Amazon is working on Kindle Unlimited

[Yoly]

Thought this news (or rumor) might be interesting.
I'm very excited about it, I hope it's true. I've been waiting for a service like this from Amazon for years.

Amazon is working on Kindle Unlimited, the ultimate subscription service for readers
Over 600,000 titles and 'thousands' of audiobooks for $9.99 each month

http://www.theverge.com/2014/7/16/590...

[Alicja, ἀπὸ μηχανῆς Θεός]

Interesting, but I wouldn't do it unless it had a huge list of m/m romances on there since those are the hardest to get free (i.e. through my library... which has hard copies, audio disks, ebooks, eaudiobooks, and an IIL program that can get me almost anything non indie published). I think they're heading in the right direction, but they need way more titles for it to be worth it.

[Heidi]

Yoly wrote: "Thought this news (or rumor) might be interesting.
I'm very excited about it, I hope it's true. I've been waiting for a service like this from Amazon for years.

Amazon is working on Kindle Unlim..."

I'd definitely be interested in something like this depending on the catalogue!

[Yoly]

Yeah I wonder what will be available as a selection and more importantly if it will be region locked as well. I'm not in the US and we don't have here the same library perks like you guys have :( so this would be a great option for people in countries like mine. But if it ends up being region locked like Netflix, we could probably end with the equivalent of Project Gutenberg as a catalog on this side of the world :(
I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

[Alicja, ἀπὸ μηχανῆς Θεός]

Yoly wrote: "Yeah I wonder what will be available as a selection and more importantly if it will be region locked as well. I'm not in the US and we don't have here the same library perks like you guys have :( ..."

Well, then, I wish it to be great so that you have access to all these wonderful books.

[Heidi]

Yoly wrote: "Yeah I wonder what will be available as a selection and more importantly if it will be region locked as well. I'm not in the US "

Well, then they need to make it not region locked! Seems like that would be a good business decision and draw in a lot more subscribers. Fingers crossed!

[Heidi]

Wow, it's already out:
https://www.amazon.com/Kindle-eBooks/...

Was that quick or is that just me? Unfortunately, it's just U.S. They do say they have plans to expand... taps fingers against desk, wonder how long that will take! Sorry, Yoly:(

[Yoly]

Amazon hates me :(
And it's sad because I really love them.

I saw that their selection is not that impressive, but I'm hoping that this is only the beginning. I remember Amazon Prime Instant Video didn't have such a great selection at first.

[Heidi]

Yoly, THEY DO NOT, lol!!!!! Despite many haters, I'm an Amazon lover too. I started buying weird books I couldn't get anywhere else from them long ago, and for that they won my loyalty. However, I do wish they'd up their speed on branching out internationally AND it will be cool if they expand their unlimited reading catalogue. Do you use Amazon Prime Instant Video? Did they expand that catalogue over time?

[Yoly]

Yes, fortunately there are ways of getting it outside the US, and their catalog is very decent these days, in fact they have many TV series that they have exclusive rights to like The Good Wife and some HBO series like The Wire, The Sopranos, Rome, etc. What I like the most about the service is that I feel I get it for free because I'm a Prime member mainly for the 2-day free shipping.

And I now realize my post sounds like an Amazon commercial :) But I admit I'm an Amazon fangirl.

[Heidi]

Yoly, Cool on the AP Instant video. I <3 The Good Wife. One of my favorite series. Alicia Florrick is awesome!!! Well, everything I've seen is that Amazon intends to expand this unlimited service, so hopefully, they do it soon. We're a member of the prime for the 2-day free shipping on stuff too. My husband just started checking out their music service and I may follow suit soon. I'm big on Amazon too. I know a lot of people hate it cause it's so big now, but like I said, I became a fan long time ago when they were "the little guy";)

[Text]

I'm now seeing people on my flist complaining about being involuntarily subscribed to Kindle Unlimited for a "free month." Which made me run and check my own account, but I've never bought any Kindle items (I don't own an e-reader), so I'm guessing I'm not one of their targets.

Anybody here have this happen? I'm curious.

[Alicja, ἀπὸ μηχανῆς Θεός]

I have a Kindle but I didn't notice anything different or any notices. But I'll check to make sure.

[Deborah]

Yoly wrote: "Yeah I wonder what will be available as a selection and more importantly if it will be region locked as well. I'm not in the US and we don't have here the same library perks like you guys have :( ..."

I'm not in the US either, so can't try this service out :(
On the upside for me, I still managed to check out the books they are offering on the US website and one of mine is in there - yay!

[Sparrowlicious]

Ahaha. Not in the US either.
I bet if this was for ALL ebooks I'd even buy a Kindle, haha. I'm usually one of those people who especially wants books that are either out of print or not on the "popular" lists so they wouldn't turn up on such a selection.

