I am keeping an eye on this as a reader. I had a KU subscription when it first came out and ended up cancelling it the end of 2014 when it had gotten flooded with shorts, porn which often gets stuffed into romance for bypassing the adult filter, scamlets, chopped up books and many regular books were pulled out of the program. I had some books on a wishlist to access with KU and each week there would be less and less on it.
Since there are no publishers other than Amazon imprints in the program right now, I was paying $10 to read amazon publisher titles and the occasional good indy book. Those were often back list titles. Many other indy books were books that either had been free for years already before, or continued to go free it seemed like every week.
I don't know about others, but KU was not reading "free" books for me. $10 a month is not free in my world. So unless I get some value out of it, its just not going to work. I read to read what I want, not for the sake of reading something just to make me feel better about the $10.
I have a Scribd subcription and although the content is fantastic, once I got my Voyage, I am finding myself using it less and less. I just don't enjoy reading on a tablet with the backlight. As sad as I am, I might have to cancel Scribd if I don't use it more in the next couple of months.
If this change to KU can get actual books back into the program, that is the first step in getting me to subscribe again. But, they will still need some publishers. I haven't checked lately whats in the program as you can't browse the selection anymore now without signing up, I think I saw some Kensington titles.
As someone that just prefers reading on e-ink, I would love to have a KU subscription, but there has to be stuff in it I actually want to read.
I said it before, I'd pay more for a KU that has all the publishers that Scribd has. I'd pay double for that selection.