Kindle unlimited-If you're thinking of getting it
- TrisNook
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Kindle unlimited-If you're thinking of getting it
I decided to give the 30 day free trial a go, to see what this was all about and if it was worth it. I have about 15 (maybe less) days left on the free trial and I am not too pleased with this. Don’t get me wrong, I have found some books that I like on the unlimited. They do have some good selections. Really good books in fact like Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Lord of the Rings etc. But the problem is, I already own hard copies of those. And I am sure that most of my avid readers out there will say the same thing. I did find The Giver quartet series, so I can not complain to much about the poor selection because at least I found one thing that I wanted to read.
The selection of Unlimited though, is slightly abysmal at best. For 10 dollars a month you can borrow books that are 5 dollars and under and also FREE. Yes, that’s right. I was mad when I found this out.kindle1 Free books are included in the kindle unlimited. Now to me, it’s a free book. You can download it for free why would you even need to borrow it? It’s free! If you don’t like it just delete the book, seeing as it’s free this is no loss on your part. Now, paying 10 dollars to get a free book to borrow (not even keep, you just get to borrow) that seems like a loss to me.
I was also doing some research on kindle unlimited, seeing if I was going to pay for it after my trial. I read a post somewhere that most of the books are 2-3 dollar books. Most of them are .99 cent books as well. To be able to get your full money’s worth out of unlimited you would have to read 10 books a month (.99 cent ones) or 5 of the 2-3 dollar ones. This only benefits you if you read over that amount each month. If you don’t read that much then it’s not even worth the money because then you are getting ripped off.
Compared to other sites as well, I read, Amazon has a lower selection of books. And compared to the selection that Amazon alone offers, they barely offer you what they are selling on their site. So, you are paying 10 dollars a month to borrow cheap books; most of which haven’t been heard of or aren’t that popular.
From what I read on the Amazon site for unlimited this was a way to get introduced to new books. To find new reads without having to pay for them. This is great if, like I said before, you can exceed reading 10 books a month. But the books that Amazon is offering hardly cost anything. And of course there are the free books that they felt the need to throw in as well. Because why would you just download the free book instead of paying to borrow it? Makes sense? Not really…
Another thing is how they advertise the unlimited books. They have these tiny words over it saying it’s a part of unlimited. They are easily missed. Amazon also advertises for unlimited audio books but when you click on an unlimited book it costs extra to add on the audio. I have yet to find an actual free audio book with unlimited. This was disappointing to me actually, why advertise that with the unlimited and then have it cost even more. I thought the point of this was to have unlimited borrowing? Not pay extra for it.
One of the things that upset me the most is they advertise it to be this really great thing, saying you can get all these books on unlimited but the reality of it is they do not offer a great selection. A lot of the major publishers aren’t even in partner with them and therefore their books aren’t offered. You can’t find most of the new or popular books. You are basically taking chance by paying the money and then searching through what they have to offer in hopes of finding something. I have found better luck and selections in browsing the free books that they have to offer instead.
My suggestion for Unlimited is to not even bother. If there is a book or two you see on there that you do want to read then get the trial and get the books. But I wouldn’t spend the money on this, unless you read more than 10 books a month and are trying to find a new book to read that isn’t that popular. I still recommend just checking out the free selections they have. If you really want the book then spend the 3 or so dollars on it to get the book. It’s better than spending the 10 a month and then trying to make it worth the money.
If you are big int borrowing books than maybe try and eLibrary app, like Overdrive, that works with your library. I can tell you the selection will be a whole lot greater.
So kindle-paperwhite-in-coverreally, this is a cool idea to have but just the way Amazon set it up andadvertised and made people think there was a whole lot more to offer kind of takes the appeal out of this and makes in not such a great deal. If they could add more of a selection, and more popular and in demand books then this would be worth it. But for now, with them trying to push free books off on kindle unlimited it’s just a waste of money entirely.
- gali
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Thanks again!
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- Scott
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It seems like it might be worth it if you could just get 10 books a month instead of merely borrowing them. Then you wouldn't need to actually read 10 books a month, as you could kind of stock up. Before ereaders, I think many of us did that too. You might go to the bookstore and buy 5 books in a single day, not knowing when you'd read all of them.
Amazon would actually profit from that too because as I understand it they only pay royalties when the KindleUnlimited books are actually read, so they have no cost when they let someone 'buy' a book through KindleUnlimited if the person never reads it.
I guess one workaround could be for multiple people to share a single KindleUnlmited account just like many people do with Netflix.
"Non ignara mali miseris succurrere disco." Virgil, The Aeneid
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I pay for the student Amazon Prime once a year, which includes KU selections, along with a ton of other benefits, so I was bothered when I saw they were trying to charge $10 a month for just the low profile selection of e-books. Not to mention, many local libraries offer OverDrive or other programs where you can check e-books out for free.
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I've researched and can't determine this myself.
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