I admit I like Amazon a lot for buying books. This has mostly something to do with bad experiences at local bookshops, money and of course that I won't get weird looks for buying m/m books online.
I once even had the problem that I wanted the German translation of Winter Birds. The employee at the shop offered me books about birds instead...
...
No.
So yeah, I like Amazon. Even if it's super 'in' to hate Amazon. Whatever. I'm a bad person. There you have it. xD

[Alicja, ἀπὸ μηχανῆς Θεός]

Sparrowlicious wrote: "Ahaha. Not in the US either.
I bet if this was for ALL ebooks I'd even buy a Kindle, haha. I'm usually one of those people who especially wants books that are either out of print or not on the "po..."

Oh no! Amazon is great when trying to buy something rare or not popular.

[Janelle]

I noticed that option today. When I checked some on my wish list only one or two are available this way (and my list is verrry long). It's new though so I will check back. Love Amazon for books so I hope they add lots more!

[Deborah]

I'm guessing that readers might not know - the only books available on Unlimited are those enrolled by the authors in the Select programme, i.e. are available exclusively on Amazon and not allowed to be sold elsewhere, even on the author's own website.
That's why you won't find all the books you want on there.

[Sparrowlicious]

Digging this thread out again since Kindle Unlimited now started for my country and I got a glimpse on which books are available:
Mostly YA Romance. I'd go as far as to say that probably 90 % are YA books, 80 % of them definitely YA romances. Apparently translations only as well. (I don't read translated books if they are originally in English.)

I admit there's a huge group of readers who prefer YA romance but ... seriously, creating something that only appeals to one kind of reader is rather weird, especially for Amazon.

[Yoly]

Sadly Kindle Unlimited is mostly romance and YA :(

They need to work on their selection if they really want to compete with OysterBooks and Scribd.

I was tempted to try them but being tablet only doesn't make sense to me since I don't like reading on a tablet for long periods of time. I prefer an e-ink device.

There's another service that will let you download the books to an e-reader but Kindle devices are not supported. This one is not an "all you can eat" service, they offer 2 books for $9.99 each month. But the books are yours to keep. That one is entitlebooks.com. Their selection is not that great either.

[Simona]

Sparrowlicious wrote: "I admit there's a huge group of readers who prefer YA romance but ... seriously, creating something that only appeals to one kind of reader is rather weird, especially for Amazon. ..."

But it's a really large target. I realized that looking for a suitable (for me) Fantasy group, many were YA oriented and were mostly composed by adult women.

[Sparrowlicious]

Simona wrote: "Sparrowlicious wrote: "I admit there's a huge group of readers who prefer YA romance but ... seriously, creating something that only appeals to one kind of reader is rather weird, especially for Am..."

I had the same problem. I found a group earlier this year that had, surprise, their location set as my country. Unfortunately I failed to realize that they even put their various romance genres into their description (although they claim to be a group for all genres). And lo and behold, almost all topics where about romance books. YA romance, New Adult romance, complementary romance which is simply a more fancy way of saying 'modern mainstream romance'. And of course all group read polls were usually about romance books only. Suggestions of other books, even when multiple people said 'I'd read that' didn't often land these books in the polls. Or they got too little votes. It actually happened that I got Le Guin's 'The Left Hand of Darkness' into a poll which then actually got all the people who don't read romance to vote for it. Unfortunately it got the same amoung of votes as another book. Which subsequently won because, well, it was in German instead of English (although there is a German translation of 'The Left Hand of Darkness'). So actually, there are a lot of people in this group who don't read romance but their voices are not very loud because, well, they obviously gave up by now.

Yeah, YA romance or romance readers in general is a very large group and to be honest, this sometimes gets really frustrating. It even gets worse when these people start recommending books like that to you, which recently happened to me: apparently because I read fantasy they thought I'd like a YA romance book... because it apparently has a fantasy setting? The title and description told me that it was your usual YA romance. No, thank you.


Sorry for this text wall but if I would put it in my blog, I'd probably get weird responses of people who don't understand my plight because 'just ignore it' does not help if you're trying to be active in a book community.

I enjoy talking to people about books, it's only that it becomes really hard if you only meet people who don't have similar interests. Or even vaguely similar interests. Seriously, anything but this romance stuff. I can't bear to hear about another story with a 'female protagonist has to decide between two guys who are both bad people' plot because this is seriously boring.

[Marina]

I read some YA fantasy, but yes, I am very tired of the whole "girl choosing between two boys" thing. I don't mind a bit of romance if the fantasy elements are interesting but love triangles are seriously overdone at the moment. I've given up on reading YA dystopian since every second one seems to involve the dreaded love triangle. I even found one that had a "love square". I wish more authors would pick a different way to introduce internal conflict for their protagonist!

