Kindle Unlimited
Netflix for books was bound to come to Amazon — it was only a matter of time.
Pay a monthly fee and you gain access to more than 600k books. What does that means? Simply browse, select and then start reading. And if you're an iPhone user like me, you can apparently do all of this without having to go to Amazon first. Note, I haven’t tried this yet, but will soon. Remember the old days when you could browse Amazon's books on your iPhone and purchase them? Apple quickly stomped that out with their in-app purchase requirement. It will be cool again to have that capability back with a limited number of finger swipes and taps.
As a reader, what does this mean to me? I may run out of space on my favorite Kindle device? But that is a good thing. I tend to bounce around books. On any given day, I might put my nose in three or more books. I’m not the average reader. I’m reading to learn how to write. Per Stephen King’s On Writing: you have to read to be a writer.
One thing I’m curious about is how the traditional publisher will react. When will we see that first big deal? And by that, I mean being able to download to my device the complete collection of Stephen King or James Patterson books. Other subscriber services have books from the big publishers already, but that may just a matter of time too.
What does this mean for the new authors who are just starting out and writing their first book?
REACH! Best way to build an audience!
In my opinion, any author publishing a new book should absolutely enter the title into KDP Select and take advantage of the promotional tools Amazon has provided them.
From one of my fave online hangouts, KBoards has a very lengthy thread that covers what Kindle Unlimited means: Kindle Unlimited?? Anyone have the scoop?
While this isn’t the first subscriber model to show up, Kindle Unlimited has a bit more going on than the others do.
First, there are the readers—single greatest online volume anywhere.
Second, there is the original architecture that Amazon has evolved and baked for years, providing a very functional review system, a ranking algorithm that lends to terrific list placement, and a recommendation system (Netflix had to sponsor a contest to get their recommendation algorithm).
Amazon may have very well changed the publishing model… again!
What’s missing? I’m a fan of Prime, and selfishly, I’d love it if KU were a part of Prime. We may see Amazon bundle this in as an option for Prime customers later in the year. We’ll see.
Happy Reading