Amazon has a new subscription service that offers all you can read for $9.99 per month. Kindle Unlimited includes more than 600,000 Kindle e-books and thousands of audiobooks, according to a company press release.
But is the new subscription service worth the $9.99-per-month price tag? For most people, probably not. According to The Washington Post, the typical American reads just five books a year. Kindle Unlimited is a good fit for people who buy and read at least 13 books a year. The Post said:
If you’re habitually spending money on more than one book per month, then it’s a service to think about. It has its perks for big book buyers — namely that [you] don’t have to worry about spending money on a book you end up hating.
All self-published e-books on Amazon are included in Kindle Unlimited, as well as bestsellers like “The Hunger Games” series, “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, “Water for Elephants,” “The 5 Love Languages,” the “Harry Potter” series and “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” among others, the Amazon release said. More than 2,000 audiobooks may also help sweeten Amazon’s new reader subscription service.
“With Kindle Unlimited, you won’t have to think twice before you try a new author or genre — you can just start reading and listening,” said Russ Grandinetti, senior vice president of Kindle.
But lots of books are excluded from Kindle Unlimited. According to Money, books from the “Big 5” publishers – Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Penguin Random House – are not included.
Kindle Unlimited ($9.99) is competing with Scibd ($8.99) and Oyster ($9.95), which both offer similar e-book services, Money said. Based on the sheer number of books included, the new Amazon service is a winner. But unlike Kindle Unlimited, Scibd and Oyster carry books from HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster.
All three reading subscription services offer a free month’s trial, so if you’re a legitimate bookworm who reads 13 or more books a year, you might want to try out each service to see which is the best fit for you.
In other somewhat related news, Amazon is embroiled in a dispute with Hachette over e-book terms. Amazon wants to bump up its percentage of e-book revenues from 30 percent to as high as 50 percent, SFGate said.
What do you think of the new Kindle Unlimited service? Will you try it out? Share your comments below or on our Facebook page.
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