[Sparrowlicious]

Btw, Mariana:
It's not only that most of these books have these triangle things, it's also that the romance plot overtakes any other plot. The main plot is suddenly the sub plot. Which means, whenever you see a book on Goodreads shelved as 'YA' and 'Romance' as well as maybe a genre that interests you, there is probably a cause to be careful because there might be yet another love triangle boat.

By the way, a fun example for a book with a really interesting summary is probably Throne of Glass
... but you can't trust it!
This reader actually reviewed every single chapter (sometimes two at a time):
http://readingwithavengeance.tumblr.c...
Wow. How can you go so wrong?

[Yoly]

Marina wrote: "I read some YA fantasy, but yes, I am very tired of the whole "girl choosing between two boys" thing. I don't mind a bit of romance if the fantasy elements are interesting but love triangles are..."

I don't mind a little romance in YA as long as is just the sub plot, but like Sparrowlicious said, sometimes the main plot turns into the sub plot because of the romance aspect of the story. I hate the girl choosing between two boys thing partly mainly because it's disguised as "female empowerment". So now we're teaching young girls that female empowerment is about being able to choose over two guys.

I would love to see a YA story where the girl (which would be a badass, BTW) would eventually decide not to choose any of the guys.

[Yoly]

Sparrowlicious wrote: "By the way, a fun example for a book with a really interesting summary is probably Throne of Glass
... but you can't trust it!"

I bought Throne of Glass on Kindle recently because it was on sale, I think it was around $2. From the summary it's not the kind of story that would get me to buy a book without someone who knows what books I like to read recommends it, but two things made me buy it. Firstly, it has +71,000 ratings on Goodreads, with a 4.17 average. Either Goodreads ratings are monopolized by 13 year old girls (which the second book in the Divergent series made me think) or there's something good here.

I didn't read the reviews you mentioned but I have seen a few comments on Goodreads about the book being too superficial. Sometimes I need a superficial light read, so to me that's not entirely a bad thing :D

Secondly, it has a very cool looking cover :P


I should probably read this soon and report how terrible it is.

[Simona]

Marina wrote: "I read some YA fantasy, but yes, I am very tired of the whole "girl choosing between two boys" thing. I don't mind a bit of romance if the fantasy elements are interesting but love triangles are se..."

I tried some YA (mostly because they were freebies...) and they are IMO terribly boring and repetitive. Come on, young adults have often brilliant minds! MOst books I read in that genre are rubbish. Depressingly so.

[Marina]

Sparrowlicious wrote: "Btw, Mariana:
It's not only that most of these books have these triangle things, it's also that the romance plot overtakes any other plot. The main plot is suddenly the sub plot. Which means, whene..."

Wow, that reviewer really didn't like that book! I'll have to go back some time and read the whole review. The bits I read were very entertaining -- I laughed at the protagonist being described as "the most notorious assassin in Mary Sue Land".

[Marina]

Yoly wrote: "... I would love to see a YA story where the girl (which would be a badass, BTW) would eventually decide not to choose any of the guys."

Me too! Or where she had to choose between love and career, or two completely non-romancey goals. Anything, really, other than two boys!

[Yoly]

Simona wrote: "I tried some YA (mostly because they were freebies...) and they are IMO terribly boring and repetitive. Come on, young adults have often brilliant minds! MOst books I read in that genre are rubbish. Depressingly so..."

Keep in mind that like in every other genre, there are some bad YA books out there, but there are some very good ones. Personally I've stayed away from YA for a couple of months because it felt like every book was the same.

Also, let's not forget about the New Adult category which contains the same silliness of a YA novel but with explicit sex scenes!

[Yoly]

Marina wrote: "Me too! Or where she had to choose between love and career, or two completely non-romancey goals. Anything, really, other than two boys!"

The thing is that if they did that, their target audience wouldn't buy the books because they would be "boring" :(

[Sparrowlicious]

Marina wrote: "Wow, that reviewer really didn't like that book! I'll have to go back some time and read the whole review. The bits I read were very entertaining -- I laughed at the protagonist being described as "the most notorious assassin in Mary Sue Land".

Haha. It has its moment. I can perfectly understand why the reviewer was so frustrated with the book. After all, it's supposely the story of 'the best assassin ever' ... and she's only 18 years old. Also, she sleeps like a rock when there's a killer on the loose?


Btw, yes, there are also a lot of good YA books. The thing is, it's hard to find them. I mean, there's always Diana Wynne Jones but what if you read all of her books or maybe don't like her style or you just don't like fantasy? Good luck finding good YA books then. Of course there are more good YA authors but how do you find them? ):
I mean, The Cloud Roads is also a nice YA book but it suffers from it's genre: problems are too easily solved.