Limited Kindle Unlimited

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

Kindle Unlimited has about 50,000 books. Prime Reading has about 3,000.

I see no way to just sort books in the Kindle store for KOLL books. I think they would be the same as the Prime Reading books,

Except that they aren't; they're the same as the KU books and if you're a Prime member and own a Kindle or Fire, you get to borrow one a month.

Really, if you're a Prime member anyway, there'd be no extra benefit to owning an Amazon device unless they let you access more books. And as you point out, KOLL books are limited to reading on an Amazon device. So why have a KOLL at all if you got access to fewer books which you couldn't read on apps? It would make no sense at all.

So, if you're looking for a KOLL book, anything on KU qualifies, at least in my experience. But that doesn't help at all in filtering it down to quality choices.

[John F]

Originally Posted by latepaul

There is a check in the DeDRM tools for whether the books are borrowed or purchased and it quits with an error if they are not purchased. ...

My apologies, thank you for correcting me.

...I know KU count as borrowed not purchased. I would have thought the same applied to Prime Reading but I've never tested it.

I just tested it, and I was able to strip a book from Prime Reading.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

Kindle Unlimited has about 50,000 books. Prime Reading has about 3,000.

...

Are you sure about the 50,000 number?

The "learn more" for Kindle Unlimited says:

... Enjoy the freedom to explore over 1 million titles and thousands of audiobooks on any device for just $9.99 a month. ...

I see the 50,000 number when I do a search, but it says something like "... showing results 1-16 of over 50,000..."

[Deskisamess]

Before Prime Reading or KU, IIRC, you could tell which were KOLL eligible because they would have a Prime logo. You knew it meant KOLL because up to that point, only tangible items that could be placed in the Cart and shipped had a Prime logo.

Once Prime Reading and KU started, it became impossible to search for just KOLL books. I suspect they are pulled from the same list as Prime Reading.

There are many more KU books than the Prime or KOLL. (At least it used to be this way when KU was new) It would be safe to surmise that all KOLL books are in the KU as well, but you couldn't say the reverse, since there are so many more to pick from in KU.

Amazon doesn't say much anymore about KOLL anymore, it seems unnecessary.

[DrNefario]

KOLL has a better selection than Prime Reading, but I do feel that amazon would like you to forget the former exists and just use the latter (maybe upgrading to KU when you realise you only get book 1 in the series on Prime Reading.)

Whenever I hear of an indie book that sounds interesting, I put it on my Prime wishlist, and then I pick my KOLL book from there each month. These days it's mainly fantasy related to Mark Lawrence's annual SPFBO contest.

Oh, and I know the tendency is for threads here to hang around for ages and drift across a number of subjects, but I do agree with the original poster that some kind of warning mechanism, at the very least, would be better than a straight ban.

[Mistyfarm]

Originally Posted by ShortNet

Honestly, the ability to pull up Harry Potter at no charge and hand my kindle over to a fussy 10 year old in the middle of a long car trip would have been worth the KU subscription alone.

ShortNet ..... Love the name.

But You have to know for your own protection against any possible legal remedy from Amazon that by deliberately showing your child your device with the content visible, you may have contravened the Amazon's Conditions of Use & Sale paragraph 6. RIGHTS OF ACCESS AND USE & more importantly let's not forget Section 23 subsection 1 "M'Lord" !!

You may wish to consider whether you need to buy from Amazon a KU subscription for each and every one of your children and maybe even a spare "guest account" in case you want to show someone else a quote from any other Amazon content !!

Just putting it out there! See;
Conditions of Use & Sale
Last updated on 5 December 2017.
https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/help/cu...deId=201374360

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

KOLL has a better selection than Prime Reading, but I do feel that amazon would like you to forget the former exists and just use the latter (maybe upgrading to KU when you realise you only get book 1 in the series on Prime Reading.

Well, KOLL is news to me. Where is it? I found an Amazon page about it, but the link for books to borrow sends me to a page with KU and Prime titles.

[Mistyfarm]

Originally Posted by rkomar

The KU system is designed to reward authors who have their works read by subscribers, and they need people to read "normally" to get the balance right. The way you used it was "unfair" within their system.

Thanks for that. I wondered why some of the books were there. So they still get paid eh?

But isn't that Amazon's problem to police?

Again I'm a "verified" paid up member not a scammer of ANY flavour!

Do me the courtesy of telling me the rules before you BLOCK me.


(incidentally I did actually manage to look at another 9 KU books before before the spotty work experience kids at Amazon locked me out again)

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

Once Prime Reading and KU started, it became impossible to search for just KOLL books. I suspect they are pulled from the same list as Prime Reading..

There are over 800,000 titles in the KOLL and only slightly over 1,000 available in Prime Reading (figures from Amazon). I did go back to try and verify, rather than just reiterate what I'd said earlier.

