What is Kindle Unlimited? 10 Facts You Need To Know About It

Introduction:

If you are a serious bookworm, who spends a whole lot of time reading books, this service is for you. Amazon Kindle Unlimited is a subscription ‘pay once read many’ services for frequent readers. Therefore, under this, Kindle Unlimited gives you the freedom to explore various books. You may try new genres and categories, discover new authors, and whole complete box sets with unlimited access to Amazon’s varied selection of books. Thus, from business to romance, or comedy to tragedy, you will find endless options within the service. In addition to this, you can also enroll in the audio-books service which allows you to listen to unlimited numbers without ever losing out on any. To do so, you can get books which have an option of ‘Kindle Unlimited with Narration.’ Therefore, you can switch between reading a book and also hearing about it at the same time.

Things To Be Remembered Before Opting For This:

In the list below, you’ll find benefits and disadvantages of using Kindle Unlimited. Therefore, by going through the list, you can take a call on whether Kindle Unlimited works for you or not. As per the above discussion, it is quite clear that this service is for avid eBook readers. Therefore, not everyone may find the option useful. Nevertheless, the following factors present a much clear picture as to where Unlimited service can be made use of:

A. Kindle Unlimited Offers Almost 1.4 Million Titles

During its initial days, users of Kindle Unlimited saw the biggest number of titles among eBook subscription services in it. A figure of around 640 thousand. During that time, a reader saw Kindle’s competitors, such as Oyster or Scribd, claiming that their stores were 1 million strong. However, it did not take much time before this gap became thin.

It turns out Kindle Unlimited – which heavily relies on titles within the Amazon publishing platform – gets stronger. At the same time, the future of other services became blurry. For instance, Oyster eBook subscription platform ended its services in October 2005. Today, you can easily explore Kindle Unlimited available books without the need to subscribe.

The main factors here are:

1. 1.4 million Kindle eBooks in all categories.
2. Almost 20 thousand come with Audible Narration – you can quickly turn between reading and listening.
3. Over 900 thousand have Word Wise-enabled – short definitions can be displayed inline above difficult words.
4. 1 thousand of these eBooks are also Prime Reading eligible.
5. Kindle Unlimited service has books from Amazon’s self-publishing platform. Thus, most authors agree to sell the books exclusively on Amazon to participate in a special promotion program.

B. Not All The Best Selling Authors Choose Unlimited:

The chances are high that, you won’t find books from Hachette, MacMillan, Simon & Schuster, Harper-Collins, and Penguin, here.

If you want to save money on bestsellers by picking up Kindle Unlimited, make sure to check out the titles you want to read. However, don’t expect to find books from Harper Lee, Janet Evanovich, Stephen King, Dan Brown, or Nora Roberts.

In fact, when you go through the list of the New York Times bestsellers in the Kindle Store, you’ll find that only very few of them are in the store. On the other hand, Scribd offers books from Harper-Collins, Simon & Schuster, or Macmillan.

C. You Can Read Most Of The Titles At 5 Dollars Each:

The main reason why readers opt for Kindle Unlimited is to save costs. You can have a book to read at a price of 4.99 USD when it costs around 12 USD outside. Also, you get these books as soon as they are out. In effect, you are getting your fee back even if you read just one book per month. In theory, this looks like a significant advantage. However, this depends on how many eBooks that you end up reading entirely in a month. To save costs, you shall have to read almost three eBooks of 5 USD each in two months ideally.

D. Kindle Unlimited And Prime Unlimited Are Not The Same:

Many users confuse Kindle Unlimited with Prime. This is because Amazon offers both services, and you need to subscribe for both. Most importantly, among many features Amazon Prime includes the below benefits for book lovers:

• Borrow books from Kindle Owners’ Lending Library,
• Free access to Prime Reading,
• Get Kindle First eBook for free,
• Getting free access to Audible Channels.

The most popular service that comes with Prime is Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. Prime members can borrow one Kindle book per month from a store that’s quite similar to Kindle Unlimited. One book per month. It’s clear that Lending Library is addressed to occasional rather than avid readers. Prime members can access a rotating selection of eBooks, comic books, and magazines. The access is unlimited, and you get all the most attractive items you can find in the entire Kindle Store. In short, Amazon Prime is a blanket service for all the goods within Amazon. On the other hand, Kindle Unlimited is a service aiming towards only the digital content.

E. Kindle Unlimited Gives You Access To Books, AudioBooks Etc:

With Kindle Unlimited subscription, you can read for free not only Kindle eBooks but also popular magazines, as well as listen to audio-books. Kindle Unlimited started and eBook-only subscription service. But the service evolves with time, reflecting the new features being added to Kindle eBooks.

