“With
Kindle Unlimited, you won't have to think twice before you try a new author or
genre -- you can just start reading and listening. In addition to offering over
600,000 eBooks, Kindle Unlimited is also by far the most cost-effective way to
enjoy audiobooks and eBooks together. With thousands of Whispersync for
Voice-enabled audiobooks to choose from, you can easily switch between reading
and listening to a book, allowing the story to continue even when your eyes are
busy”
Kindle Senior Vice
President, Russ Grandinetti, commenting on Amazon's launch of Kindle Unlimited
Amazon
is still in the Book business it seems. After all, before the Amazon Kindle,
Kindle Fire, Fire Tv and Fire Smartphone came along as noted in my blog article entitled “US$199
Amazon Fire smartphone is Amazon Prime member's Nirvana – Shopping by Nodding
your Head and Finding Waldo”, their chief #Breadandbutter was selling
books!
 |
So
I’m proud to announce that Amazon has decided to launch an unlimited
Subscription all-you-can-read Service called Kindle
Unlimited as reported in “Amazon
rolls out $9.99 Kindle Unlimited monthly subscription”, published July 18,
2014 4:53 AM PDT by Lance Whitney, CNET News
and “Amazon
Officially Announces Kindle Unlimited, Offering Endless Reading And Listening
For $9.99 A Month”, published July 18, 2014 by John Biggs, Techcrunch.
Amazon Kindle Unlimited
– Oyster and Scribd got served by Earth’s Most Customer Centric Company
This
is basically their answer to Oyster
Books who launched a similar App based all-you-can-read US$9.95 per month
service back in September 2013 as I'd chronicled my blog article
entitled “Oyster
Books launchers US$9.95 Apple iPhone App for lending 100,000 book titles -
Amazon Kindle Lending just got competition”.
Back
then, it was for Apple iPhone and Apple iPad; now there's an app for all
smartphones, including Nokia smartphones running Windows Phone OS and Amazon’s
own Kindle Fire and Nook HD. Scribd offers
a similar service, costing $8.99 per month. All reasons as to why Amazon would
make their Kindle
Unlimited offer now; Oyster and Scribd were taking away their customers!
Like
Oyster and Scribd, Amazon’s Kindle
Unlimited offers a free one month trial, making this yet another “free”
Book Service like those listed in my blog article
entitled “US$199
Amazon Kindle Paperwhite upgrades Hardware and Software - How to find free
Ebooks and e-Book Readers for Laptops and PC”.
Amazon’s
Kindle
Unlimited offers some 600,000 Kindle titles and more than 150,000 titles
via a complimentary three month Audible audiobooks offer. Subscriber to Kindle
Unlimited can find titles that are a part of this unlimited month long
Online Library by simply searching the Kindle Book store and looking for titles
labled “Read for Free”.
Best
of all, this offer is open to all Kindle Paperwhite as well as BlackBerry
phones, Apple iOS devices, Google Android devices, Windows Phone smartphones as
well as Desktop and Laptop users that have the Amazon Kindle App installed.
The
difference with the Amazon Kindle
Unlimited, dear reader, is in the amount of titles and the scope of the
offer:
1.
2001: A Space Odyssey
2.
Animal Farm
3.
Cat's Cradle
4.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
5.
For Dummies book series
6.
Harry Potter series
7.
Kitchen Confidential
8.
Lonely Planet travel guides
9.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
10.
The Good Earth
11.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy
12.
The Princess Bride
The
Audio Books, a unique offer to Amazon's Kindle
Unlimited Service, sports some equally listen-worthy titles:
1.
Boardwalk Empire
2.
Hunger Games trilogy
3.
Life of Pi
4.
The Handmaid's Tale
5.
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
However,
the so-called Big 5 Publishers, who are a part of Oyster and Scribd, aren’t a part of Amazon’s Bestseller
lineup as noted in “How
Amazon’s New E-book Subscription Service Stacks Up”, published July 18,
2014 by Kristen Bellstrom, Time.com:
1.
Hachette
2.
HarperCollins
3.
Macmillan
4.
Penguin Random House
5.
Simon & Schuster
Amazon Prime users
cheated – Oyster and Scribed pay Independent and Big 5 Publishers handsomely
All
this must have Amazon Prime users quite upset. After all, they’ve paid US$90
for unlimited 2 day shipping and the added perk of streaming video, streaming
music and one-per-month e-book rentals.
Now
as Streaming for books is set to start thanks to competition from Oyster and Scribd as concluded in “Kindle
Unlimited: it's the end of losing yourself in a good book”, published
Sunday 20 July 2014 by John Naughton, the UK Guardian, Amazon Prime and
regular Amazon customers are now at a three-way Crossroads!
Clearly,
this is a new service aimed at catching new Readers who may plan to purchase
the Amazon Fire “people’s phone” smartphone by Friday July 25th 2014
as described in my Geezam blog article
entitled “Amazon
Fire is a Volkswagen for Amazon Prime subscribers that’ll drive shop-on-the-go
Online Obsession”.
Now
for an extra US$8.99, you can get an unlimited library on your Kindle Fire? Why
isn’t this just introduced as another service under Amazon Prime, being as
they’re already have a Book Lending Scheme?
The
missing Big 5 Publishers may also be a deal-breaker for many considering
Amazon's Kindle
Unlimited Service, as Oyster and
Scribd. That’s because they pay writers
overall, be they Independent publishers or writing under the banner of the Big
5 Publishers a lot more money as stated in “Kindle
Unlimited: Good for customers, not so good for authors?”, published July 19,
2014 4:00 AM PDT by Nick Statt, CNET News.
It
seems that for a service described as Unlimited, it has a lot of limitations
aimed squarely at Amazon Prime users and Independent publishers as noted in “What
are the limits of Kindle Unlimited”, published July 19, 2014 4:01 AM PDT by
Donna Tam, CNET News. In the end, it may
succeed in pushing more Amazon users and Independent Publishers towards Oyster and Scribd!
So
which service will you pick as the book industry becomes more like the
equivalent of Streaming in the Music Industry as stated in my blog article
entitled “Nielsen
Stats record continued decline in Music Downloads - Developed World Streaming
will catch on in Developed World once we get 4G LTE”? The choice is really
yours, my friend, once you weigh the evidence!
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