Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kindle Unlimited

amazon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 199 posts

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#91

Post by Joeri »

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…

The purchasing model that amazon has isn't ownership either, it's rental with an indeterminate end date. Any time you cannot resell something or your children cannot inherit something, you don't own it. In some ways this kindle unlimited subscription is more honest, because it doesn't pretend to be something it isn't.

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#92

Post by hugh4life »

Hmm... how can you tell which books are available for it?

I searched for a philosopher I like to read and none of his books had the "unlimited" indicator... so I don't think this is for me.

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#94

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

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…

Copyright infringement to the rescue!

You can even have your cloud-like experiences with software like Plex and Calibre (though I like Plex better, it won't do plain ebooks). Audio books work well enough on Plex, and you can even share the server with friends if you want.

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#95

Post by epaladin »

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…

When that holographic storage media finally comes around, we'll just store a full copy of all of human knowledge in our pockets, and this won't really be a problem anymore. That's one possible solution at any rate.

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#98

Post by walterbell »

uptown wrote: post #23
swanson wrote: post #17

I love the idea, but the selection is not good enough (for me) yet. I keep an Amazon wishlist as a "reading queue" and none of the 60 books (technical, business, pop-psych) in it were available on Kindle Unlimited. I usually buy 2-3 Kindle books a month at around $9/per, so I would definitely use this service if the selection improves. I kind of wonder if Amazon could get away with charging $9/month for any book they…

Agreed. I don't read many books, but I asked my wife about the last 3 ebooks she'd read. One of the three was already a free book due to Amazon prime and was also included in Kindle Unlimited. The other two weren't available as part of Kindle Unlimited. So comparing Kindle Unlimited to Netflix's online streaming is actually a pretty accurate correlation. It's currently comprised of second-tier (or lower) books that a…

Free, top-tier pre-1920 ebooks from centuries of book reviews:

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/themes/

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#99

Post by ColinCera »

jaysonelliot wrote: post #77
mrt0mat0 wrote: post #15

To all the "this is just a 10 dollar library card", I ask you this: if library books are the way to go, why do people buy endless amounts of books from amazon. Amazon became successful by selling books. Audible is another successful company that offers a feature that according to you, can be achieved at a library. Clearly libraries are missing something or else we'd be using them more. Maybe it's one click instant ac…

I'm surprised by all the comments in this thread saying that you have to physically go to your library during their open hours to borrow a book. Most libraries I know offer digital downloads through the Overdrive app. I regularly borrow audiobooks and ebooks from the library with a couple of taps on my iPhone.

Yes, but they don't allow an unlimited number of patrons to read the book at the same time. You have to get in line. At my library, the wait time for popular ebooks can be more than a month. And once you do get to check out an ebook, you only have it for a couple weeks, then you have to "return" it, and if you want to read it again/more, get back in line.

That's clearly inferior to Amazon's service where you can read any book in their catalog at any time, even if a million other Amazon customers are simultaneously reading it, and you can open it and read it as often as you want, with no waiting.

I borrow ebooks from my library quite often, but I also buy a ton of books for my Kindle, for similar reasons as above, and will most likely subscribe to Kindle Unlimited (depending on the catalog — right now the catalog looks like a few bestsellers I've already read or don't care to read, plus several hundred thousand self-published romance novels).

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#100

Post by Tloewald »

Given that Amazon royally screws independent authors (not being a publisher, I can't speak to whether they screw larger publishers too) who want to price their works about $9.99 (if you're after a vertical market, Amazon hates you) I can only imagine they'll extend the screwing to authors who won't also make their works available via Unlimited.

(How do they screw us? They cap the 70% less download fee royalty at the $9.99 level. In order to make more than $7 (less download fee) per sale, you need to price a book at over $20. So if I sell a $20 book on Amazon, BN, and iBooks -- I get twice as much from BN and iBooks as I do from Amazon. To make the same royalty from Amazon, I need to charge $40, but Amazon won't let me do that. So I pulled my book from Amazon and revenues increased.)

Post reply on HN