One of them is Audible Narration. It’s an extra feature of some titles available in the Kindle Store. For an additional charge (usually up to $4) you can add to the Kindle book you’ve bought the ability to switch to audio narration and backward quickly. In short: you can turn the book you read into an audio book.

Kindle Unlimited subscribers have this feature at no extra cost. Currently, there are about 20 thousand Kindle Unlimited books with Audible Narration. In autumn 2016 Amazon has also added the selection of popular magazines to the list of eligible Kindle Unlimited titles.

It means that with your subscription you can read current magazine issues for free. So far, reading digital editions of magazines and newspapers was possible if you signed up to a separate Kindle Newsstand subscription.

F. Finding A Good Kindle Unlimited Title:

Amazon has many features, categories, and dedicated sub-pages that it is hard to search for a book that you want. However, it’s good to spend some time to test Kindle Unlimited eligibility against the books on your wishlist. Thus, you cannot assume that a bestseller will be available as soon as it is out in this service. In addition to this, it is also possible that you’ll never find it at all, even at a later time.

There is no way to check out on a page with a Kindle book details whether this book is included in Kindle Unlimited or not.

There are two ways to find Kindle Unlimited eligible books on Amazon:

1. Start browsing from the Kindle Unlimited home page: Within the homepage, you will find featured sections. They will be – Popular Titles, Popular Romance, Popular Club Picks, Popular Biographies, etc. When you scroll down, you’ll see the entire catalog, sorted by featured titles. Editors hand pick the titles within “Featured” basing on sales popularity, reviews, etc. You can change the sort order to price, average customer review, and publication date. Relying on customer reviews is a good way to find good reads, especially if you haven’t heard about the books and their authors before.
2. Browse Kindle Store with Kindle Unlimited filter turned on: Instead of the home page, you can still narrow down the search results for the subscription service. When browsing Kindle Store, look for the Kindle Unlimited Eligible check box on the left. It usually comes as a first filter option in the left sidebar. However, if the title is not available in Unlimited, you will not see it within search results.

G. Kindle Unlimited Is Available In Select Countries:

Kindle Unlimited was launched on Amazon.com as a service addressed to U.S. customers only. However, It’s now available across  Kindle Stores in select countries. To accurately see how much it costs to subscribe to Unlimited service, you may need to visit the local Amazon website. What you have to keep in mind is that international customers of Amazon.com are not eligible to subscribe to Kindle Unlimited. The following are some of the costs:

1.  Amazon in USA, UK, Canada charges at the monthly fee of 9.99 USD,  7.99 GBP, and 9.99 CND respectively.
2. Unlimited service within Germany, France, Italy is coming to 9.99 Euro in each of them.
3. Within Asia, the service is available in India and Japan at a monthly fee of INR 99, JPY 980 respectively.

H. You Can Keep 10 Kindle Titles At A Time:

Don’t think of packing your Kindle with hundreds of Kindle Unlimited books, or making extensive collections of them. You can only keep up to 10 books from Kindle Unlimited in your account at a time. Other eBook subscription services also have such limits. For instance, Scribd has a limit of 20 books. While this limitation is against the “unlimited” selling proposal of the service, it is logical. When you pack your Kindle with 500 books, you won’t be able to read them at once, anyway.

However, there is one major advantage to this range. 10-book limit is too low. It’s below the number of books many readers have in different stages of reading.

I. After Subscription Ends Your Books Go Away:

If you plan to get too many KU books to your Kindle e-reader or application, it is a waste of time. This is because if you don’t read them, they will be gone when you cancel your subscription.

Some users try to outsmart the Amazon and think they could load lots of Kindle Unlimited books to their e-reader, then cancel the subscription, but keep the books. This is not possible because when you cancel the Kindle Unlimited subscription, the books will be automatically removed. This happens as soon as your device connects to the web and syncs content with Amazon servers. Even if you de-register the device from your Kindle account, the maximum number or books to have at a time is 10, so it doesn’t pay in the end, anyway.

J. You Get To Keep Your Book Marks And Highlights:

As it is the case with Kindle eBooks, you can save and sync your bookmarks, annotations, highlights, etc. across devices. Thus, you can highlight a word in one device, and Amazon account syncs it to your other device. Having said that, what happens when you cancel the Unlimited service? The answer is simple. You still get to keep your bookmarks and other text wraps, post canceling. The official Amazon para regarding this reads like this – “After the billing date passes, you will lose access to Kindle Unlimited books that you have downloaded. However, your bookmarks, notes, and highlights within the book will be saved to your Amazon account. They are available if you access the book in the future”.

