17 July 2014

Would you Netflix your books?

Rumor has it Amazon is launching a "Kindle Unlimited" service that allows free monthly access to all Prime titles. Any Amazon Prime subscribers want to give me an idea of how extensive that library is? 'Cause whoa

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It looks like Amazon is targeting kids. ~Jen

Ellen said...

That would be useful given how fast kids can go through books. On the other hand, how many kids get Kindles?

Anonymous said...

If this is the same selection as the current Prime collection, I wouldn't be impressed; I can read much faster than I can find things I feel like reading in that assortment. They have a small number of extremely high-profile titles (Harry Potter was the series they showed off at launch) and then a long tail of stuff that I'd never pick, because there are always things higher up my list that I could get from the library or am willing to buy. I think the Prime collection is primarily an advertising tool and in practice is used sporadically, or maybe by people who aren't choosy and are trying to save money.

If they actually managed to get major publishers to participate, I'd be tempted against my own principles, because I get sick of waiting for library books. I suppose they have better leverage than Oyster to achieve that, except all the publishers hate them now.

-bradamant

Ellen said...

That's what I was afraid of -- I thought Amazon doing it would have a more extensive library available, but that doesn't sound like such a great deal. (I've heard similar things about Oyster.)