Via Reuters.com
“(Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc on Friday unveiled a subscription service that allows customers to read as much as they choose from its library of more than 600,000 e-books.
Subscribers to the Kindle Unlimited service, which costs $9.99 per month, can read the e-books on Amazon’s Kindle reader or on any device that supports the Kindle app.
Customers can choose from books including “The Hunger Games,” “Life of Pi,” and “Diary of a Wimpy Kid.”
Subscribers also have access to thousands of audio books.
Amazon’s service competes with others in the market including Oyster, which charges $9.95 per month for unlimited access to more than 500,000 titles.”
It will be interesting to see what profits the authors make out of this deal, and whether it is good for reading in the long run. I asked my wife who reads many books as to her views on this monthly service. She simply said pointless and expensive.
Gavin's Gadgets & Photography 
Well I love reading and have many books in my library both ‘e’, paper & hardback.
Of choice I’m old school and love going into a book shop and ploughing through hundreds of books in search of a good read.
However, I do also take with me quite a few e-books to read on holidays and breaks and it’s also convenient when you are in a waiting room or wherever to pass the time with a quick read.
BUT…… I draw the line with these subscription services.
Like your good wife Gavin I simply can not see any understanding in obtaining books this way when you can easily obtain your reading material through normal means…… That and it’s also expensive.
With this coming from Amazon I would love to see exactly where the charges and profits are going.
Also, have authors been asked if they wish to have their titles included in such services and would they have to take a reduction in takings?
Subscription services on the whole take away a lot of middlemen and additional costs where normally it results in a cheaper outcome to the subscriber. In this case however, on paper (pun intended), I fail to see any reasoning for a subscription service. It is no cheaper so obviously profits will be much greater.
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There is already a similar service on Prime. You can borrow one book per month. However, his has several flaws:
– You can only borrow one book per month, so if you read you book in a week and return it to the library, you have to wait until the next month before you can borrow another one.
– You can only borrow a book on a “real” Kindle or Kindle Fire.
– Since you can only borrow books available on Prime, this restricts you choice considerably.
The new service seems to remove several of these restrictions. However, it’s still pointless and expensive.
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