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posted by janrinok on Monday July 21 2014, @08:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the turning-a-new-page dept.

The Telegraph reports on Amazon's unveiling of their new service (video) called Kindle Unlimited. This is a netflix-like service for kindle ebooks. For $9.99 a month subscribers will be able to read all the books they want just so long as they're covered by the service. This will include all Amazon self-published books and in total covers about 600,000 titles.

Amazon already allowed people with an Amazon Prime subscription to 'loan' one book a month from its Prime Lending Library. Extending this scheme to give subscribers unlimited access to ebooks for a fixed monthly fee puts it in direct competition with services like Oyster and Scribd, which offer unlimited access to 500,000 and 400,000 books respectively.

Last month, Amazon launched a music streaming service for its Prime customers in the US, called Prime Music, to rival Spotify. It also offers a video streaming service called Prime Instant Video - its answer to Netflix.

Note that this doesn't actually extend Amazon Prime and is a completely separate service.

Related Stories

Which Books Make it to Your List? 64 comments

One or more Anonymous Cowards write in with two related stories:

Firstly, eight science fiction classics, including Dune and The Lord of the Rings, have earned a spot on a list of "100 Books to Read in a Lifetime" as chosen by the book editors at Amazon.

"Over many months, the team passionately debated and defended the books we wanted on this list," explains their editorial director, noting that the "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams was a near miss. Other books included were "A Wrinkle in Time" and "The Hunger Games", as well as at least six free public domain classic books.

But one reporter notes that the list also includes both children's classics like "Where the Wild Things Are" and "House at Pooh Corner", as well as Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" ("We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold...").

Secondly, a related story notes that the popular meme relating to the BBC's "100 Books" list is a giant hoax.

"The BBC believes you only read 6 of these books" reads the headline on countless Facebook posts, forum comments, and web pages. But it's a hoax, conflating a 2007 list from Britain's Guardian newspaper (which had simply asked their readers to name which books "they can't live without").

The readers selected The Lord of the Rings trilogy and books from the Harry Potter series - but one reporter notes that the entertaining list is skewed heavily toward British authors. Six of the 100 books were written by Charles Dickens and four by Jane Austen - while not a single book on the list was written by Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, or William Faulkner."

From these lists it does seem clear that The Lord of the Rings remains popular.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by compro01 on Monday July 21 2014, @08:27PM

    by compro01 (2515) on Monday July 21 2014, @08:27PM (#71984)

    So it's like a public library, only now, you have to pay for it directly and pay more as they need to make a profit on it.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 21 2014, @08:32PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 21 2014, @08:32PM (#71986)

      Amazon isn't a charity, bum.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 21 2014, @08:55PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 21 2014, @08:55PM (#72007)

        Nor are Libraries. They are collective undertakings which, rather efficiently, provide access to a large number of titles for a given population. Access to knowledge, resources and entertainment regardless of ability to pay surely has a positive impact on society.

        The point the OP was making is that to a large extent most people already have this service and the amount (already paid) is probably nominal compared to the $10/month Amazon is charging individually and collectively. So why pay Amazon more for it. And libraries can provide it at a low cost in part because they don't need to extract a profit or pay recurring royalties on the works loaned out (although that may begin to change with how libraries are allowed to provide e-books to their member base).

        To extend that line of thought, imagine what an online-only library could do since it wouldn't have to maintain the infrastructure of a traditional library.

        There are some inklings of this with the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) : http://dp.la/ [dp.la]

    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Monday July 21 2014, @08:35PM

      by frojack (1554) on Monday July 21 2014, @08:35PM (#71988) Journal

      Pretty much the Netflix model.

      Unlimited ebooks for 9.99, per month but you can only read them if you continue to subscribe. Once you drop out, books you had under the program disappear. If its anything like the music program there is also a BUY button, so that you can keep it forever (although still DRM locked).

      I find the music program useful, (because it comes free with Prime) and I can try out new artists before I actually spend money on them.

