[Manabi]

Originally Posted by GlenBarrington

Am I the ONLY one who is beginning to feel that "Kindle First" is becoming less and less useful to them?

Nope, I started feeling that way months ago, it's part of why I forget to post them most months when I used to do it regularly.

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

They shifted a bit on the genres. When they had more variety, it was easier. Put at least one SF&F in the mix, please. Now it is multiple thrillers, mystery, history any more.

That's it exactly, they seem to be targeting a specific set of readers that doesn't include me. I can understand why they choose to focus on some genres over others to publish, since some genres are definitely going to make more money than others. But it's becoming quite off-putting that this "benefit" of Prime membership is no longer a benefit for readers who prefer different genres. To give a different example, if the only music available for free streaming for Prime members was country from the 1960s, that wouldn't be a benefit to people who like any other kind of music, whether it's country from other decades, rock & pop or classical.

It's particularly annoying when you take the time to search their scifi imprint (sorted by publication date, go to page one of the search to see future scheduled books) and see they're releasing a book or two in those genres about once a month. In fact they have two releasing in September. And yet they rarely include those genres in First Reads.

Maybe they should revamp First Reads a bit. Perhaps change it to a free book from a limited selection or a decent discount on any book already published by Amazon if you don't want any of the books from that month's selection. Or they could stop pretending the only readers out there are ones that like thrillers, mysteries, historical fiction, contemporary fiction, literary fiction and children's books and mix in other genres like they used to. (That's the ones I remember seeing regularly.)

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

I already chose a book this month, but when I looked at the children's book badgoodDeb was talking about, I saw that I was allowed to get it for free. I tried a second book that sounded interesting and it let me get it!

I wonder if they never changed the code that let you get two books like we were allowed to get a month or two ago. It now shows that I have to purchase the next book I checked.

Does the second book free work for anyone else?

The First Reads overview page says that you get to pick two this month instead of one. They do that occasionally, sometimes for obvious reasons (like a certain holiday), but this one appears to be totally at random.