Kindle Unlimited subscribers, are you getting your money's worth?

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Amazon has a much-varied customer base and they target each segment with perks only available to those customers. The confusion sets in when customers belong to more than one group. For example:

• Kindle Owners' Lending Library --> free for owners of Kindle devices
  
• Kindle First --> paid for Amazon customers | free for Prime members
  
• Kindle for Samsung --> free for Samsung device owners
  
• Kindle Unlimited --> for paid subscribers
  
• Prime Reading --> free for Prime members

Originally Posted by jhowell

It is for Prime members who own Kindle or Fire devices.

(Sorry for being pedantic.)

I was going to say the same thing. Prime Lending and KOLL targets are overlapped and both are exclusive to Prime Members but for KOLL you also have to have a Kindle or Fire so it is a subset of the overall "Prime Member" group. They do have a different set of books available though.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by jhowell

It is for Prime members who own Kindle or Fire devices.

(Sorry for being pedantic.)

Not a problem. I changed the entry.

[bfollowell]

For me, Kindle Unlimited, is far too limited. If more of the big five publishers, or maybe even just S&S were to get on board with their whole library of titles, I'd strongly consider. As it is, there just isn't enough quality content to make it worth it to me. They list over a million titles, but a huge percentage of that is low quality and self-published stuff. That's not to say all self-published titles are of low quality but, in my experience, it certainly does describe much of it.

Has anyone heard any rumors of more of the big five publishers coming on board?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by bfollowell

For me, Kindle Unlimited, is far too limited. If more of the big five publishers, or maybe even just S&S were to get on board with their whole library of titles, I'd strongly consider. As it is, there just isn't enough quality content to make it worth it to me. They list over a million titles, but a huge percentage of that is low quality and self-published stuff. That's not to say all self-published titles are of low quality but, in my experience, it certainly does describe much of it.

Has anyone heard any rumors of more of the big five publishers coming on board?

No rumors because there is no chance of it happening the way you want it.
Not enmasse.
Not anytime soon.
There isn't enough money in KU to feed the maws of the BPHs. Remember, those publishers believe $10 ebooks devalue literature.

[bfollowell]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

No rumors because there is no chance of it happening the way you want it.
Not enmasse.
Not anytime soon.
There isn't enough money in KU to feed the maws of the BPHs. Remember, those publishers believe $10 ebooks devalue literature.

I'm sure you're right. Then again, most of the big five supported, in one way or another, Oyster Books and to some degree still support Scribd. So, who can say for certain what may happen.

I won't be holding my breath though.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by bfollowell

I'm sure you're right. Then again, most of the big five supported, in one way or another, Oyster Books and to some degree still support Scribd. So, who can say for certain what may happen.

I won't be holding my breath though.

You shouldn't.
Cynanosis is very painful.

1- Oyster was paying near-sale rates. They went under.

2- Scribd trimmed their catalog to pull some of the most popular titles because they couldn't afford to keep paying what it cost to feature them.

3- Amazon does carry a small amount of tradpub titles in KU they pay more to feature. In Japan they are currently dealing with complaints from tradpubs for dropping titles that were too popular, just like Scribd. So it's clear that Amazon is not going to throw money away just to feature tradpub titles. There simply isn't enough money in a $10 subscription to support tradpub titles in any large volume. A handful of titles here and there, yes. Full catalogs? No way. Not now, not ever. Not without the BPHs giving up 80% of the revenue they currently demand. Amazon is not about to bleed themselves supporting books from companies that have spent the last 6 years looking for ways to hurt them.

4- The lack of BPH titles is not a defect in KU but rather a defining feature. Look to Amazon's promotional page for KU and they make it clear KU exists for "discovery", to promote Indie and small press books that get lost in the shadow of the higher profile titles from the BPHs. The same is true of the recently introduced Prime Reading: there's a few high profile tradpub titles but the bulk of the ebooks featured are highly-rated Indie and APub titles that Amazon pays a lump sum to feature instead of per-read payouts.

5- Looking at it from the other side, KU works for Indies because the typical full-read payouts for novels run in the $2-3 range which is about 80-90% of what a sale brings in, which is $2-3.50. Obviously, books that readers don't like payout a lot less but the tradeoff is the increased visibility of a channel where they can compete for reader attention without having to deal with the Pattersons, Kings, and Roberts' of the world. That is not a tradeoff that tradpub authors will support, as was made clear by the way so many went bat-guano crazy when they first heard about the KU payout system. The difference is the difference between Indies getting 70% of retail revenues and tradpub authors getting 17%. At best. (That would work out to maybe $0.35-0.50 per full read.) Even if the publishers were willing to accept per page read payouts, the authors and their agents wouldn't. Instant lawsuit guaranteed.

Add it all up and there is no chance any of the BPHs will put their full catalog into KU anytime soon. They're still making good money without it and their preference is to discourage ebook use, anyway, as they've made abundantly clear.

Not going to happen any time soon.
There's no "anything can happen" about it.

It's simple math: average subscribers read about four to five full titles per month which works out to $2-3 per full book payout. A fair deal for subscribers and a fair deal for Indies. Not a deal tradpub publishers can stomach, though. And they don't have to: they're still making good money without KU.

[Dr. Drib]

I just tried the 30-day KU free trial.

I created a new wish list and moved 32 titles from my regular wish list and into the new KU wish list.

Total cost is approx. $134, so this looks like a great opportunity to acquire them for free to read.

I just now added 3 more titles to the List.

This looks like it will easily pay for itself.

I'm almost finished with one book right now.

[Atunah]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

I just tried the 30-day KU free trial.

I created a new wish list and moved 32 titles from my regular wish list and into the new KU wish list.

Total cost is approx. $134, so this looks like a great opportunity to acquire them for free to read.

I just now added 3 more titles to the List.

This looks like it will easily pay for itself.

I'm almost finished with one book right now.

And one can go in and out at any time and keep growing the wishlist. Using wishlists with KU is really the best thing. I have several. I also have one for things that either came out of KU or I am waiting to go in. So once a week I grab my kindle and go to the wishlists, browse through them as the KU logo is right there and move those not in KU anymore to the wait for KU list and move those in that list to the proper KU list if they are now in KU.

My kindles make this much easier than doing it from the computer.

Makes it easier to grab the next read if you already have a bit of a wishlist to pick from.
Because browsing for stuff randomly in KU is too much of a frustration for me.

Have fun reading.

[wakkaday]

do the wishlists actually appear for you to read free?

[NickyWithNook]

I go back and forth on KU. I join, and then I get so annoyed by the abundance of weird romance books about shape-shifters, or whatever, that I give up. I'm on it again and I found a few books I liked - I think they were all Kindle First books from previous months that I hadn't picked, or maybe other books by authors who have had Kindle First books. But I really enjoyed them. You just have to be willing to sort the wheat from the chaff. And you have to be willing to deal with what's available. Anyway, mixed feelings.