Amazon's testing a Kindle Unlimited book subscription service

[Justin Kahn]

Amazon is testing out a new ebook service called "Kindle Unlimited." As spotted by GigaOm this morning, the service offers a large number of ebooks and audio books for $9.99 a month. Most of the Kindle Unlimited test pages were taken down this morning after users began to notice them, but according to Amazon the subscription service will offer over 600,000 ebooks and "thousands" of audio books.

This is a separate offering from the lending program the company already offers. Kindle owners with Amazon Prime memberships are allowed to borrow 1 book per month, but there isn't any clear indication on whether or not the content available will vary between the two services. At this point, there are only minor differences in the selection the two offer.

According to reports, many of the books are from Amazon's publishing imprints and available on the aforementioned Kindle Owners Lending Library, including popular titles like the Harry Potter Series.

Rumors surfaced again last month about Amazon creating a book lending service to compete with similar services, and this appears to be the early stages. However, unlike its competitors Scribd and Oyster, Kindle Unlimited doesn't look like it will offer content from the big five publishers: Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Hatchette. 

Amazon appears to have moved the service back into hiding for now, but you can check out a preview of what's to come via Google's cache of the page.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/57434-amazons-testing-a-kindle-unlimited-book-subscription-service.html

 

[madboyv1]

If you manage at least two or three paperbacks in a month, the retail cost of those books would more than cover $10 a month, assuming you can find the kind of books you want without the big five publishers. I don't imagine that to be too hard...

Incidentally you can borrow a hard copy at your local library (almost always for free), but of course you have to deal with having the physical item (eg, not losing it, returning it, etc).

If iHeartRadio did not exist I'd probably use the same justification for paying for Pandora, which is even less expensive than this service will be.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

I enjoy reading and I buy books from 2nd hand book stores. I do this because the store owner is trying to eke out an honest living and I'll help support them. Amazon is busy killing them and they certainly need no financial assistance so I'm dammed if I'll ever give them a dime. Besides I prefer physical books to electronic ones and I am aware of it's impact to the earths resources but old habits die hard.