Amazon launches Kindle Unlimited: 'Netflix for books'

As am I... There is definitely a market, I would suggest to the tune of a third versus traditional sales, as covered on my other post - but yet to see what that will look like in terms of cash, and probably won't for three months or so due to Amazon's processing time.
 
I've been a part of Kindle Unlimited in the USA for about 2 months now and from a readers perspective, I love it. It seems to emphasize books that have been out a while that had good response the first go round. Right now I'm reading Water for Elephants as a Kindle Unlimited book. I would never have spent much money for it otherwise, but I find I'm enjoying it. I will remain a member for the foreseeable future.
 
Hi,

If your book is in Kindle Select as some of mine are, then it's in KU. And currently about one in ten is my ratio between borrows and sales.

Cheers, Greg.
 
Parson said:
I've been a part of Kindle Unlimited in the USA for about 2 months now and from a readers perspective, I love it. It seems to emphasize books that have been out a while that had good response the first go round. Right now I'm reading Water for Elephants as a Kindle Unlimited book. I would never have spent much money for it otherwise, but I find I'm enjoying it. I will remain a member for the foreseeable future.
Click to expand...

That's pretty much my own perspective after (almost) two months. And I, too, read Water for Elephants, which I would not have done otherwise, and enjoyed it.

With some popular authors there is a huge chunk of their backlist available. Right now, I have several books by Tim Powers lined up to be read.
 
Hmmmmm.

I picked up Water for Elephants at my local school fete for 30p (loved it, btw, so that's three out of three.) i also got Love in the Time of Cholera yesterday for a couple of quid.

Yes, yes, I know - the authors weren't paid. But they will be for the next one which I pick up on the back of that one.
 
It's available for £7.99 a month

That's nearly €120 a year for me. No thanks!

So a Library you pay for. I don't like the subscription model for many things. Ultimately a small number of high consumption consumers get a bargain and almost half or more end up paying far more than they would otherwise (Sky).
Ultimately Broadband will be tiered on all ISPs, subscription level linked to consumption. "Unlimited" at same price for everyone is totally unfair and exploitive.
 
My grandchildren are already enjoying books I have.
I'd rather have a book permanently too even if an eBook. The subscription model can benefit Writers more than a Library if they get a proper cut. It otherwise benefits Amazon and ONLY high consumption readers who also are uninterested in having their own collection.
 
Ray McCarthy said:
My grandchildren are already enjoying books I have.
I'd rather have a book permanently too even if an eBook. The subscription model can benefit Writers more than a Library if they get a proper cut. It otherwise benefits Amazon and ONLY high consumption readers who also are uninterested in having their own collection.
Click to expand...

This is precisely who I am, a high consumption reader with a smaller collection -- Does a thousand books count as a small collection? The books that I want to keep I purchase, those I simply think might be good for a read I read on Kindle Unlimited.
 
@Parson
But you are subsidized buy other people who read less. That's how the very very profitable Subscription model works. But then I dislike lotteries regarding them as a tax on the poor. Not that I'm a pinko socialist. Perhaps a little socialist about some things (i.e. hardly at all in Swedish Terms and raving Marxist in US view, but then I think Blair was far more right wing than Margaret Thatcher)
 
But people who read less need not subscribe. Obviously it's only a good deal for those of us who are high consumption readers. Anyone who isn't who subscribes anyway has only themselves to blame if they aren't getting their money's worth. Like Parson, I have a large collection of books and fully intend to go on buying more and more. But for those times when I haven't the money to buy anything and haven't the energy to go to the library, it's been well worth the monthly fee. (Not to mention that they have some books that my library might not have.) I am sure there will be a time when I've run through most of the books that I want to read and it won't be such a good deal. Then I'll be subsidizing the high consumption users for a few months before I decide it's not worth it and stop subscribing. Perhaps in the meantime, though, I'll have discovered some new authors whose books I will want to buy and permanently own.
 
That's what they say about Subscription TV

Yet though of the people that have it, 92% viewing time is content on Free To Air TV. Pay TV has 81% of households in Ireland. Almost all that money goes abroad and almost none benefits the 92% of watched content.

I know it's not the same thing. But the subscription model is extremely profitable because people like Parson, and Teresa Edgerton are a tiny minority. Once people have a subscription inertia sets in and they are unlikely to cancel.

But then I wouldn't subscribe to Netflix either. All these subs people take out add up and reduce your flexibility on what to spend money on. I used to have loads of different subs. The only one I have now is Digiguide which is about 1/12th of the local listings magazine I used to buy.
 
Ray McCarthy, Teresa said what I would like to say. I agree with her.

I do not agree that it is like a lottery, a tax on the poor (I do agree that a lottery is just that), but the difference is this is not being promoted as way to "get rich quick." If people decide that Kindle Unlimited is worth it for them, even if they do not read enough to make it pencil out, I'm afraid that's their decision. In my opinion poor people make a lot of bad choices.... But then so do I. I can't sit in judgment on them.
 
Ray McCarthy said:
That's what they say about Subscription TV

Yet though of the people that have it, 92% viewing time is content on Free To Air TV.
Click to expand...


That may be, but about 90% of the programs watched by adult members of my household are on channels we wouldn't get if we didn't subscribe to cable. So for us it's a very good deal.

______

And this is my 11,000th post!
 
I'm afraid, much to my kids' disgust, paid for tv will not cross my doorstep. I passionately object to the model which means those who don't pay don't see, ergo elitism.

But that's very different from a lending library. But I'd never join one, nor netflix etx, because I know I wouldn't be organised enough to manage it right and I'd end up not using the services. But that's not the model's fault but mine if I buy into it. I also avoid Christmas clubs, syndicates and anything else that relies on me having money at a set time each month. (Dang, I need to talk to my mortgage provider about their model.... :D)

@Teresa Edgerton ...... Criiiiiiiiitttttttt! :D
 
I agree that it's not the same as lottery, or pay Tv. Nor is it the same as Public Library.
Also PayTV / Cable etc is quite different vs Free To Air in UK (or Ireland as we get all the UK Free to Air and all Irish) vs some other countries.
If you are Italian the outlook seems poor apart from Films and Sport. German Free To Air TV (I get most of it) seems better than my memories of US Pay TV! But only if you speak German.

I totally agree that Kindle unlimited is great for some people. I could get value out of it. But I'd rather not commit what little money I have to a subscription as it reduces flexibility. Some months I might get two DVDs or a pair of jeans for that amount of money.
 
In these parts, there is very much that you can get for ten dollars.

As far as flexibility goes, you pay for Kindle Unlimited month to month. At the end of each month you can browse the catalogue and see if there are still enough books that you want to read that it will be worth the commitment the following month. If not, you can cancel your subscription. It's not like Amazon Prime where you have to pay for the whole year.
 
I tend to read a book a week minimum and the other person in the house reads an average of a book a day and can usually read three while I'm slogging through the one so it goes without saying--I began to save money and had a chance to read somethings I wouldn't otherwise have considered all within the first week; so unless one of us goes blind I think KU will work for us. I do have to do something about the cable TV, which currently we are using mostly to listen to music.
 
Hi,

Well regardless of the rights and wrongs of it, my numbers of KU borrows lately seems to be rising fast. Currently I'd say of those of my books in KU, for every ten sales I've got seven borrows as well. Don't know what's happening out there but keep doing it!

Cheers, Greg.
 
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