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If you read consistently and read pretty fast, KU sems like a good deal. Since I don't read very fast, and only manage one or two books per month, it's cheaper for me to buy the books outright than subscribe to KU.
I have used a few KU free trials. Sometimes these are $1/month, but that's basically free. I check out the books not with the intent to read them, but to "check them out". I can scan through them quickly, sample a bit here and there, and decide it I want to purchase them outright later. You can read free samples from Amazon's regular website, but I find having the entire book, if only briefly, a much better sample to decide if the book is for me.
So I am using KU as a "sampling service", not a "reading service". The free trials come often enough that I have built up a list of well over a hundred books that I would consider buying outright. Then I can buy from this list at my leisure, without feeling pressured to read faster to get my money's worth out of KU. It would not be to my financial benefit to subscribe to KU at regular price and read at my regular pace. I see a long term subscription to KU as a good deal for fast readers. And short, intermittent bursts of KU (preferably free trials) for slow reader "samplers" like me to create "possible future purchase lists". To Amazon, I must look like a very fast reader, since my sampling usually results in a turnover rate of one book per day. But I'm not reading them that fast, I'm just sampling them that fast. I haven't had any issues with Amazon trying to reign me in at a rate of one book per day, so that must be an acceptable throughput for their algorithms (I'm sure some people DO read this fast!)
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