If you know anyone who writes books, or if you follow any authors on social media, you’re probably used to regular cries of doom and gloom about the death of writing and how Amazon is killing the book as we know it. Some of this may even be true. But if anything, it’s the massive increase in writing of all kinds that is killing (or changing) the book industry, and Amazon is just one part of that phenomenon. Books — like so many other forms of media — are becoming a commodity.
Take Kindle Unlimited, for example, an Amazon feature that provides a kind of Spotify-for-books rental service, where users pay $9.99 per month and can borrow one of more than 700,000 books. The service is similar to subscription rentals offered by Oyster and Scribd, but since this is Amazon, all hell broke loose when the new offering was…
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnVNbYdo2FU
The links below are to articles that look at Amazon’s new Kindle Unlimited service.
For more visit:
– http://kindleworld.blogspot.com.au/2014/07/amazons-new-kindle-unlimited.html
– http://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-news/amazon-enters-ebook-subscription-market-with-kindle-unlimited
– http://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-news/kindle-unlimited-goes-live-with-ebook-audiobook-titles
– http://goodereader.com/blog/digital-publishing/is-kindle-unlimited-good-for-indie-authors
– http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/amazon-reveals-kindle-unlimited-ebook-subscription-service_b88175
– http://ilmk.wordpress.com/2014/07/18/its-official-kindle-unlimited-is-here-with-639621-titles/
– http://www.infodocket.com/2014/07/16/get-ready-here-comes-we-think-amazons-all-you-can-read-subscription-e-book-subscription-service/
– http://www.teleread.com/amazon/kindle-unlimited-now-live/
– http://www.teleread.com/amazon/amazon-start-kindle-unlimited-service-similar-scribdoyster/
– http://the-digital-reader.com/2014/07/18/amazon-launches-kindle-unlimited-will-take-international-september-october/
Amazon(s AMZN) has officially launched Kindle Unlimited, the $9.99/month ebook and audiobook subscription service we told you about on Wednesday.
The details are, pretty much, what already leaked. The service is only available in the U.S. for now. About 640,000 titles are available, most from Amazon’s own publishing imprints or by self-published authors who’d previously enrolled their books in KDP Select. There are books from traditional publishers as well — no big-5 publishers — but Abrams, Algonquin, Workman, Open Road and Bloomsbury, among others. Two thousand audiobooks from Audible are included, and a membership to Kindle Unlimited comes with a free three-month Audible subscription.
“You can keep up to ten books at a time and there are no due dates,” according to Amazon’s help pages. “Read your Kindle Unlimited books on any Kindle device or free Kindle reading apps.”
One splashy series of note that is available: The first…
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At the BookShelf 