Kindle Lending Library to end Jan 4, 2021

[haertig]

Originally Posted by mitford13

And there are usually 1-2 cheap subscription opportunities for KU throughout the year, around .99 for 1-3 months.

My first KU free trial was July 2018. Now, in Dec 2020 I am in the middle my 7th KU free trial. Disclaimer: Some of these were actually 99 cents, some were totally free, I can't remember which was which but the split is around 50/50. So I just call them all "free" since 99 cents for three months is so close to free that I count it as such.

You find generic offerings of these trials around Amazon Prime day and around Black Friday. You find more offers when you buy a new Amazon device (a Kindle or a Fire Tablet or an Echo device). And sometimes, an offer just comes out of the blue in an email Amazon sends you. I just bought a Paperwhite for my daughter about a month and a half ago, and that came with yet another free KU trial, but I didn't keep that for myself, it was the daughter's to use. That would have been "free trial #8" for me had I kept it.

There are even MORE offers for free trials, but I don't qualify for those (they are limited to "new users" or "one per address").

I find that I do not read fast enough to come close to justifying paying the normal $9.99 per month that KU costs. I could buy the books outright cheaper than I could borrow them from KU. But 99 cents (or free) for three months is a price point that even my slow reading speed can make use of. You don't generally find big name authors on KU. They throw a handful of them into KU so they can advertise and make it look like the big names are there. I think the Harry Potter books are one (if not the ONLY) example of that. But truthfully, you will have a large selection of mostly unknown authors. Some of these unknown's books are very good, some are very bad. If you want the big name authors, use your library and Overdrive, not KU.