Originally Posted by Catlady

Well, KOLL is news to me. Where is it? I found an Amazon page about it, but the link for books to borrow sends me to a page with KU and Prime titles.

IIRC, use the drop-down store menu in the Kindle app on a Fire tablet (never had a Kindle), and KOLL is one of the choices. Pull it up. I don't think that helps with selection, but I never came up with anything on KU that I couldn't borrow with KOLL (although now that I've checked, it's obvious there are even more titles available through KU.)

You get one book per calendar month, but you can keep it as long as you like. You can only borrow one at a time, though.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by rkomar

The KU system is designed to reward authors who have their works read by subscribers, and they need people to read "normally" to get the balance right. The way you used it was "unfair" within their system.

That's silly. So what is it here, Amazon expects consumers to pay to subscribe to KU with a consumer goal of "rewarding authors"? Thus Amazon mandates how you are allowed read books (in the "normal" way) so as to maximize author payments?

(1) The consumer goal is "reading books"

(2) The Amazon goal is "creating corporate profit" (this goal may be enhanced by screwing consumers, or screwing authors, or both - chances are quite high that Amazon wants to minimize payments to authors, not maximize them - Amazon is probably tickled pink by consumers who download books and only skim or never read them ... they don't have to pay the authors so much then!)

(3) The author goal may be "rewarding authors" however

I expect the typical consumer cares about their goal, but couldn't care less about Amazon's goals or the author's goals, except for how those other goals negatively impact the consumer.

[Mistyfarm]

Originally Posted by haertig

(2) The Amazon goal is "creating corporate profit" (this goal may be enhanced by screwing consumers, or screwing authors, or both - chances are quite high that Amazon wants to minimize payments to authors, not maximize them - Amazon is probably tickled pink by consumers who download books and only skim or never read them ... they don't have to pay the authors so much then!).

Aha my dear Watson, you may indeed be correct!

Let's make a case of it, shall we? - It shall be called ........ The matter of the Kindle Swindle! Eh what?

I like it!

Give me back the "Unlimited" access I paid for Amazon!

[murraypaul]

Your behaviour has hit a filter that looks for suspicious activity aimed at gaming the system and letting scammer take more than their fair share of the KU revenue.
To put this in perspective, on a quick Google I couldn't find any other incidents of this happening.
So whatever limit is set seems to be high enough not to catch anyone actually reading the books they select, so calling it a swindle seems a little silly.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

so calling it a swindle seems a little silly.

But how else will we be able to advance to the "Amazon is the Devil" phase of the conversation?

As for why the details of the algorithm (or "rules" if you like) in question aren't spelled out explicitly; we've been down that road, too. Publicizing the details of such algorithms would play into the very hands of the real gamers/scammers such safeguards were put in place to protect against in the first place

Instead of angering the rare individual who happened to be using their system honestly--but in a way that they didn't foresee; they'd have thousands of people purposely scanning-to-the-end of the exact number of books that can checked-out without running afoul of safety mechanisms by people attempting to pimp their pages-read numbers to make more money.

It's a balancing act. And people are simply never going to be told exactly where the tipping point is.

[haertig]

Can the O.P. tell us approx how many books they checked out from KU during the month in question? They should be listed in your KU history. Then we will have some idea of what this "invisible limit" is.

I personally have had a month or two during my KU trial membership where I checked out maybe 35 books during a month (always subject to the "only 10 at one time" published limit). What I was doing was getting a bunch of books to my reader so I could peruse them in batches offline at my leisure to see which ones might be worth purchasing. My intent was never to read them - well, maybe a few of them - but instead I was wanting to filter through them quickly (while offline) to see if there was much of anything that would make me want to pay the normal price for KU, or to purchase the book outright (sadly, the answer to that was "no" for me).

But none-the-less, I didn't trigger any limits at the "about 35 books per month" threshold. I certainly can't actually read that fast, I was just skimming/filtering, but I suppose there are people who might be able to actually read the books and manage that kind of throughput. I figured my skimming/filtering was what many people might do during a KU trial membership. After all, the trial is to determine if KU is right for you, not to trial if you can actually read a book. I did end up reading a few of the books during my trial, but the majority of them were "skim and return".

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by issybird

IIRC, use the drop-down store menu in the Kindle app on a Fire tablet (never had a Kindle), and KOLL is one of the choices. Pull it up. I don't think that helps with selection, but I never came up with anything on KU that I couldn't borrow with KOLL (although now that I've checked, it's obvious there are even more titles available through KU.)

You get one book per calendar month, but you can keep it as long as you like. You can only borrow one at a time, though.

Thanks. I was looking in the "Books" section of the Fire tablet, where it wasn't, instead of in the Kindle app, where it was. I'd much rather search with a Web browser, but the KOLL option is only shown in the tablet. Ridiculous.