge number of titles you can get on Netflix DVD that you can't get streaming. In this case, publishers have to negotiate separately and differently for digital rights compared to rights for physical media like books and DVDs, and some are playing hardball.

This is why we haven't given up our Netflix DVD service yet -- too many of the things we want to see just aren't streaming. I suspect this will be the same, at least for a while.

 

[tuixiu]

Ziggy we ended our DVD service, you should check out the cost of pay for view a movie on Vudu/Amazon/Redbox, depending how often you watch movies you might find you would be break-even on just renting specific movies you wish to watch instead of dropping $12/month or whatever.