Rabid Reader Ramblings: First Impressions: Kindle Unlimited

Well, I know, it has been dangerously quiet here lately.  No, I have not stopped reading.  No, I have not stopped blogging.  But, it tends to get a bit hectic around here during the summer, with a houseful of kids, one of whom hates the fact that she is not in school right now because she yearns for the structured, carefully planned out days that her classroom provided and that mommy stinks at trying to replicate for her at home.

But, hark! I received an email and saw a bunch of hubbub on the interwebs about a service that gave me the means to springboard a new R3 post and I wanted to run with it.

Yes, I am an early adopter for Kindle Unlimited.  Yes, I know there are other services out there.  I am familiar with them.  Yes, I know I can get the same type of thing from a library for free.  Except, I can’t.  Not really.  My areas public library is only just beginning to offer ebooks.  And they also only have 1 copy of any given title.  Oh, and they tend to get ban-happy.  I live in the south.  You know, bible thumpers and strong Christian values and all that.  Harry Potter is frequently banned, as is the Hunger Games, and a few John Green titles.

Some proponents of the library system might say, well, then read print books.  Hmm, I am thinking none of those folks that make that suggestion have 3 kids of their own, plus one they keep for a friend who has to work.  They also must not work 12 hour days that make access to the library during operating hours nonexistent.  Oh, and then the coup de grace!  I am somewhat visually impaired.  For print books, in order to read them comfortably anyway without significant effort, I really need large print.  A lot of the titles I prefer to read (I read largely young adult) are not available in large print.  Let’s be realistic.  How many people in the target demographic for YA need large print?  How many 32 year olds do you know who can’t see well enough to read regular size print in a book? There are not many.  I have asked.  Most 70 year olds have better vision than I do.  It is a fact of life that I have accepted.

So, I figured, what the heck.  Let’s give it a go.  I know that Scribd and Oyster are out there.  I know those services have a lot of the big publishers that Amazon, well, doesn’t.  But neither of those give you the ability to read on e-ink.  I spend 12+ hours a day at a computer before I ever even sit down to write a blog post.  I don’t want to stare at an LCD screen for several more hours to entertain myself with fiction.  I prefer reading on e-ink.  Enter Kindle Unlimited.

Yes, a lot of the titles available are self published or readily available in the public domain.  You know what, though? I am reading Harry Potter.  I can’t make international purchases so I have not previously been able to access the ebooks for the series because my debit card views Pottermore as “international.”  So, for the first time, I get to read Harry Potter….with real page numbers…On my Kindle.  How sweet is that!

I am in the free trial and have only had the service since the day it released.  Will I continue to pay for it? Most likely.  Though I have as of yet not really gotten into audiobooks, the 3 month gift subscription to Audible is a nice bonus.  I have started that off with one of those John Green titles my library banned.

I think that, with time, the big publishers are going to see that Kindle Unlimited reaches a market that those other services are not able to reach, since they do not offer e-ink compatibility.  There are quite a lot of us that, for whatever reason, prefer to read on e-ink devices.  It is an untapped market for subscription ebook services as of yet, and I for one am glad that Amazon has decided to give it a go.  For 10 bucks a month, I really don’t have a lot to lose since, well, I read more than 100 books a year anyway.  That works out to…more than 8 books a month, more than 2 books a week.  Some weeks those numbers are actually much higher depending on what I am reading.  SO when you divide 8 books into 10 bucks, it is a little over a dollar a book.  And, well, there are 7 Harry Potter books, then 3 Hunger Games, 3 in Lord of the Rings.  And since I actually don’t mind reading indie, since I am an indie author myself, I am good with there being a large quantity of self pubbed authors.  I just wish they had Anne of Green Gables.

Rabid Reader Ramblings: First Impressions: Kindle Unlimited is a post from: Just Another Rabid Reader