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I just canceled my Kindle Unlimited $9.99 monthly subscription. Are you a Kindle Unlimited subscriber? Why or why not?
It would be impossible to overstate how excited I was when Amazon announced the Kindle Unlimited program this past summer. 10 bucks a month to browse e-books seemed like a great deal. The fact that Amazon promised to include audiobooks, and audiobooks that synced up with the Kindle books, made Kindle Unlimited even more appealing.
The reality of Kindle Unlimited ended up being wildly divergent from all the hype.
While Amazon promises 700,000 e-books (and thousands of audiobooks), almost none of these books were ones I actually want to read. The selection on Kindle Unlimited is shockingly bad. Amazon seems to have been completely unable to persuade authors or publishers to join the program.
The other problem with Kindle Unlimited is that it is difficult to discover books that qualify. There is no easy way to see which books in your Amazon or Audible Wish Lists are Unlimited eligible. Amazon does nothing to match the books that I’ve previously purchased or have put in my Wish list with books available through Kindle Unlimited. There is no Kindle Unlimited recommendation engine.
The mistake that Amazon seems to be making is that they structure the Kindle Unlimited program at the low-end of the book buying market. It seems that they wanted to keep the monthly price below $10, and have therefore decided to compensate publishers and authors at a low rate. Each Kindle Unlimited borrow pays an author about $1.40.
What would of the payment had to have been to attract almost every author and publisher?
The opportunity to sample every Kindle and Audible book would be enormously appealing. I would happily pay $1 a day for unlimited access to digital books.
My guess is that there are lots of other big readers out there who would also be willing to pay a buck a day for this service.
Why didn’t Amazon go after the hard core reading public with a high quality and higher priced service?
Are you a Kindle Unlimited subscriber?
How much would you pay for an all-you-can eat digital book subscription service?
To illustrate just how bad the selection in Kindle Unlimited is, I’ve copied the first screen of my Kindle Wish List. As far as I can tell, none of these books is in the Kindle Unlimited program. (I'm also curious if we share any books on our Wish Lists).
| The Sellout: A Novel |
| Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town |
| H is for Hawk |
| Rust: The Longest War |
| Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World |
| Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania |
| Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It |
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The Life and Times of the Stopwatch Gang (Kindle Single)
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Anticipating 2025:
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Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think About Colleges
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| The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age |
| Rare: The High-Stakes Race to Satisfy Our Need for the Scarcest Metals on Earth |
| The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World |
| The Great Race: The Global Quest for the Car of the Future |
| Circus Maximus: The Economic Gamble Behind Hosting the Olympics and the World Cup |
| College Disrupted: The Great Unbundling of Higher Education |
| Flight 232: A Story of Disaster and Survival |
| World 3.0: Global Prosperity and How to Achieve It |
| Oil on the Brain: Adventures from the Pump to the Pipeline |
| The End of Country: Dispatches from the Frack Zone |
| Satin Island: A novel |
| After Birth |
| We Are Pirates |
| The Italians |
| Citizens of the Green Room: Profiles in Courage and Self-Delusion |
| The Big Seven (Faux Mystery) |
| The Great Leader (Faux Mystery) |
| The Misfit Economy: Lessons in Creativity from Pirates, Hackers, Gangsters and Other Informal Entrepreneurs |
| Single, Carefree, Mellow: Stories |
| Hush Hush: A Tess Monaghan Novel |
| The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help |
| America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940 |
| The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere |
| Funny Girl: A Novel |
| Big Little Lies |
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This Explains Everything: 150 Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World Works
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| Locus of Authority: The Evolution of Faculty Roles in the Governance of Higher Education |
| Transforming Students |
| The Magician's Lie: A Novel |
| The Resilience Dividend: Being Strong in a World Where Things Go Wrong |
| Boom, Bust, Exodus: The Rust Belt, the Maquilas, and a Tale of Two Cities |
| Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products |
| On Such a Full Sea: A Novel |
| The Forgers |
| Redeployment |
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Imagining the University (New Studies in Critical Realism and Education)
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| This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage |
| Expatriates: A Novel of the Coming Global Collapse (Coming Collapse) |
| Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate |
| Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism |
| Building Organizational Capacity |
| Leading Change, With a New Preface by the Author |
| College and University Budgeting: An Introduction for Faculty and Academic Administrators |
| The Organization of Higher Education: Managing Colleges for a New Era |
| A History of American Higher Education |
| American Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century |
| Organization and Administration in Higher Education |
| Organizational Theory in Higher Education (Core Concepts in Higher Education) |
| How Colleges Change: Understanding, Leading, and Enacting Change |
| The King of Sports: Football's Impact on America |
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One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer
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The History of American Higher Education: Learning and Culture from the Founding to World War II
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| The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden |
| How to Be a Victorian: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Victorian Life |
| Do or Die: Reluctant Heroes |
| The American Mission |
| The Distance: A Thriller |
| The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike Book 2) |
| The Fever: A Novel |
| The Perfect Score Project: Uncovering the Secrets of the SAT |
| Lightning Rods |
| Thrown |
| Teaching Machines (Tech.edu: A Hopkins Series on Education and Technology) |
| Moments of Impact: How to Design Strategic Conversations That Accelerate Change |
| Leadership Without Easy Answers |
| How Great Leaders Think: The Art of Reframing |
| The Men Who United the States: America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible |
| Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia |
| Putin's Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? |
| Paying for the Party |