      Still, your access to the music and books is even more tenuous, and you are merely renting them.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 21 2014, @08:43PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 21 2014, @08:43PM (#71994)

        It would be a lot more enticing if I could apply that $9.99 towards the purchase price of a book once a month. Spending $10 for a digital library, when libraries already have digital lending, seems ludicrous to me.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Sir Garlon on Monday July 21 2014, @08:50PM

      by Sir Garlon (1264) on Monday July 21 2014, @08:50PM (#72000)

      If your local library turns away people who can't pay, has no reference desk, offers no Internet access, keeps no local historical archives, runs no community programs, offers no meeting space for local clubs and organizations, sells user data to whoever wants it, has a history of censorship, and buys new books according to a kickback scheme, then yes, it's a lot like a public library card.

      --
      [Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Monday July 21 2014, @09:11PM

        by frojack (1554) on Monday July 21 2014, @09:11PM (#72017) Journal

        I often get ebooks from my public library, and pretty much all public libraries contract all that out to Overdrive.

        If you are content to read sufficiently behind the best seller crowd its a good way to go because its dirt cheap, (you've already paid with your taxes).

        I've never understood why people have to read the latest book they day it comes out. But trying to do so via the public library is crazy. The waiting lists are months long. On the other hand books from one or two years ago are readily available.

        But the public library, even in the digital age has a SELECTION problem. And a lending period.
        If I get busy, I might not finish a book in 21 days. I can renew, but not if there is a waiting list.

        Amazon's service solves both the selection problem and the check-out-duration problem. But that's at a cost of $120 per year. That's more than I want to pay for the privileged. I'll read it next year.

        I probably buy 10-15 books a year, and seldom pay $9 for any of them, and once I buy them, the DRM is coming out (come get me), and they are going on my house calibre server.

        --
        No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 21 2014, @08:55PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 21 2014, @08:55PM (#72006)
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 22 2014, @04:04PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 22 2014, @04:04PM (#72325)

      They deliberately block proxies, tor, etc.. I see no point in them doing this. Trying to restrict users based on copyright, etc., is already blatantly spelled-out on their front page as the user's responsibility, not gutenberg.orgs. I don't see the point in refusing people who want to read books anonymously. Can't even get to their FAQs.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by tibman on Monday July 21 2014, @08:57PM

    by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Monday July 21 2014, @08:57PM (#72009)

    That is extremely cost effective if you read. New (as in just released, not condition) ebooks are often more than 10$. Especially if you get into technical books that age very quickly. What use is a heavily depreciated reference manual? It was just taking up shelf space.

    If you do fall in love with a book you are likely to buy a print version. You know, to put on a shelf where other people will see it : )

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    • (Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Monday July 21 2014, @09:49PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday July 21 2014, @09:49PM (#72034)

      "Especially if you get into technical books"

      Two publishers I purchase (directly) from have some ideas about that. One is periodic sales where you get the ebook for free if you buy the pbook. Another is beta access where I already have access to certain books that aren't being published yet, which is interesting. Finally one of them offers DRM free multiple formats pushed automagically into my dropbox as new editions are released (and new editions / new printings are free...)

      A third publisher, Oreilly, offers kinda the same thing as Kindle Unlimited via the Safari, although more limited and a multiple of the cost. My guess is Oreilly and possibly some other technical publishers simply won't participate.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Tuesday July 22 2014, @10:07AM

    by PizzaRollPlinkett (4512) on Tuesday July 22 2014, @10:07AM (#72216)

    Hachette, and all publishers, are at war for their survival right now. Amazon wants to turn permanent books sales into disposable rentals. Publishers will get a pittance per temporary rental instead of a sale. Amazon gets the profit from the $120 yearly fee for this service, and publishers get a trickle of revenue. This is a loser deal for publishers.

    The RIAA member companies slept through Apple turning $20 CD sales into $0.99 downloads, focusing their attention on suing people instead of managing change. Book publishers are just a tad bit smarter than gangsta rappers turned record label owners. They're not going to let this happen.

    The only way to win is not to play. Anyone who plays Amazon's game will lose, because that's what Amazon does. Unless publishers are willing to walk away from Amazon and not let them have their content, publishers will lose. Without publishers, Kindle Unlimited is an unlimited slush pile of stuff no one wants to read.

    There are no winners, and there are no good guys, in this war.

    --
    (E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)