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Kindle Unlimited

amazon.com

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Re: Kindle Unlimited

#81

Post by sremani »

jwr wrote: post #73

"We're sorry. Kindle Unlimited is currently only available for US customers. Please visit us again when it is available in your country" Again. Companies just don't learn. This is the Internet. If you sell digital content online, there is no "US customers". There are exactly two groups of customers: those with credit cards that are willing to pay you and all the rest. This whole idea of segmenting by country is not o…

Publishing and Media (Music, Movies & Entertainment) are two sectors known to have illogical business practices and entrenched interests. The internet is still trying to disrupt these sectors, Amazon would love to take your credit card number but they have to operate on what is possible and choose their fights wisely.

Secondly, US is the trend-setter in many things internet, that may be coming to an end but companies would want to try new things in a market they have most comfort before expanding out.

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#82

Post by makmanalp »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #75
makmanalp wrote: post #64

This service would have the extremely interesting effect of replacing itself with all your reading sources. Consider: Given a choice between buying a book elsewhere and reading it here, you're going to choose the latter because it's free. But also, if you normally read a book per month, since you're paying for it whether you read or not, you'd have to basically read more from here to be able to make it "worth it". So…

Are books fungible? If you're in a rich Western country, the time you spend reading a book probably has an opportunity cost much greater than the cost to acquire rights to read the book. Why would you spend 10 hours with a book whose marginal cost is $0, when you could pay $10 and spend those ten hours with a better book?

Wow, never thought of it that way. Although I don't think that'd factor in as much if there's books I want to read on both sides, which I assume is the case. So it's not so much an absolute ranking of books. If it's over a threshold, I want to read it. Given two books I want to read, it might not be that clear that I want to read one over the other, but when you add the cost difference it'd become clearer.

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#83

Post by dynamic »

jwr wrote: post #73

"We're sorry. Kindle Unlimited is currently only available for US customers. Please visit us again when it is available in your country" Again. Companies just don't learn. This is the Internet. If you sell digital content online, there is no "US customers". There are exactly two groups of customers: those with credit cards that are willing to pay you and all the rest. This whole idea of segmenting by country is not o…

The copyrights are often dispersed, with different publishers owning different rights. It's not a matter of just "arrang[ing] for worldwide licensing." It's dealing with a completely different set of owners who may have no interest in signing on.

Of COURSE Amazon wants to access customers in other countries, it's not like they haven't thought of it!

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#84

Post by yan »

jaysonelliot wrote: post #74

I'm very disturbed by the steady erosion of ownership that has been happening for the past few years. Subscription models are an attractive way to get some digital content for a low price, whether it's music, software, movies, or books—but the internet has a notoriously short memory, and I fear that we're condemning ourselves to becoming cultural goldfish. I have books and records from my youth that sit on my shelf a…

I can fully understand your sentiment, and to some degree emotionally connect with it, but rationally: my entire bookshelf of computer science and literary classics has gone untouched since my initial read through the vast majority of books.

I keep looking around and I'm not sure that I'm happy with the "ownership" aspect of books, or a lot of stuff in general. (Having moved three times during the last six years, moving books is an awful experience).

This is probably an expression of what I've been feeling in general as of late, but I am extremely happy with the "subscriptionification" of media that's been happening. Spotify's huge library is a net win for me, as opposed to collecting albums for them to just collect dust. For me, revisiting what I used to listen to in high school by over-hearing someone's playlist has a far stronger emotional reaction than revisiting it by walking past a bookshelf.

Regarding stuff disappearing ten, twenty, thirty years from now: my experpience has been the opposite. The Internet has been getting better and better and archiving content of yesterday, and has provided better and better access to it.

My personal lean has been to own less stuff in general, which includes books, music and media in general. So needless to say, I'm pretty excited about Kindle Unlimited.

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#85

Post by thrownaway2424 »

jaysonelliot wrote: post #74

I'm very disturbed by the steady erosion of ownership that has been happening for the past few years. Subscription models are an attractive way to get some digital content for a low price, whether it's music, software, movies, or books—but the internet has a notoriously short memory, and I fear that we're condemning ourselves to becoming cultural goldfish. I have books and records from my youth that sit on my shelf a…

Shall we also get off thine lawn? Having big stacks of books in your home is a relatively recent phenomenon. People used to borrow them from the library or circulate them from person to person. Mass availability of inexpensive books has only been with us for 100 years or so.

How do you know Jeff Bezos didn't tweak a couple of sentences in your Kindle copy of Catch 22? I don't know, but I do know that detecting such a change will be far, far easier with digital publications than it ever was with paper.

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#86

Post by bennesvig »

fideloper wrote: post #58

How do authors get paid with this? I don't imagine a pay per play scheme work like it does with the music industry

I assume the same way they do with KDP Select where prime members can borrow a free book once a month. Amazon will set aside a pool of money and divide it among the books that were read each month as part of the program.

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#87

Post by [deleted] »

jonknee wrote: post #60
unicornporn wrote: post #53

So let's see... 10 bucks for books, 10 bucks for Spotify, 10 bucks for Netflix. That's $360 a year. It kind of adds up, doesn't it? :) When I was little I went to the local library. There I had unlimited access to movies, music and books, for free. Sure, it's hard to compare the music collection to Spotify. But at the time I was content. And I actually think I'd still prefer both the movie collection and the book col…

Less than a dollar a day for unlimited media consumption doesn't sound like a lot to me. It's still significantly less than 1 cable subscription.

[deleted]

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#88

Post by fleshgolem »

To anyone complaining about country restrictions:

Selling books is actually quite the complicated matter in some countries. At least in Germany you are not allowed to sell a book at a price of your choice (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_book_price_agreement)

It can be pretty fucking annoying to have these laws in place (they do have their merits, but... that's a completely different debate), but I can understand Amazon not having worked out all the legal issues to go worldwide with this

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#89

Post by Eleopteryx »

Sadly, I don't read nearly enough to justify a $10/mo subscription. (This is something I'd like to improve, but I have ADHD and poor reading comprehension.) This is contrast to a service like Google music that I use nearly every day. I wish there were a cheaper tier with perhaps fewer rentals at a lower price. Based on the current volume of reading that I do, the most I can see myself paying for a subscription is about $3~5/mo.

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#90

Post by brotoss »

WhatsName wrote: post #21

Can someone explain to me, whats the difference between Kindle Unlimited and Amazon Prime[1]? [1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/?docId=1000739811&ref=...

Prime gave free access to some ebooks but I'm pretty sure they were mostly classics
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