Lazy Man and Money

Kindle Unlimited, Revisited

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Back in July, I wrote about Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program.  In a nutshell, for $10 a month, you have access to borrow from a library of Kindle eBooks and audio books (up to 10 can be borrowed simultaneously).

I’ve been on the program for nearly a year now.  What are my thoughts?

In the last year, I have read/listened to more than 30 books that have been borrowed from Kindle Unlimited.  While it’s true that many of the most popular authors aren’t part of Kindle Unlimited, there’s still a lot to choose from.

As I suspected, I am seeing the best value from the audio books.  Nearly all of Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series is available on audio.  I listen to 2-4 of these in a typical month.  The price of many of the audio books in this series exceed the monthly cost of Kindle Unlimited, so I’m already ahead.  So before we go any further, I can declared Kindle Unlimited as a financial success.

When you borrow an audio book, you also get the eBook version.  You can flip between the two – listening when you want to and then picking up at that exact spot when you want to read.

I’ve also been a lot more willing to branch out and explore the work of authors I haven’t read before.  I listened to a book in the Alix London series by Aaron Elkins and before I knew it, I had read a half dozen books by Elkins.

My seven year old daughter loves elephants.  One day I downloaded a half dozen elephants books and handed her the Kindle Fire.  She read quietly for hours.  My son is five and also loves to read.  We may be able to save a small fortune in children’s books in the coming years. Many of the books in Gertrude Chandler Warner’s excellent Boxcar Children series are included and I’m trying to get them hooked (my son loves the movie).

I was hoping the size of the Kindle Unlimited catalog would grow over time, and it has.  It began with 600,000 eBooks and 2000 audio books.  I has grown to 800,000 eBooks and 4000 audio books.  Many of these are books by independent authors, but there are also books like Harry Potter, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Water for Elephants, The Hunger Games, Twelve Years a Slave, and many more.

Since I’m listening to audio books and podcast so much, I finally bit the bullet and bought Bluetooth headsets in order to cut the cord.  I have a nice pair at home (the $44.99 Air Fi Runaway) and a cheaper pair (SoundBot 220, $13.99) to keep at work.  The more expensive pair definitely feels better on my head (and they were $59.99 when I bought them about a month ago – it might be a good idea to snap them up at $45), but the Soundbot isn’t too bad either – a nice pair for someone on a tight budget.  Neither of them has a visible microphone, which was a key factor for me (since I wouldn’t be using it anyway) and both have good battery life.  I also use the Runaway to listen to watch baseball games via the MLB.TV app, and I can listen to several games before the battery gets low.

I do have one pet peeve with Kindle Unlimited.  If you already own a book, you can’t borrow it from Kindle Unlimited.  This becomes a problem if you own the eBook and want to borrow the audio book, as Amazon somehow has the two linked together (because audio book downloads also include the eBook version) and doesn’t allow this.  The solution that Amazon’s tech support suggests is to return the book that you’ve purchased.  Personally, that doesn’t seem very fair to the author and publisher, since I bought the book previously in a good faith sale, so I didn’t pursue that solution.  Amazon should be sophisticated enough to handle this situation without taking money out of the pocket of the author and publisher.  I suppose I could return the book, listen to the audio, and then re-purchase the book, but that’s a bit awkward.

Elsewhere in the Amazonverse

Somehow, there is a way to get free books that managed to elude me until recently.  A friend pointed out the Kindle First program while simultaneously doing a happy dance to celebrate the fact that she was able to tell me something I didn’t know about Amazon.  Every month, Amazon Prime members can choose from one of four books to receive for free.  None of the authors have been household names at this point, but free books are always good (especially when they’re digital – nobody will know that you’re a hoarder).

Amazon Prime also now includes free unlimited photo storage.  I currently have several other options for online storage, so I haven’t checked this out – yet.

Is Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited A Good Deal?

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Amazon has just announced a new service, Kindle Unlimited.  For $10 per month, you get access to 600,000 books and 2000 audio books.  Is this a good deal?

Well, first of all, in classic Amazon style, there’s a free 30 day trial.  Give it a spin and if you don’t like it, just cancel.

What’s included in Kindle Unlimited?  The “Big 5” publishers (Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, Simon and Schuster) are not included.  That eliminates a lot of best sellers …  but the smaller publishers also publish a lot of good books.  According to Laura Hazard Owen, the following publishers are included: Algonquin, Bloomsbury, Harvard University Press, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Open Road Media, W.W. Norton, and Workman, among others.

Are any good series included?  Yep – Hunger Games, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct are a few that immediately jump out.  There are even 46 books and stories by my favorite author, Lawrence Block .

Let’s flip through a few more shelves.  Water for Elephants (if you haven’t read it, I strongly urge you to read it), The Life of Pi, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Hangman’s Daughter, Lawrence Sanders’s Archy McNally series (which continues to grow, in spite of his death), Jim Bouton’s seminal baseball book Ball Four, The Boxcar Children series for children … suffice it to say, there’s a lot to choose from.  A couple of other books that I had been intending to buy were displayed in Amazon’s recommendations for me.

OK, I know what you’re thinking.  “So what, Kosmo?  Scribd and Oyster have similar offerings at similar prices.  This isn’t a game changer.  You’re just being a shill for Amazon.”

Audio books.  BAM.

I spend a lot of time in a car, and fill most of it with either podcasts or audio books, because most radio programming drives me nuts.  I recently moved to a smaller town, and I’ll have access to a much smaller audio book collection in Overdrive.

The collection of audio books is much smaller – 2000 as opposed to 600,000 – but there are still some winners.  39 books in McBain’s 87th precinct series!  That should fill a lot of commuting hours.  Unlike the library, there are no wait lists.

Is Kindle Unlimited worth it?  If you enjoy audio books and have a limited selection at your library, I think it’s a pretty obvious slam dunk, considering the cost of audio books.  If you’re a voracious reader, it could also make a lot of sense.  As mentioned earlier, it’s not a comprehensive collection, but I found a lot of gems in the short time I spent poking around.  I signed first thing this morning and I suspect I’ll waste a lot of time in the next few days just perusing the collection.

Amazon Prime Update – Amazon Prime has also seen some recent changes.  First, the price jumped from $79 to $99 per year.  Then Amazon added access to the Prime Music catalog of roughly one million songs.  You can listen in the cloud or download for offline listening.  Again, not comprehensive, but it’s a pretty strong collection.  I had tried Prime once before and had canceled after the trial offer.  This time around, I think they have me hooked for good.

[Editor’s Thoughts: The audio books are certainly tempting. I have a collection of regular books that I’d love to read, but never have the time to. I’ve gotten into podcasts recently, especially the awesome ones on Microblogger because I can listen to them while walking the dog or while doing some types of work (not writing). The audio books would be an extension of that. Unfortunately, it looks like the audio book collection is small. Since there are almost limitless podcasts that I’m now interested in might as well go the free route.

I’m surprised the pricing doesn’t have a tie-in for Amazon Prime subscribers. It seems like a no-brainer to price it at $11 for non-Prime subscribers and $9 for Prime members. The idea would be use the non-Prime price to subsidize the Prime members a bit. It would be another thing to hook the Prime members in a little more… as Kosmo alluded to here. It also shows them a little love for being loyal Amazon customers.]