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Kindle Unlimited

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Re: Kindle Unlimited

#171

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…

Any time I see something that is both interesting and obscure, like an article or a podcast, I have a tendency to packrat it. I have a USB RAID drive full of that stuff. It's a habit I've had for a while and it comes from exactly what you say: the Internet has a short memory.

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#172

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…

Half of what I read as a kid came from the library (and by "the library" I mean any one of at least 7 systems) and went back a week later. Half the remainder came from thrift stores and was left back in there in boxes when we moved. How common is it to have a personal physical copy of all your childhood possessions? What's the demographic variation?

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#173
I notice few commenters have brought up the obvious deflationary pressure being brought to bear against authors and publishers here. The same thing has occurred in music and film.

In the future is art and literature going to once again be the exclusive province of either those who have taken a implicit vow of poverty or the independently wealthy? Are we seeing the end of the era when a person could actively earn a living doing these things?

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#174

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…

Not just ownership, but rights in general, and even worse: the concept of individual independence and empowerment.

There has been a consistent trend to portray the digital/online realm as a world apart from the "real" world, rather than, as is the truth, just another facet of it. This has facilitated massive erosions of civil liberties in the online world. Government censorship is the norm on the internet, not the exception. Warrantless monitoring and trespass on private systems and data by the government and law enforcement is also rampant, with few safeguards. In a similar vein, the protections of the rule of law and the criminal justice system are completely thrown out the window in many circumstances when it comes to the online realm. You can be effectively punished online merely due to an allegation (i.e. DMCA takedown), and often only arbitration is available as a remedy, erasing centuries of traditional protection for individual rights through the court system.

And that's aside from the ongoing war over DRM and the desire of major content aggregators to deny ownership rights and privileges to customers.

Add to that the growing reliance on paternalistic relationships with large corporations and business entities, eroding individualism. People rely on their ISPs and their cell carriers for access to the online world, a major aspect of modern business and private life. Unlike phone service these service providers have much greater leeway to decide what you can and cannot do online and have increasingly taken advantage of consumers. People rely on major services (gmail, hotmail, facebook, twitter, etc.) for their primary means of communication, services that in many cases border on unregulated monopolies. And at work people are increasingly dependent on their employers to provide medical and dental coverage, retirement savings, and so forth.

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#176
post #2

Very saddened by this: We're sorry. Kindle Unlimited is currently only available for US customers. Please visit us again when it is available in your country.

I live in France but it worked right away. I still have an old address in the US on my amazon account from when I studied there which might explain why it works.

My credit card's billing address is in France though so I think they're really just trying to make it as easy as possible to sign up while still respecting the letter of the contracts they signed.

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#177

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…

>Will books end up getting unskippable "updates," or even being deleted at the whim of the publishers or Amazon one day? Amazon can already do this. http://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/oct/22/amazon-wipes-cu...

You're overlooking the followup where they restored access the next day, with a clarification that account closure isn't supposed to cut off access to your already-purchased content.

http://www.dailydot.com/news/amazon-linn-nygaard-deleted-acc...

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#178

It seems that the debut of $10/mo Kindle Unlimited was accompanied by the demise of the one per month free Kindle lending library for Prime customers.

Where did you see that? The KLL page is still up and accepting Prime memberships, and the Kindle Select (author program behind KU and KLL) terms are clear that authors can opt their books into or out of either or both.

Edit: I do notice that the website doesn't display the KLL option for me on eligible books, but I assume that's because my KU subscription enables less restrictive access to the same book.

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#179

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…

$400 or so was about one month's budget for me for media, though that included games and my $100/mo cable bill.

I'm way ahead with KU (was using Oyster), Netflix/Hulu, and Rdio. If someone comes out with a decent all-you-can-eat gaming service that doesn't make me juggle discs, I'll be way, way ahead.

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#180

As an author with two books enrolled in KDP select, I didn't know they'd be included in Kindle Unlimited. It will be interesting to see if this has any effect on sales.

Do you know how you and the publisher are compensated in this situation? I'm assuming there is some sort of royalty stream coming back to you? (I'm not asking for details, just generalities).

I'll answer since they didn't. Kindle Select is direct publishing only, so they don't have another publisher.

They get paid based on number of their reads (that's anyone who reads >10% of their book) as a proportion of number of total reads across the library, calculated against a money pool that Amazon determines month over month and tunes to keep the program attractive.

More details here:

https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A3BQJE2QV37M1B#kll_calc

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