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Kindle Unlimited

amazon.com

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Re: Kindle Unlimited

#131

Post by Patrick_Devine »

yan wrote: post #84
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, mov…

This may sound weird, but I actually love staring at my bookshelf. I often will go, pick up a book I haven't thought about in a while, and read it again. I've filled it with (mostly) timeless technical manuals, plate picture books (like pictures of the cosmos, airplanes and things like that), plenty of sci-fi, flight instruction manuals, foreign language dictionaries and other odds and ends. There are plenty of books which I'll buy on Amazon and leave on the shelf for a couple of years and I'll randomly pick one up and start reading.

I think the point here is that a bookshelf makes ideas have a geographic location. With web sites, knowledge doesn't occupy physical space and doesn't have the same permanence which a book occupies. With the bookshelf you're reminded of ideas not because they're hyperlinked together in some ever shifting zeitgeist, but because they're literally sitting right in front of you.

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#132

Post by Groxx »

jaysonelliot wrote: post #105
yan wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, mov…

Show me anyone's MySpace profile from 2006. Tell me again how good the Internet's memory is.

Its memory is probably better than yours. https://web.archive.org/web/20060408183534/http://profile.my...

That would be "Chris", one of the "Cool New People" on the homepage: https://web.archive.org/web/20060209175255/http://www.myspac...

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#133

Post by waterlesscloud »

bennesvig wrote: post #86
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.

Yes. As a Kindle author, I got an email this morning stating that's how it will work.

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#134

Post by drdaeman »

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…

> Amazon became successful by selling books.

Licensing, not selling. Unless you were talking about dead-tree versions.

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#135

Post by dragonwriter »

drdaeman wrote: post #134
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…

> Amazon became successful by selling books. Licensing, not selling. Unless you were talking about dead-tree versions.

Since Amazon became wildly successful by selling dead-tree versions of books before it even started selling ebooks, yeah, I would assume that selling rather than licensing was what the grandparent post intended, and that it referred to dead-tree rather than electronic books.

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#136

Post by walterbell »

ryanklee wrote: post #54

If I have a digital copy, it's important for me to have a physical copy, as well. At different times, I prefer different media. Until I can buy a book and get a digital version for either free or for a (very) small added fee, I'm just not getting on board with kindles (or whatever e-reader device). Amazon did roll out some version of this book+ebook service a few months ago, but it included such a small number of vol…

It's dependent on publishers. At any time you can ask Amazon to search through your _entire_ history of Amazon print purchases and it will give you free access to the Kindle versions, if the publisher enabled this feature.

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#137

Post by [deleted] »

orbifold wrote: post #55
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…

This of course all depends on which country you live in. Where I am from libraries already offer ebook and audiobooks and university libraries have bought licenses from most academic publishers, so that students can download most of their course material and almost all journal articles free of charge. Also all libraries are a 15 minute bike ride away. All of them combined carry a higher quality selection of books tha…

[deleted]

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#138

Post by jamesbritt »

smacktoward wrote: post #123
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 hear you on this, and am in sympathy with your point. But this bothers me less than Amazon selling Kindle books does, because at least this is clearly marked as rental. All your points are just as true about the Kindle books that Amazon sells to people -- you lose the right of first sale( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine ), so you can't re-sell or lend your books; they're tied to a specific DRM sche…

they're tied to a specific DRM scheme;

I have an ebook available through Amazon and opted to have no DRM. I'm pretty sure this is still up to the author/publisher.

I just got an E-mail about Kindle Unlimited and it had a link to make my book eligible. However, to do so you have to enroll the book in Kindle Select (or whatever it's called) and that requires that the book not be available from any other outlets.

Well, fuck that.

I can see this as preventing a good many books from being available on Kindle Unlimited.

I expect this is more of an issue for self-publishing authors with zero rep.

In any event your comment reminded me that I need to make a current backup of the books on my Kindle and strip them of any restrictions.

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#139

Post by walterbell »

mimighost wrote: post #32
xhrpost wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of people already on the $15/mo plan with Audible. Myself included. I listen to audio books on my commute. The difference with my more expensive plan is that I get too keep the audio books. Though I have not re-listened to any so this is something for me to think about.

It is a surprise that Audible is an Amazon company. Will the launch of this service create self-competition?

Amazon also own GoodReads, CreateSpace, Shelfari, Abe Books, The Book Depository, BookFinder and 40% of LibraryThing. Some of those compete.
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