| The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football |
| Busted: A Tale of Corruption and Betrayal in the City of Brotherly Love |
| The Chain: Farm, Factory, and the Fate of Our Food |
| The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere (TED Books) |
| Risk Wise: Nine Everyday Adventures |
| The Setup: A True Story of Dirty Cops, Soccer Moms, and Reality TV |
| How The World Was Won: The Americanization of Everywhere |
| Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind |
| Capitalism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) |
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Faster, Higher, Stronger:
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| Nicely Said: Writing for the Web with Style and Purpose (Voices That Matter) |
| Revival: A Novel |
| Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon |
| Well-Designed: How to Use Empathy to Create Products People Love |
| The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance |
| Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States |
| My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey |
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The Fear Project:
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| The Intercept (Jeremy Fisk Novels Book 1) |
| Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined |
| The Next Best Thing: A Novel |
| Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History |
| Down the Up Escalator: How the 99 Percent Live in the Great Recession |
| Midnight in Mexico: A Reporter's Journey Through a Country's Descent into Darkness |
| Two Nations Indivisible: Mexico, the United States, and the Road Ahead |
| Managers As Mentors: Building Partnerships for Learning |
| Leadership and the Art of Struggle: How Great Leaders Grow Through Challenge and Adversity |
| Why Teach?: In Defense of a Real Education |
| The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery |
| Beautiful Ruins |
| The Newlyweds |
| Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics, and Society |
| My American Revolution: A Modern Expedition Through History's Forgotten Battlegrounds |
| The Coming Jobs War |
| By Blood: A Novel |
| Fooling Houdini: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks, and the Hidden Powers of the Mind |
| The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation |
| Darwin: Portrait of a Genius |
| The Leading Indicators |
| Dead Stars: A Novel |
| Ministers of Fire: A Novel |
| Retail Hell: How I Sold My Soul to the Store |
| Concierge Confidential: The Gloves Come Off---and the Secrets Come Out! Tales from the Man Who Serves Millionaires, Moguls, and Madmen |
| Mortuary Confidential: Undertakers Spill the Dirt |
| Detroit City Is the Place to Be: The Afterlife of an American Metropolis |
| The Good Son: The Life of Ray ',Boom Boom', Mancini |
| The Expats: A Novel |
| Models. Behaving. Badly.: Why Confusing Illusion with Reality Can Lead to Disaster, on Wall Street and in Life |
| Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain |
| The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life |
| Brain Bugs: How the Brain's Flaws Shape Our Lives |
| Against Thrift: Why Consumer Culture is Good for the Economy, the Environment, and Your Soul |
| Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States |
| Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man |
| The Assumptions Economists Make |
| The Great Divergence: America's Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do about It |
| The Age of Equality: The Twentieth Century in Economic Perspective |
| Getting Better: Why Global Development Is Succeeding--And How We Can Improve the World Even More |
| Fifteen Digits |
| And When She Was Good |
| Desert America: Boom and Bust in the New Old West |
| Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep |
| The End of Men: And the Rise of Women |
| Jet Age: The Comet, the 707, and the Race to Shrink the World |
| Townie: A Memoir |
| Our Kind of Traitor: A Novel |
| Getting Smart: How Digital Learning is Changing the World |
| County: Life, Death and Politics at Chicago's Public Hospital |
| Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It (Discovering America) |
| My Hollywood (Vintage Contemporaries) |
| Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity |
| Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory |
| Panicology: Two Statisticians Explain What's Worth Worrying About (and What's Not) in the 21st Century |
| Cleopatra: A Life |
| Stolen World: A Tale of Reptiles, Smugglers, and Skulduggery |
| Wrong: Why experts* keep failing us--and how to know when not to trust them *Scientists, finance wizards, doctors, relationship gurus, celebrity CEOs, ... consultants, health officials and more |
| Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?: How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life |
| Poorer Richard's America: What Would Ben Say? |
| The Five-Year Party: How Colleges Have Given Up on Educating Your Child and What You Can Do About It |
| Merchant Kings: When Companies Ruled the World, 1600--1900 |
| Poop Culture: How America Is Shaped by Its Grossest National Product |
| The Comeback: How Innovation Will Restore the American Dream |
| Not Quite Adults: Why 20-Somethings Are Choosing a Slower Path to Adulthood, and Why It's Good for Everyone |
| Portfolios of the Poor: How the World's Poor Live on $2 a Day |
| Punching Out: One Year in a Closing Auto Plant |
| Lost Detroit: Stories Behind the Motor City's Majestic Ruins |
| The M-Factor: How the Millennial Generation Is Rocking the Workplace |
| The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves |
| Education Nation: Six Leading Edges of Innovation in our Schools |
| The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work |
| Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences |
| The Killer (Victor the Assassin Book 1) |
| The Gun |
| Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places |
| Newsonomics: Twelve New Trends That Will Shape the News You Get |
| The Future of Management |
| The Science of Liberty: Democracy, Reason, and the Laws of Nature |
| Numbers Rule Your World: The Hidden Influence of Probabilities and Statistics on Everything You Do |
| Power Trip |
| The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives |
| Hartsburg, USA: A Novel |
| The Lunatic Express: Discovering the World . . . via Its Most Dangerous Buses, Boats, Trains, and Planes |
| The Social Atom: Why the Rich Get Richer, Cheaters Get Caught, and Your Neighbor Usually Looks Like You |
| The Moral Underground: How Ordinary Americans Subvert an Unfair Economy |
| Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life |
| The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory |
| Repeat Until Rich: A Professional Card Counter's Chronicle of the Blackjack Wars |
| Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School |
| Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things |
| Death with Interruptions |
| Lost on Planet China: The Strange and True Story of One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation or How He Became Comfortable Eating Live Squid |
| Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town |
| Stuff |
| The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice |
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