Of course, this means you need to buy that book you were reading or again renew the service. Therefore, when you do that, you get your annotations back in the reader.

K. Kindle Unlimited Works Across Devices And Applications:

If you use Kindle applications or devices for reading eBooks, you know that you can sync across all of them. The process is simple. You can login to multiple devices and applications, under the same Amazon account. This account records and saves your reading features such as titles, highlights, bookmarks, search items, etc. Also, as you can get Kindle apps for free, it becomes easy to view books on them.

With Kindle Unlimited you can still sync your titles across all your devices. However, this is not the case with Kindle Owners Lending Library. This is a service which is only for people owning a Kindle device. On the other hand, Kindle Unlimited is for everyone. Kindle for iPhone/iPad, Kindle for Android, Kindle for PC and Mac – you can use them right away to access your Kindle Unlimited books.

However, browsing for Kindle Unlimited books is only supported on Kindle devices, Kindle for Android, and Kindle for Samsung. On other devices, you’ll have to use a browser, and visit Amazon site.

L. Using Amazon Deals For Saving High:

Once you have Amazon subscription, mostly you pay for it on a monthly basis. However, at times Amazon offers huge discounts on its products and services. Therefore, if you are looking forward to subscribing to Amazon Unlimited service, you can have to wait for these offers. Some of these annual periods of offers come as – Black Friday Or Cyber Monday during the months of November/December. In addition to this, there is always the annual Amazon Prime day which comes during June or July of each year. Thus, massive discounts are on offer on Unlimited services as well. As an estimate, you will save around 30 to 45% on these days.

However, please keep in mind that if you take part in the promotion like that, and, for instance, buy the 12-month plan, you won’t get a refund for 11 months if you decide to end the subscription in the first month.

Other Features About Kindle Unlimited:

For the monthly fee, you’re given access to a vast selection of titles and audio-books, and you can read or listen as many as you’d like – although you can only have ten saved to a device at any given time. Signing up for a free trial is easy.

1. Head to Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited page and click the 30-day trial button. You’ll be asked to log in, and then be able to access the Kindle Unlimited library.
2. You’ll need to have a valid payment card on file for the free trial to work and have one-click payments enabled.
3. Amazon also shows if the book is available under Kindle Unlimited if you search for it via the standard Kindle Store, so you won’t accidentally buy a book that you could read for free.
4. To download a book, just click the orange “Read for Free” button that’s in the same spot of the page as the regular buy now button. You can then select which device you’d want to deliver the book to.
5. In case you are looking for Audiobooks under this service, you can get such titles. You just need to click on the button which says “Read and Listen for Free.” Once the book is on your device, there will be a logo of a headset in the top right corner if there’s an audio-book included.
6. Once you’re inside the book, tapping the page to see options will show a headset icon on the top of the page. On tapping that, and you’ll get an option to get the audio files too.
7. If You are planning to return some Kindle titles and remove them from your Kindle account, you just have to go to Kindle “manage devices and content.”

Cancelling The Kindle Unlimited Service:

If you’re on the 30-day trial or have been paying for the service, but have decided it’s not worth the cost, it’s easy to cancel. You just have to visit your Amazon account homepage. Once you login to it, click on Manage My Devices And Content. Under this, you will find the Cancel Kindle Unlimited feature. Also, you can see if there is any due amount.

Keep in mind that Amazon will automatically start charging your card if you don’t cancel before the end of the free trial.

Advantages For The Publishers With Amazon Unlimited:

Kindle Direct Publishing is Amazon’s book publishing division. Additionally, KDP Select is its Amazon’s marketing system for self-publishers too. If you are a KDP Select participant, you can only make your book available only through Kindle portal. Therefore, Amazon then pushes these books into Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owner’s Lending Library as well.

KDP Select authors and publishers get a “share” of the KDP Select Global Fund each time a reader finishes 10% of a book. However, It’s not clear how much that share is. “The fund amount is variable and announced on a monthly basis,” Amazon says in a FAQ. “We constantly monitor all factors that impact the KDP Select fund to set the fund amount for our KDP Select authors.”

Final Words:

Amazon Kindle is a fantastic service for an avid reader as it offers him thousands of options. However, it is not easy to find all the books you need under this plan.You may still have to buy the best seller you want to read. However, Amazon Unlimited works fine if you do not have any specific requirement as such. Also, since you can enroll int this option after trying the service for a month, you can take a proper call. However, if you are a publisher looking to get your book into this service and reach out to millions of readers, you can approach an eConversion services entity for your needs.