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Kindle Unlimited


dtrpath27

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Kindle Unlimited is when you pay $10/month and can read any Kindle Unlimited titles for free. Has anyone done this, and did you find it worthwhile?

 

I'm thinking of signing up, but the problem I see is that many titles aren't included. For example, an author might have a series of several books, but randomly only the second and fourth ones are included. I wonder if I could find/read enough to make it worth the money.

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I signed up for the free month trial to see if it would be worth the money. So far I'm thinking no, but I also rarely use my kindle. I only use it for reading a lot of classics because a good number of them are free on kindle as opposed to buying the real book. 

 

If it was $5-8 like Hulu Plus or Netflix, I would probably keep using it but its honestly not worth the price for what they're giving you. I don't blame Amazon because I'm sure there are many authors not willing to go along with it, but it just doesn't work. Limited number of options for a relatively high price compared to other online monthly services. 

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I haven't signed up but a few months ago I was seriously considering it. I spent an evening going through the titles available and was left disappointed by the selection so I decided against it. I found that the vast majority of books available were self published and in genres that generally don't do it for me.

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I am in my free 30 day trial for the UK Kindle Unlimited at the moment. So it's early days for me, but I thought I would try it for the next six months or so, just to see if it would be worth it. Some books I have read/am reading at the moment are Hugh Howey's novels, which I was thinking of buying recently, but now it is quite useful to read them through the Kindle Unlimited scheme. I

certainly think that it is good for trying books out (making it as more of a longer version of a free sample), also I think that it could be quite good for someone who is a fast reader, who use a lot of books per month. But the actual amount of books by authors can be very limiting, but then I have found that most of Kurt Vonnegut's novels are on Unlimited, so it would be a good thing for me to start reading his novels. I will just have to see over the next six months, and whether it is worth the monthly cost works for me.  

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It does sound like a good idea, and I did consider it, but as others have said, there are a lot of books that are not included. As I tend to read the less popular books, chances are that most of the things I am interested in would not be included. The big thing for me though is that it doesn't really support the authors in the same way - you are not buying the books but borrowing them, as least that is my understanding. The author then doesn't receive anywhere near the same level of royalty that they should. A lot of the books that I read are non fiction anyway, particularly since I started to rewrite my own work, and these are the sort of books that like I keep permanently, so I can refer back to them. After all, 5 years from now I might want to do another rewrite or maybe write something else, so you never know when I might need to refer to them again.   

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There is more info here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201556940

 

 

 

As a member of Kindle Unlimited, you may read Kindle books and listen to Audible audiobooks from a designated list of titles an unlimited number of times for so long as you are a member of the program.
 If your membership ends, you will no longer have access to the titles you selected from the program.
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Ah. Make sense. Thanks so much for posting the information!

 

I was just looking at the list of all the "literature" titles available. At least fifty percent are seemingly self-published erotica with a smattering of Harlequin-esque romances thrown in for good measure. Another good chunk were horror/creature tales of similarly dubious quality. As I only found about a dozen titles on the entire "literature" list I would want to read for sure, I think I'm going to pass.

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There are actually quite a lot more books now than there were.  If you go to the Kindle bookstore front, you can see current titles listed there, there all have Kindle Unlimited written above them (if you have a Fire, I am not sure how you go about that on a regular Kindle, but it works just as well on Amazon's Kindle bookstore front).  For me, I will hold off for awhile, but more and more I see books I like on Unlimited.  One thing that stops me is it must be charged on a credit card and not a debit, therefore I am out of luck on that one!

 

I know most, if not all, Catherine Ryan Hyde's books are available and I was just looking at current releases, and saw The Paper Magician.  :smile:

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Its like a library that doesnt have great selection that you also have to pay for every month. Just not ideal. Amazon has begun to do anything that gets them money, but this isn't the greatest idea of how to do it.

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Indeed. Having looked through my wish list, which has well over 100 titles on it, mostly literary or non fiction, I can see that less than one third of them are available through the Unlimited Program, if that.. For me personally then, it does not live up to its name - but I guess that for others who do read the sort of stuff that is included it might be a good deal. It's horses for courses, as they say ....

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  • 1 year later...

Looks like it's been a while since this thread was posted in.  Has anyone signed up for Kindle Unlimited recently?  How do you like it?  I've been thinking about getting it, but not sure if it's worth it or not.  I've heard of some other services like Scribd and Oyster, but don't know if they work on Kindle or Kindle Fire.

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Looks like it's been a while since this thread was posted in.  Has anyone signed up for Kindle Unlimited recently?  How do you like it?  I've been thinking about getting it, but not sure if it's worth it or not.  I've heard of some other services like Scribd and Oyster, but don't know if they work on Kindle or Kindle Fire.

I still have not signed up for it, but it does see that the selection has markedly improved over the past two years. This article had great info on the topic: http://ebookfriendly.com/kindle-unlimited-ebook-subscription/

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I had it a few months ago and didn't find it worth the money. I picked up at least two thrillers from it which were pretty terrible but compelling enough that I read to the end. I discontinued my subscription to save myself from sinking further into the abyss of bad thrillers.

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I had it a few months ago and didn't find it worth the money. I picked up at least two thrillers from it which were pretty terrible but compelling enough that I read to the end. I discontinued my subscription to save myself from sinking further into the abyss of bad thrillers.

 

From what I've read over the last couple of days, it seems like most of the books available on unlimited are cheaper books from unknown authors and publishers.  Some are self published.    I have discovered some great books that are deals or through the kindle lending library, but Unlimited is probably not worth the price for me.  Right now I check out bestsellers and new releases that are ebook from my library, granted I do have to go on a waiting list sometimes, but at least it's free.

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